Living Between The Icebergs

I live in Jakarta, Indonesia. A city with two seasons only, either rainy or shiny. The only times I see iceberg are only in the James Cameron's movie Titanic, TV news, and magazines.

Iceberg is a massive body of floating ice that has broken away from a lacier or ice field.  Most of an iceberg lies underwater, but because ice is not as dense as water, about one ninth of it remains above the surface (source:www.dictionary reference.com).

The seen part of an iceberg is only one ninth of its actual size. Most of its part is hidden under the water. Sometimes I feel that humans are just like icebergs. We only see or interact with a tiny part of its actual shape during our daily lives. There are so many unseen parts that we never know about people living around us.

Judging a person by his or her appearance is the easiest way to satisfy our curiosity. Sometimes we even conclude person's personality just by seeing their single response in certain circumstances. A young administrator lady in my office just joined our company for around six months. She has cheerful attitude, keen on the details of her job. Who would have thought that she just lost her mom one month ago...and since her father died long time ago, now she is a single parent with four younger sisters, the youngest was only 8 years old.

A colleague of mine cannot fully concentrate in her job for the past four months. She came late to the office and came back early. She had her own struggle as her only son was diagnosed with rare bone disease and now underwent a long healing process through  healthy food and herbal medicines.

My housemate is an independent girl, a music and vocal teacher. She is not the type of a talkative person who will share her days on every occasion. She likes to listen to music through her headphones or doing so many things with her blackberry and laptop. I need to respect her "individuality", although sometimes it means just two sentences conversation with her in the morning or evening after work. Hence I embrace the times when she is willing to share her feelings with me.

My former boss had an autistic son. She had her own business that required so much of her times. People may only see the little time she spent for her boy during the day, but they didn't see the hours she spent early in the morning and evening praying and hugging her boy.

There are so many unique person around us. I still learn not to label them because of their appearance or seen habits. There are eight ninth parts that we haven't seen yet...and they may surprise us a lot!

 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7 - New Living Translation)