Love of my life, really?

When I hear someone saying “She’s the love of my life,” the first thing I imagine is an eighty-year old couple sitting at the back deck on rocking chairs, watching the sun set and drinking hot tea, not a newly formed couple. How do you know things might not change? Nowadays love is a word that is being overused a lot. Besides that, things and circumstances change so that the intensity of love could change, and it’s only if that love endures so many experiences could someone crown another with the “love of my life” title. So in my opinion, love is not defined as love unless it’s gone through many tests and remained unscathed. Love is not a word, it’s represented by a series of mawaqif (or situations not the parking space) in which someone wouldn’t translate it as being anything else other than love.

For instance, in a famous experiment, a group of professional posted “What does love mean?” to a group of children, and these are some of their answers.

1) ”When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore.  So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too.  That’s love.” Rebecca – age 8

2)  Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.” Danny – age 7

Or it’s someone going to visit his wife at an elderly center and talking to her everyday even when she doesn’t remember who he is because of Alzheimer’s.

So yeah, it’s a series of mawaqif and not a word to be thrown just because it’s what the girl wants to hear. So going back to the “love of my life” description. A more accurate phrase could be “she’s the love of my life at the moment (or until now)”. Can you imagine a guy telling a girl that? That would totally drive her crazy and have her follow him with a frying pan to his head. “What do you mean until now?”

*Sorry honey, I’m just trying to be accurate because I don’t know what tomorrow might bring*

So yeah, of course, everybody plays it safe by omitting those extra words, “at the moment – or until now”. But then let’s say it doesn’t work out as we discussed earlier in Marriages that don’t last. The girl will be hung up on, “But he said that I was the love of his life!”

*if he had said, you’re the love of my life until now, you would have followed him with a frying pan, what to do?*

Just my opinion on the matter not that I’m an expert in the topic being a cynic and all…

(c)Lel4nd

I guess that’s just something that’s been on my mind today.

Negative Space

Love is neither appreciated in its complete presence

Nor complete absence

But rather in its lack of presence

The empty slot in the shelf full of books

The clean square in a thick layer of dust

Where a photograph once was

The empty vase where once stood a rose

That drooped and wilted with time

It’s ironic that the ones who appreciate love the most

Are those who have just lost it

Image credit: TF

P.S. According to Wikipedia Negative Space in art, is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image.

Crushed Flower

The note below is just a figment of my imagination

She pulls open the curtains and watches him through the window with a wistful smile on her lips. He’s playing in the sand, a look of utter concentration on his face. He’s happily humming to himself. The world looks beautiful to him. From the dew on the leaves at the break of dawn to the crickets chirping at night. From the sight of roses to the pattering of rain on the roof.

She watches him grow, and sees a person who thinks he can conquer the world, whose real world could not contain the magnitude of his dreams, who has to redefine the borders of what was possible. His head is always in the clouds. Ideas burst like fireworks in the sky of his imagination. He lets his dreams paint the canvas of his world.

As she watches him, she wonders how long it will last. She wonders when he’ll land hard on the ground. When the world will turn gloomy on him – a crushed flower, on the brink of survival. She wonders when she’ll hear the heavy sigh, the hollow laugh and the occasional sobs.

“You know, I thought I got it all figured out,” she expects him to say. “What happened?”

“You grew up. That’s what happened. Your innocence was tainted by the darkness of people who believe that they need to step on each other to reach the top.”

“One day I had hope. I believed in the good of people.”

“But then you tasted the poison of bitterness, watched your best friends turn their backs on you in a world that knew only selfishness, greed and betrayal.”

Maybe then he might choose to close himself in his room, close himself in a shell, fortify himself between high walls. She wishes she can warn him of the long tortuous road ahead. But it’s through tasting the sorrow will he learn to appreciate the joy. She wishes she can warn him. But she pulls the curtains shut.

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Dedicated to Mona Ockba

Picture taken from http://sanalogy.net/ who runs Qamrah Photography http://www.facebook.com/qamrahuae

Originally posted in Feb 13, 2011

Lesson Learnt from a Bicycle Rider on a Highway

source: istockphoto.com

So the other day, I was watching the cars passing by on the main street under our house – a strange pastime of mine – and I saw a guy riding a bicycle on the highway. Cars kept on appearing from view and disappearing as they rounded the corner, and the guy was cycling at a very leisurely pace. I wondered how he felt moving at a snail’s pace in the dust  comparison with cars passing by at 100 kph at least.

