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What is Freedom?

Where can it be found? Is it simply a state of mind? Can it be a place? How is such a place determined to be free for us?

It is said that life isn't fair. Let's say it isn't. This becomes an incredibly difficult fact to swallow for someone who is looking to dig themselves out of the trenches. If life isn't fair and never was, what's the purpose of trying? Fate and destiny cannot be determined as linear in our lives, therefore we keep up the struggle. Who is to say the struggle will bear fruits for us to see? Even in the next world, who is to say those fruits will serve us well then?

Waiting for the day that I'm not considered too perfect to fall, to be afraid, to make mistakes.

Waiting for the day where I'm not considered so low as to receive your time of day, your words, your thoughts.

Waiting. Just waiting.

The Unknown Variables in the Brevity of Time

This week has left a lot for one to ruminate over. From the death of three promising Muslim Americans, to young women who do not look unlike me having their safety threatened, to the masjid in Houston that was flamed, no matter how internal or external our pride and satisfaction of time, we cannot afford to remain content on our perception on the longevity of life.

Today, I decided to watch Wild. Perhaps not the best choice for some escapism, but it did well for the mind. Cheryl Strayer's story depicts a life spiraling towards promised brevity to one that flourished. The movie shows a damaged character finally being triggered into the dark abyss of self-destruction when her mother, the only positive role model in her life, dies an early death. The movie shows the woman's journey through over 1,000 miles to rid herself of her painful past so that she may be internally cleansed to start a new life when she reaches Oregon, Fast forward to the woman now (since the film is based off of a biography), Strayer has more than one best selling hit, as well as a movie to have brought her much acclaim. To contrast that with her impoverished life of government aid and an abusive father, to a life of social and economic comfort show us much in the fickleness in the promises that time seems to make. While I didn't find in the film what I had been searching for, it provided interesting fodder to the thoughts I've carried this week.

As 20-somethings, we hope for a life more similar to Strayer's. We desire the chance to make our mistakes, and remain confident that we'll have the time to heal ourselves, better ourselves, and truly become ourselves. We live in a lofty understanding feeling as if time is promised to us. During exams, how is it that our perception of time is stretched? How is it that spending all day studying makes time move painfully slowly? How is it that winter or spring break go by achingly fast? How far do our 30s and 40s seem to us? Yet how is it that the feeling of being 10 years old seems like the memory of yesterday?

Deah, Razan, and Yusor didn't have the luxury of time that we dream of and depend upon. In their short lives, they lived lives of fulfillment through love, support, service, and community. How many of us would be able to tout the same if our lives were to end so abruptly tomorrow?

Perhaps instead of indulging in thoughts of achieving and doing in an unpromised tomorrow, there is more security and solace to be found in depending upon no moment promised to us other than the very present.

#UNCShooting #Wild #IAmYusor #IAmRazan #inshaAllah #ChapelHillShooting

Kissi din hum bhi doobenge, kissi din aap bhi doobenge. Kissi din samundar ki lehron main agar saat kho gaye hum jo, umeed hai ke jahaan-e-Khuda ke kinaare par izhaar karenge. Ikraar karenge.

Regret

I can live in my regret, bathe in it, consume it, be consumed by it. Regret lives in my past, depletes my present, and it steeps in my future. Regret became my friend, my lover. My company, my demise. It holds my hand through nostalgia and strokes my hair through rumination. The remnants of regret's touch permeates my skin; its scent expelled through my pores. It flows through my veins, and fills within my lungs. I can live in my regret, die in my regret; sink in my regret, swim in my regret; drown in my regret, survive in my regret.

And if you are to become mine, you will be even if the seven seas separate us. If you are not, then no real or ethereal proximity could ever unite us.

... All good things in life were fragile and easily lost...

And the Mountains Echoed

Reputation is everything in our society.

Cloud Atlas

"It's a funny thing, Markos, but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But what really guides them is what they're afraid of. What they don't want.

And the Mountains Echoed

I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple and cruel as that... Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

And the Mountains Echoed

They say. Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.

And the Mountains Echoed

I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.

And the Mountains Echoed

He said "some just can't afford it"

We were talking about studying abroad. You were at my humble abode for iftar, for the first time. You live, part time, in a nice upper- middle class family home in an affluent suburb. The other times you spend in a college dorm. I live in a two bedroom apartment with only my mother in a middle class suburb that may be too close to the city for your liking.

We were talking about studying abroad. I told you my greatest regret in college was not being able to study abroad. You tell me you understand, that some can’t financially afford it… I tell you it was because my mother was sick for 3 years…

And it struck me.

My ability, my education, my personality were all struck down in your eyes… Because my home didn’t live up to your standards.

You were in my home for the first time for iftar…

Ramadan Mubarak.

#ramadan #privilege

WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

Tibet :)

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