My journey to go to Umrah and the 10 life lessons I learned

 

In 2017 my parents asked me to perform Umrah to the holy land of Mecca. Because my parents went on Hajj around 2009. In 2017, I was still in college and there were still many considerations for me going on Umrah. The point is, my deepest heart is not ready.

Until someday in 2023, my passport has to be renewed. At that time, it was quite difficult to find an immigration office that had an empty schedule for registration. Initially I chose the city of Bandung, because I live there. However, everything in Bandung was full, then I continued looking at the Jakarta immigration office, but it was full too. Finally I tried to register at the Cianjur City immigration office, the city where I was born. It turns out that at the Cianjur immigration office, there is still a large registration quota. so I registered there. Long story short, the passport creation was completed. At that time I paid for the expedited process, where I could collect my passport on the same day. It's quite more expensive, but it saves time.

The day after the new passport was made, suddenly I didn't know why I wanted to go for Umrah. I immediately told my father, then my father was very enthusiastic to hear my desire to go for Umrah. He said the sooner the better. finally that day my father accompanied me to a travel agent in my city to register for Umrah. After arriving, the travel agent said the closest schedule was 3 weeks from that day. I chose the fastest schedule and immediately paid the fee for Umrah on the same day.

During the Umrah journey, there were 10 life lessons that I learned:

First, Umrah does not recognize rich or poor. Why is that? because in fact there are many people who go for Umrah even though economically they are not rich. Some of them get gifts from their work, bonuses from their companies, savings for decades and so on. And there are also many people who have a lot of money, but they don't want to go for Umrah, for fear of sin, and other reasons. even though our goal in going for Umrah is precisely because we have many sins.

Second, Umrah taught me about diversity and tolerance. As a Muslim, I realize that even though we are fellow Muslims, we will always have differences. Muslims in every region or country usually have differences. In the Umrah activity, I really saw the differences, for example in some things in the demonstration of prayer. We don't need to debate these differences, we should actually respect this diversity.