Beberapa waktu yang lalu,
di Mesir hidup seorang sufi yang tersohor
bernama Zun-Nun.
Seorang pemuda mendatanginya dan bertanya :
"Tuan, saya belum faham
mengapa orang seperti anda
mesti berpakaian apa adanya,
amat sangat sederhana.
Bukankah di zaman yang ini
berpakaian moden amat perlu,
bukan hanya untuk penampilan
namun juga untuk tujuan banyak hal lain."
Sang sufi hanya tersenyum,
ia lalu melepaskan cincin
dari salah satu jarinya, lalu berkata :
"Orang muda,
akan kujawab pertanyaanmu,
tetapi lebih dahulu lakukan
satu hal untukku.
Ambillah cincin ini dan bawalah
ke pasar di seberang sana.
Cubalah, bisakah kamu menjualnya
seharga satu keping emas."
Melihat cincin Zun-Nun yang kotor,
pemuda tadi merasa ragu;
"Satu keping emas.
Saya tidak yakin cincin ini
bisa dijual seharga itu."
"Cubalah dulu orang muda.
Siapa tahu
kamu akan berjaya menjualnya..!."
Pemuda itu pun bergegas ke pasar.
Ia menawarkan cincin itu
kepada pedagang kain, pedagang sayur,
penjual daging dan ikan,
serta kepada yang lainnya.
Ternyata, tak seorang pun
berani membeli dengan harga
satu keping emas.
Mereka menawarnya
hanya satu keping perak.
Tentu saja,
pemuda itu tak berani
menjualnya dengan
harga satu keping perak.
Ia kembali
ke kediaman Zun-Nun dan melaporkan;
"Tuan,
tak seorang pun yang berani
menawar lebih dari satu keping perak."
Zun-Nun, sambil tetap tersenyum arif, berkata,
"Sekarang pergilah kamu
ke kedai emas di belakang jalan ini.
Cuba perlihatkan kepada
pemilik kedai atau tukang emas di sana.
Jangan buka harga.
Dengarkan saja,
bagaimana ia memberikan penilaian."
Pemuda itu pun
pergi ke kedai emas yang dimaksud.
Ia kembali kepada Zun-Nun
dengan raut wajah yang lain.
Ia kemudian melaporkan;
"Tuan,
ternyata para pedagang di pasar
tidak tahu nilai sesungguhnya
dari cincin ini.
Pedagang emas menawarnya
dengan harga seribu keping emas.
Rupanya
nilai cincin ini
seribu kali lebih tinggi
daripada yang ditawar oleh
para pedagang di pasar."
Zun-Nun tersenyum simpul
sambil berujar lirih;
"Itulah jawapan
atas pertanyaanmu tadi orang muda.
Seseorang tak bisa dinilai
dari pakaiannya.
Hanya
"para pedagang sayur,
ikan dan daging di pasar"
yang menilai demikian.
Namun tidak bagi "pedagang emas".
Emas dan permata
yang ada dalam diri seseorang,
hanya bisa dilihat dan dinilai
jika kita mampu melihat
ke kedalaman jiwa.
Diperlukan kearifan
untuk menjenguknya.
Dan itu memerlukan
proses wahai anak muda.
Kita tak bisa menilainya
hanya dengan tutur kata dan sikap
yang kita dengar dan lihat sekilas.
Seringkali
yang disangka emas
ternyata besi biasa dan yang kita lihat
sebagai besi biasa
ternyata emas."
p/s : Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover.
Don't Judge a book by its cover meansnot to judge people or things
by what they look like
from the outside...
Broken Wing - Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover
By Jim Hullihan
Some people are just doomed to be failures.
That's the way some adults look at troubled kids.
Maybe you've heard the saying,
"A bird with a broken wing will never fly as high."
I'm sure that T. J. Ware was made to feel
this way almost every day in school.
By high school,
T. J. was the most celebrated troublemaker in his town.
Teachers literally cringed when they saw his name
posted on their classroom lists for the next semester.
He wasn't very talkative, didn't answer questions
and got into lots of fights.
He had flunked almost every class by the time
he entered his senior year,
yet was being passed on each year
to a higher grade level.
Teachers didn't want to have him again
the following year.
T. J. was moving on,
but definitely not moving up.
I met T. J. for the first time at a weekend
leadership retreat.
All the students at school
had been invited to sign up for ACE training,
a program designed to have students
become more involved in their communities.
T. J. was one of 405 students who signed up.
When I showed up to lead their first retreat,
the community leaders gave me
this overview of the attending students:
"We have a total spectrum represented today,
from the student body president to T. J. Ware,
the boy with the longest arrest record
in the history of town."
Somehow, I knew that I wasn't the first
to hear about T. J.'s darker side as the first words
of introduction.
At the start of the retreat,
T. J. was literally standing outside
the circle of students, against the back wall,
with that "go ahead, impress me" look on his face.
He didn't readily join the discussion groups,
didn't seem to have much to say.
But slowly,
the interactive games drew him in.
The ice really melted when the groups started building
a list of positive and negative things
that had occurred at school that year.
T. J. had some definite thoughts on those situations.
The other students in T. J.'s group
welcomed his comments.
All of a sudden
T. J. felt like a part of the group,
and before long he was being treated like a leader.
He was saying things that made a lot of sense,
and everyone was listening.
T. J. was a smart guy,
and he had some great ideas.
The next day,
T. J. was very active in all the sessions.
By the end of the retreat,
he had joined the Homeless Project team.
He knew something about poverty,
hunger and hopelessness.
The other students on the team
were impressed with his passionate
concern and ideas.
They elected T. J. co-chairman of the team.
The student council president
would be taking his instruction
from T. J. Ware.
When T. J. showed up at school on Monday morning,
he arrived to a firestorm.
A group of teachers were protesting
to the school principal about
his being elected co-chairman.
The very first communitywide
service project was to be a giant food drive,
organized by the Homeless Project team.
These teachers
couldn't believe that
the principal would allow this crucial
beginning to a prestigious,
three-year action plan to stay
in the incapable hands of T. J. Ware.
They reminded the principal,
"He has an arrest record as long as your arm.
He'll probably steal half the food."
Mr. Coggshall reminded them
that the purpose of the ACE program
was to uncover any positive passion
that a student had and reinforce its practice
until true change can take place.
The teachers left the meeting
shaking their heads in disgust,
firmly convinced that
failure was imminent.
Two weeks later,
T. J. and his friends led a group of 70 students
in a drive to collect food.
They collected a school record:
2,854 cans of food in just two hours.
It was enough to fill the empty shelves
in two neighborhood centers,
and the food took care of needy families
in the area for 75 days.
The local newspaper covered the event
with a full-page article the next day.
That newspaper story was posted
on the main bulletin board at school,
where everyone could see it.
T. J.'s picture was up there
for doing something great,
for leading a record-setting food drive.
Every day
he was reminded about what he did.
He was being
acknowledged as leadership material.
T. J. started showing up at school every day
and answered questions from teachers for the first time.
He led a second project,
collecting 300 blankets and 1,000 pairs of shoes
for the homeless shelter.
The event he started
now yields 9,000 cans of food in one day,
taking care of 70 percent of the need
for food for one year.
T. J. reminds us that
a bird with a broken wing only needs mending.
But once it has healed,
it can fly higher than the rest.
T. J. got a job.
He became productive.
He is flying quite nicely these days.