But then again, can you compare the legpower of an average male with the horsepower of an engine? This guy made me see that sometimes in life, we really need to stop comparing ourselves to the people around us. Some may be prettier, smarter, have better jobs, or more friends, and we might be inclined to do preposterous things in an attempt to compete with them. But we need to remember that each one of us has a unique set of talents and qualities that makes us who we are.

Some might claim that comparing ourselves with others can be quite motivating, and it could be true to some extent, but at some point or another, frustration begins to set in, because wherever you are in life, someone will always be in a better position, and for every ounce of motivation we might get, we risk the chance of getting a pound of frustration, helplessness and worse of all, ingratitude and envy.

So sometimes it’s best for someone to make an inventory of their strengths and weaknesses, work hard to compete with himself, and be better than they were yesterday.

Hadeeth of the Day

عن أبي هريرة رضي الله عنه قال: قال رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم : ”انظروا إلى من هو أسفل منكم. ولا تنظروا إلى من هو فوقكم؛ فهو أجدر أن لا تَزْدروا نعمة الله عليكم” متفق عليه.

Abu Hurayra reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “Look at those who are lower than you and do not look at those who are higher than you. That is more likely to prevent you underestimating the blessing of Allah on you.” [Agreed upon]

Hadeeth translation source: http://www.sunnipath.com/library/Hadith/H0004P0055.aspx

The Road Less Traveled

Growing up, it took me a long time to become comfortable in my skin. I grew up with people calling me abnormal because I didn’t exactly conform to our society’s definition of normal. I used to write in my diaries because nobody was there to listen and even if there was somebody, they probably didn’t make the effort to understand. Sometimes people don’t have to say a word for you to know that they are judging. Silent looks can tell a lot if you learn to read them. So people judged. A lot. And talked. A lot.

The silver lining in that dark cloud was that it taught me the skill of turning “people’s talk” into white noise. It is actually like vapor; if you come across it, it will just go around you, disperse and disappear, without affecting you much.

It’s sad when you see people’s judgments and talks start to change someone in ways that they wouldn’t have if it weren’t for this “peer pressure.” People find themselves in careers they don’t like, with spouses they can’t stand, and leading lifestyles chained in debt, only because they need to satisfy this ever-hungry need to “fit in.”

But in the end of the day, do we ask ourselves, “Why are we trying to fit in? Would those people who talk about us today help us tomorrow if we fall? For example, would they pay off those debts we got into to impress them?”

Besides one thing I figured out, especially with non-friend acquaintances is how much they like you is directly proportional to how much you can benefit them.  You want someone to like you? Benefit them with something and they’ll start paying attention to you. Also, it’s very easy to keep people under control when #1 you make them owe you, and #2 you know their deepest secrets. Doesn’t mean you should blackmail them or anything. But just in case, they are out to destroy you, you always have to be ready for betrayal. In Swahili I think it’s called “akiba ya maneno.”

The more time one takes to understand their self-worth, the more they’ll realize that it’s not measured by the BMW they may drive, the size of clothes they wear, or the mansion at the top of the hill, and the millions of fake friends who smile at them at all the ‘right’ parties. Instead, it’s about the good deeds you’re preparing to meet your Creator with, your love for your family and closest friends, your ethics and integrity at work, your ability to give to the needy even when you barely have enough to survive. And if people are still busy blabbering about you, close your ears, and focus on your achievements. You might not be able to stop them, but you can stop listening to them and taking their words to heart. There’s another Swahili saying that goes like, “ watasema mchana na usiku watalala.” (They’ll speak in the morning, and at night they’ll sleep) 

Also remember, Robert Frost wrote in “The Road Not Taken”,

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

Accept Things And Let Go

So today I was thinking about how in life, changes tend to happen a lot, so we have to learn to accept that and let things go. A lot of times, a person walks out of our lives, and we might get hurt but we keep on telling ourselves that “It’s okay, I’m moving on,” when in reality we are only lying to ourselves because we are NOT moving on. A void exists, and our hearts ache when something really interesting happens and we reach out for the phone to call them only to remember that they’ve walked out of our lives willingly, maybe something catches our attention, a flower, a building, a phrase and flashbacks begin when we start thinking about them.

So no, we have not moved on.

The worst thing happens when they move on with their lives and leave you behind, especially when the story’s been repeating itself over and over again. That’s why I put the quote on facebook, “Same story, same pain but different names…” The thing is, these people might not be out of your lives entirely but the situation changes between the two of you. For instance, something happens and you learn not to trust them as much as you used to. Or where once you used to be their #1, now you’re thrown into #2 position. And you know, at one point I was okay with being #2, until one day I realized that I’d rather not be in the list at all.

