I wonder about people who can work for 10 hours a day, then stay on their feet doing other things but not getting tired even though they have left work for the day. Then, when it's all over, you go lay down and fall asleep eventually...squeezing in about 6-7 hours of sleep, just to get up again and do it all over again. Sometimes I am so relieved having left work that I have the stamina of a cheetah for the next few hours, not realizing that I am actually tiring myself out.
What's the point? You earn money so you can spend it? Whether you spend it now or later, you save or what have you...what really is the point? What is life all about? Some sick game that is being controlled by a bunch of control freaks? Is there really a source of faith? Is there a higher power that gives people strength without them being able to see them?
I see things quite simple, there is birth, growth, responsibility for yourself, companionship, birth and growth of others for whom you take responsibility…and then you die. Now, take the thought of me being morbid out of your head and think about what I have written. You really should because since you only live once, I think it might do you some good. You ready? Good.
I presume that you all read my article, 'Drowning Deity'. I wrote that a while ago so I don't quite remember what it was about, but the gist of it was that God has some funny ways of showing his ability to be in control. Gods exists in inexplicable ways as everyone knows, yet there are those who believe and those who don’t. The latter are certainly of the minority, but don’t we all need some element of faith? So, if one is agnostic or dare I say atheist, what form of faith, if any, would they have? Since I am of the former belief, I can help clarify that one. The latter I won’t presume about because it is not my place, but you will come across someone who is atheist and you will then learn their virtues and teach yourself how to appreciate a person of such strength and caliber.
Yes, I have a lot of respect for atheists and ill explain why. I don’t want to pray, read the Qur’an or any such Islamic activity because I have very weak faith in it, but I do believe in God, his existence and sometimes even his power puts me in awe, but I don’t believe I need religion to act as a medium between my God and I. He knows I know he’s up there, when I remember to think of him I thank him. I came to this point after having lost faith in God for sometime and I regained it because I wanted to. I don’t want to restrict myself because of a religion; god wouldn’t have given us half the shit he did if he really wanted us to be weary of its consequences. He gave us the power of ‘choice’ and that is one fucking powerful tool. Some folks don’t realize its potential so it lays dormant. To lose complete faith in God is tough because just to be on the safe side, one could remain agnostic and still not follow any religious guidelines, but being atheist means that if and when you die, there turns out to be a heaven and hell, atheists are pretty fucked. Keeping that in mind, I think atheists are pretty tough people. So, in the words of Ali G, “Big Ups to ma A’s”
The human mind is so complex as everyone knows, but the limitations it carries for each individual determine our ability to perceive things outside of what we presumably know. I am no psychologist or a psychotherapist, but something that experience teaches you is that not everyone is the same. We are snowflakes (more flaky than snowy) and most of us always try to maintain that. Even the slightest threat of resembling someone else takes away our originality and uniqueness, which then begins to challenge our identity. In life, one thinks what the purpose really is, to be born so you can die? In that instance life is meaningless, considering how short it really is in the bigger picture, right? But then what is the bigger picture? Why should we be concerned with what happened 1,000,000 years ago or what will happen in the next 1,000,000 years? So many questions that arise from a small moment of insecurity from life, yet most questions such as these tend to be answered by other questions. Funny how science some how parallels religion in that respect, yet they can never be friends.
I am rambling now, but there is a point I am trying to reach, which will be sought eventually. Bear with me for a moment if you dare and I might just tickle your numb brain enough to make you think about the same things from my approach.
I am going to side-track for a moment and talk about something irrelevant. Unfortunately as I began writing this sentence one of my colleagues walked in and made me forget entirely what I was going to write about. Fortunately I have a dynamic mind that can improvise so watch me!
I began questioning God about 3 years ago while I was studying in the States. Incidentally, I was also the president of the Muslim Student Association and I believe I was doing good things in the name of Islam, but as a moderate and reasonable Muslim. I was never really religious, but that was never something I could disclose to my family without some serious questioning of my credibility as a good person. I was all beards and long dark brown hair (silky texture with a heavy fall). That pretty nifty lookin’ guy with the crazy beard at the beginning of this post is me (MSA 2002).
Anyway, I never believed in crazy, kill everyone and purify the souls of people type Islam. In fact, I think that Osama types are very unfortunate humans. One could curse them and say terrible things about them, but they are just as bad as any of the criminals in our maximum security facilities, just that there are a lot more of these bearded fellers chillin in the hills in groups. To tell you straight, I pity them a lot. They are strong people to believe in something so much to want to kill themselves for that cause. Wrong act for the right cause, but they have that faith. That faith has tremendous power over them, so much that they become dyslexic towards everything else.
