KambingBujang

It’s a heavy burden for being a father.

A father has to make sure members of a family get the basic needs, such as, food for eating, a shelter to cover from rain and to have a warm sleep at night, and clothes for them to wear. The moment Amirul was born, I knew it’s going to be fighting tooth and nail to make sure my family to get they are deserved to. Now our second baby has knocked on our door of life, our obligation as a parent becomes more heavy as the needs are growing in multiply, yet our both income remain the same.

For me, single and married life are equal it comes to making decision. What differs between this two entities are when you are single, you and you only gain benefits or harms from what you have chose, but in married life, there will be chains of good or bad implications affect your family members upon your decision.

Alhamdullilah, in our blessed country, we are offered with full of choices and varieties in everything. You always can get what you want. In perfect world, we can choose whatever we want because there’s no opportunity cost. Unfortunately, in our imperfect world, money is one of our major limitations. When there are limitations, there are several T-junctions or choices that I have to make, such as;

• Public Hospital or Private Hospital.
• Buying single-storey house or double-storey house.
• To seek immediate consultation with speech therapy specialist about Amirul’s speech delay, or to let Amirul gains his voice naturally.
• Buy something that gains family interest, instead of your self-interest.
• Hire a maid or send our kids to daycare.

Making decisions on the five issues above affect my family life. Sometimes, it’s hard to make decision when there are no guidelines to tell me whether they are right or wrong. I guess all my banking and economic studies may apply to my practical life. I have to look back the economy of my household, the kind of social life that my family lead, and the people that live in our surroundings. The decision making will be made only after carefully taking that aspects into considerations .

Why Making decision is important?
Making decision wisely is very important to me and my family. It protects the value of my family’s principle; buy only things or services that give benefit to our family, and not to someone else. For example, in future, we need a bigger vehicle if we have four children, we only buy the cheapest family MPV (hmm.. Proton Exora Basic everyone?), regardless of how hype the Toyota Estima is or how cool the people think when we drive latest MPV. We do not seek the people’s approval, even though we have all the money in the world. We have to fulfill our family value first. That our principal.

Just for the thought. In Islamic perspective, a father has to meet the requirement of the basic needs as well, Islam called it nafkah.  A father also has been obligated to lead a family to the right path. Every decision have to maintain the prosperity of a family without being slipped off from Islamic taughts.