It didn’t take so much willpower as much as it took time, time to get used to being out of the list, time to get used to fight the itch to call the number, time to get used to….

Because one day you wake up and realize you can’t live your life hanging your happiness on someone else out there. You can’t live life thinking that I would be happy if that particular thing happens, or that person walks back and remembers what you’re worth or…

Remember that what you really have is now, so appreciate the moment, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and feel it in yourself, letting go, detaching yourself from that person or thing that’s left you behind a long time ago, and don’t do it for them.

Do it for you.

Ten Degrees of Perspective – On Love

So the other day somebody was saying that love is forever, so if you ‘fall out of love’ with somebody then by definition, it was not love to begin with. Personally, I thought the idea was a bit too idealistic, because the implication was, it should be perfect or doesn’t exist.

Growing up I used to simplify the concept of romantic love as being something that encompasses “lust” from his side and “need for company” from her side. Add to that all the pop culture that tries to tell us what love is, for instance ”love is like the wind.. you can’t see it, but you can feel it,“and it becomes more undefined. Nowadays we can always blame endorphin (happiness), dopamines (reward system) and other hormones for what drives people to behave in ways others could call love. Someone simplified it better, love is just a series of chemical reactions.

So my new idea in the issue is the 10 degrees of perspective. Let’s take love and all his friends, crush, infatuation. Some are more intense than others. Then let’s look at a thirteen year old who just started having estrogen flow within her bloodstream. Her idea of love could be, “OMG !! I’m so in love with him because of I love his hair!” So whatever she loves about the person is only 0.1 degrees or less of his total being. (I mean, seriously?? She sees his hair and  decides she is in love with him – true story by the way).

Then as the person matures (hopefully), their experience with different people make them judge better as to how good or not a person is. But the thing is, unless the two get married and actually live together, their perspective of each other will always be limited to something really small like 10 degrees. So if someone claims, “I’m in love with him,” it’s really, “I’m in love with my perception of ten degrees of him,” (because sometimes one’s perception is different than the reality. Take an extreme case where a person is married to an abusive husband and justifies it as, “He hits me because he loves me” – that’s her perception of the matter, not necessarily the reality).

For instance, unmarried couples might see each other only at their best and not at their worst. That’s where the whole devil-orchestrated dating system crumbles. Also you know how they say, “Until you’re broken, you don’t know what you’re really made of.” And that’s you talking about yourself. You live in your skin 24/7/52 year in, year out. So imagine what sort of crises would be needed to know what the other person is made of.

So in the end, you can really decide if you love someone through their Mawaqif (As much as I hate the parking company, I can’t think of any other word to use here). I mean you learn if they’re good by the stance that they make when facing a certain situation, how they react during times of anger for instance, are they insecure, temperamental, do they go childish when they want something being done their way? The claws – from both sides – normally start appearing after marriage because they’re both sorta stuck. Some people I know who knew their spouses before marriage admit to that, saying the same thing I said before, “You think you know someone but then you get married and live with them, and that’s when you realize you never knew much about them to start with.”

That’s why it’s better for a person to pray to Allah (SWT) to get them what is best for them because He knows best, and no matter how much you think you know somebody you’ll be surprised. As for us selecting people for ourselves, we tend to be limited to ten degrees of perspective, and even if a selection is to be made, one needs to pray istikhara to be sure.

So what’s your insight on the topic?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When The Heart Hurts

Funny thing about the heart, is how its name in English sounds like “hurt” as though that is its natural state of affairs; as though that is the state of equilibrium it goes to after a series of instabilities. They say the greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to hurt. And that makes sense because the people who hurt you the most are the ones you actually care about.
Problem is, hurting others has become so easy for us nowadays. As easy as saying “I love you” when you don’t mean it.
I was reading S’s post on love and disappointments that states that people who use the L word do so when they are emotionally unstable. And it strikes me as true. Because after three or four years of marriage when the emotional instability starts to disperse with the increase in responsibilities and strain/stress levels, it’s easy to see people “fall out of love with each other”. It’s like they were using drugs before and suddenly they got sober and things started to clear up. In other words, they start becoming emotionally stable.
Another way to hurt people is to take them for granted, and this happens especially among family members. People always say that blood is thicker than water so it’s easier to take family members for granted and neglect them, since after all, they’re family, people who -it’s assumed -will always be there in the background. But you see, people get tired of being thrown in the background, sorta like 3absi from the 90′s cartoon 3adnan Wa Leena. They get tired of broken promises and lies, they get tired of being stood up, of being thrown lines with hope as the bait so they will hang on to the end of the line, and struggle. One day they’ll break free and those responsible will start asking, “What happened?”
And finally the worse way of getting hurt is when the pain is self-imposed. When we hurt ourselves with a combination of the above; an imaginary love story that exists only in our minds or promises that we don’t keep to ourselves.
But if you think about it, we cannot stop people from hurting us unless we learn to freeze our emotions and stop feeling the good and the bad. Hurting is part of being alive. The pain can also be a great motivator for after all they say,
“Don’t break a girl’s heart because she’ll probably write a bestselling novel about you.”