You ever been in love? I mean real love, the kind where you wouldn’t know what to do if the person or people you love just vanished? The kind that makes you immune to any physical pain, but challenges your mental strength and pushes you over the edge but in the hope they may return you keep yourself partially sane? The kind that suddenly takes your life, slices it in half like a summer pineapple and puts the other half in a place you can’t reach, but visible so you know its there and safe. I presume you get the picture.
Let’s move along then, shall we? I believe, as crazy as these mo-fo’s are, they are in that state of mind I just put you through. They may not be in love, but it’s the same intensity. Now at this moment I would like to point out that if anyone from homeland security or MI5 is reading this and thinks that I am empathizing with the fundamentalist bastards, then read what I wrote before the ‘being in love’ episode again…then read it again….and one last time to get that they are #1 on my shit-list. I might also add that I do not sympathize with them, I simply pity them. Yah Hear?
Coming back to the ‘faith having tremendous power on you para’, I think faith can make you do some crazy things. You just have to find that thing in which you can place your faith, your complete trust and lose all ability to be disappointed by it and just sit back and let it foster your strengths and weaknesses.
I was kind of like that with this girl I was with for sometime. I won’t go in to details, but yes I think I was madly in love. After having been around that situation so long, I forgot what anything else in life was like. I created a sort of boundary, a mote around myself so nothing could enter my little space where I protected myself with this ‘love’. One day, I stepped out….why? I don’t know, but hell if I hadn’t this post would certainly not exist. I think that moment for me was regaining of faith in life and losing of faith in that entity, not the person, but the strength of belief in any one person.
What I'm trying to say there is if you surround yourself with Linus’s blanky for a long long long time (4 yrs will suffice), then you are capable of losing focus on things that could be important because one thing takes all your energy in itself. The funny thing, however, remains that if you step outside prematurely, you wont have a realization or a revelation of life and how much there is yet to experience. You will just be out of what you were in and get into something similar soon after because you are not ready and your insecurities will take over you. I understand that some people might think that this is just some crazy mambo jambo, but I will try to give you something to visualize so you can better understand my gibberish. It will be tough because I have to take something that already has life so here goes:
Imagine a big slab of meat. A good portion, choose one, any one that you love to eat cooked. Now season that meat with your favorite spices and flavors and stick it in the oven. I feel like some rump roast…hmmm. Anyway, coming back to our meal; if you haven’t cooked too many things before, you may well not know for sure the right time to pull the roast out of the oven. Sure you may have a recipe book in front of you, but different types of meat in different parts of the world with different climates cook differently, so no recipe book will ever give you the right recipe, it will be an approximation. It is your trial and error that will help you better understand how to cook the roast. Let’s say you pull the meat out cause it looks ready on the outside and you serve it to your guests, family or just your fat selfish self. You lick your lips and commence carving the meat. To your dismay, it is pink as a poon from the inside and you think well I followed the instructions, why this?
Now I shall elaborate for those of you too daft to understand. The good portion is something / someone of your choosing. Your favorite spices and flavors resemble your ideals and methods of dealing with your other half. Not having cooked too much before is your inexperience with relationships and love. The recipe book is what someone told you or what you think or what you read in Dr. Phil’s pathetic books about how to deal. The different types of meat are the various individual characteristics people posses that we cannot account for in others. Trial and error is the gaining of experience through various episodes in your life. Meat being pink as a poon (you either know what poon means or you don’t) is how that rebirth in a different light is premature.
I am no love or relationship guru, but I sure have had my bit of experiences in life. I have not been single for more than 6 months from the age of 13 until now. That only happened twice, and I have been in 8 various relationships that have spanned from as long as 4 years and as short as 2 weeks. Some long distance (really long) and others too close for comfort. They have been from different parts of the world and some have been live-ins. I think that, in it self qualifies me to have the capacity to understand some things about relationships and such.
By the way, most of you may have noticed I have taken a tangent a few times during this entire post. There is a purpose and it is unintentional but I have realized from the many things I have written, in the last few years, why this happens. Sometimes I have a message to get across, sometimes I pick at something to make others thing about the various possibilities, and sometimes I do both. It is for the reader to decide what they want to acquire out of what I have written. I feel like Sarah Jessica Parker. Maybe I could get a column in The News called Taboo in the City. Anyway, relationships with life, people, god, gods are all tricky. The trick is really how you deal with them and my advice to you all is to make it personal. Don’t force others to follow you and don’t follow others by force. Do what your gut feeling tells you. If its not, then so what, you will know better next time and that is the process of adding experience to your little book of life.
By the way, I wrote 85% of this article while on my way to Lahore, listening to some great tunes. Seclude yourself from your surrounding environment sometimes and find a way to express yourself. It helps understand who you are and what you want and how you see things. Good luck and thank the scientists who invented the Notebook!