Love yourself and forgive someone today. Maybe they never meant to hurt you because they were also hurt by someone sometime.

Image from graphicshunt.com

P.S.
(Love and disappointments
Love and Disappointments

How To Stop Hurting Too Much

When you care too much, you get hurt a lot, so in order to stop hurting you need to care too much. Of course, a lot of people might claim there is a logical fallacy there but let me explain.

When you care too much, there is a higher chance of hurting too much, right? And everytime you get hurt, it’s like a dagger sent through your heart, and even if you don’t let others see it, the immense pain is there. You feel it. With time the wound might heal (or it might scar over) and you move on. You care again, and you get hurt again, and the cycle continues; the more you care, the more you get hurt. But then a point comes when your heart is so scarred over that you don’t feel the pain anymore. Your threshold for pain increases, and suddenly the pain doesn’t feel so bad.

Think about it in another way. Burnt skin hurts for some time but when the sensory cells die do you feel anything?

So in other words, When you care too much, you get hurt a lot, so in order to stop hurting you need to care too much.

Do you agree or not?

Image courtesy of google images;

Stepping Stones

Sometimes wading through life’s struggles is like walking on stepping stones across a river. And some people are blessed to have a mentor one step ahead of them. That mentor would warn them if the stone is slippery or if another is broken. But when the mentor falls off, does that mean that the following person stop moving? Not necessarily. Learn from their mistake, avoid the stone and jump over it. Also, you never know, because you might find someone else who takes the leadership role. Someone who was very far ahead at one point in life, but then life somehow hindered them, and they felt sad, wondering why for every step forward, they were taking three step backwards.
Until they met you, and discovered that maybe that was why they were being pushed back by life; so they would end up leading you at one point in time.
And you be the person to help the person behind you, even if the person behind you is an evil person who secretly desires to throw you into the water. The best thing to do when you feel the intensity of evil eyes on your back, is to help that person to get ahead of you.
Get ahead of you?
You may ask yourself, “Why do I do that when the person was trying to throw me into the water? Why help them proceed?”
Show them that the destination is not as important as playing it right during the journey. A lot of times, they might end up embarrassed for even thinking of throwing you off, and just watching their embarrassment is enough for your self-satisfaction.
But don’t do them for you or for the self-satisfaction, but do it because you’re a Muslim who believes in the following aya from Surat Fussilat (which can be heard after the 7th minute of the video); ﴿
﴾وَمَنْ أَحْسَنُ قَوْلًا مِّمَّن دَعَا إِلَى اللَّهِ وَعَمِلَ صَالِحًا وَقَالَ إِنَّنِي مِنَ الْمُسْلِمِينَ٣٣
وَلَا تَسْتَوِي الْحَسَنَةُ وَلَا السَّيِّئَةُ ادْفَعْ بِالَّتِي هِيَ أَحْسَنُ فَإِذَا الَّذِي بَيْنَكَ وَبَيْنَهُ عَدَاوَةٌ كَأَنَّهُ وَلِيٌّ حَمِيمٌ ﴿٣٤﴾
وَمَا يُلَقَّاهَا إِلَّا الَّذِينَ صَبَرُوا وَمَا يُلَقَّاهَا إِلَّا ذُو حَظٍّ عَظِيمٍ ﴿٣٥﴾
33. And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites (men) to Allah’s (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: “I am one of the Muslims.”
34. The good deed and the evil deed cannot be equal. Repel (the evil) with one which is better (i.e. Allah ordered the faithful believers to be patient at the time of anger, and to excuse those who treat them badly), then verily! he, between whom and you there was enmity, (will become) as though he was a close friend.

35. But none is granted it (the above quality) except those who are patient, and none is granted it except the owner of the great portion (of the happiness in the Hereafter i.e. Paradise and in this world of a high moral character).

English translation from http://www.dar-us-salam.com/TheNobleQuran/surah41.html

Picture From: http://www.healersharbour.co.uk/Stepping_Stones.jpg