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  • Significance

    In my search for significance, I’ve realised that I always come up short. It’s a double-edged sword with a poisoned tip. The very fact that I feel a need to seek significance is damaging to my sense of self, since significance is not something that can be earned. It’s given. 

    There are so many times that I’ve seen huge sacrifices made by some on behalf of others, but the one making the effort often ends up insignificant and taken for granted anyway. Unless there is an inclination on the part of the recipient to express gratitude or elevate the significance of the giver, it remains a fool’s endeavour. 

    The poisoned tip is the realisation that I’m inconsequential to the state of happiness of those I covet for significance which is why I need to seek this significance in the first place.

    My ingratitude probably distracts me from the realisation of the significance that I do hold in the lives of those around me, because I’m so busy searching for it in one that I wish to be significant in my life. There’s that vicious cycle again.

  • Simple Challenge of an Average Muslim

    Many years ago I relocated from Johannesburg to Cape Town for a work contract. On my arrival in Cape Town, I found a place to stay in a predominantly non-Muslim neighbourhood since it was close to the office, and there were mosques within driving  distance. This was before the time of magnetometers in mobile phones, and I didn’t have a compass of my own yet either. So I used the rudimentary method of finding the direction of the Qibla relative to the position of the sun.

    I stood in my living room, plotted the path of the setting sun with my left hand, held my right arm out in front of me perpendicular to the position of the sun, and adjusted it slightly to the right to cater for the average of seven degrees east of north for the direction of the Qibla in South Africa. Seemed simple enough, so I performed my salaah at home facing this direction. I recall clearly using the gap between two mountains (Lion’s Head and Table Mountain) to note the position of the sun.

    Over the next few days, I found myself inclined to shift my direction to the right whilst performing salaah. Each time I completed my salaah, I felt a strong urge to move the prayer mat which I did. After about three or four days, this feeling settled, with my prayer mat now almost thirty degrees further to the right than where I had originally started. 

    That weekend I made a point of getting myself a decent compass. So I bought one in the Suunto range, which according to a friend that is an avid hiker, was a good choice. Upon using it to confirm my direction for the Qibla, I discovered that it was indeed in the direction I stopped at after moving my mat based on that feeling I had, and not the direction I had originally calculated with my arms. That moment was a truly memorable one for me. As simple as it was, it made me feel connected with Allah in a way I had never imagined. I felt guided. It felt good. 

    Later that year, as the seasons changed, I noticed that the sun didn’t set in the same spot as it did when I first moved into that apartment. I suddenly realised how little I knew of the wonders of nature, and how vague the statement is regarding the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. I guess more accurately, it generally rises in an easterly direction and sets in a generally westerly direction. 🙂 

  • Sometimes I share details of personal struggles with strangers because I need the release, and other times I do so because I hope that they may avoid the pitfalls that I experienced. Nonetheless, the shedding of my veil of privacy is always sincere. More often than not I restrain myself because even I find it hard to swallow the volume of colourful experiences that I’ve had to endure. And when I place myself in the position of the recipient, I can only imagine how quickly they reach a point when they question the voracity of what I’m saying.

    I guess I have yet to figure out the human psyche, especially within the context of interpersonal relationships. I can sense the anguish or regret, hope or passion and even optimism in the words of strangers, but I can never foresee being discarded. That always takes me by surprise. Every single time. Perhaps it’s representative of an over-inflated ego or sense of self. That would be a contradiction of note, given my grave insecurities about my ability to contribute positively in a manner that may be well-received. 

    Hasn’t happened yet. Perhaps I’m plagued by both ingratitude and delusion. A fatal combination for one who desires to connect with others on a human level. I guess my latest experiences just reaffirms my hesitance to want to reduce the story of my life to a book. 

  • Do you ever look at yourself?

    cynicallyjade:

    Do you ever look at yourself endearingly? At least long enough until you realise that you need to dismiss your thoughts because it sets fire to a desire to want to be consumed, physically and emotionally…but more physically? Ever look at yourself endearingly and wish that someone would see you through your own eyes, instead of theirs? Do you ever wish that someone would want you to give them what you so much yearn to give of yourself? Do you sometimes block out the noise, let go of the inhibitions, close your eyes and see yourself as beautiful? 

    Or is narcissism a prerequisite for such acceptance of self? I sometimes focus so much on trying to understand or appreciate how others see me, that I fail to notice myself. I look at myself so often through the eyes of others that I eventually find myself looking at myself through the same jaundiced view that is tainted with their broken dreams. I make myself the victim of their disappointments simply because I allow myself to be viewed with the defensive cynicism that life has taught them. 

    This is how I lost myself to the world, and now I wait to be found because my insecurity won’t allow me to believe in me unless another tainted soul believes in me first. 

    So relevant right now.

  • Life

    I feel somewhat weepy today. Strange though, because I have no real reason to feel this way. No, this is not my feminine side showing, it’s my human side. At times the accumulation of life’s struggles creeps up on me without warning, and it’s when things are going well that I realise how bad it was before. It’s a strange sort of weightiness that I feel. I don’t feel weighed down, but I don’t feel lightened of my burdens either. 

    My endeavours to simplify my life have been somewhat fruitful, but the emptiness of space alongside me in bed still leaves me reaching out for something that isn’t there more often than I should. That’s probably the cause of my self-imposed insomnia, especially on Sunday evenings. Despite knowing that I will fall asleep the moment I lay my head down, I resist it with everything in me until I’m literally ready to pass out at my laptop before I begrudgingly drag myself over to the bed.

    At times the exhaustion at that point is so bad that I find myself slithering into place trying to shrug the blanket over me, because I barely have the energy to move my arms. But it’s all not lost, I guess. Outside of these moments I still feel resolute in my naivety, and my optimism still persists. One thing I have resolved never to do is assume that it can’t get any worse. I’ve made that mistake too often before. It can always get worse. 

    If nothing else, the lessons of my life, thus far, have taught me that even when it seems like the darkness is going to overcome me completely, it always only ever took a single split second of light to change that. The trick now is to remember that the next split second could be the one when that light will pierce through the morbidity and pain. It reminds me of so many defining moments in my life. Moments when everything seemed consistently headed in one direction, and in a split second, it all changed. The moment I received that phone call when my first wife died. The moment I received that phone call that I got a job after being out of work for seven months and having made the last payment of my mortgage from my credit card. 

    There is no guarantee what the next split second brings, but because I’m often a creature of probability more than possibility, I easily forget those defining moments in my life, because innately I’m a statistician by nature. And the statistics prove that the trends of my life are mostly mediocre and blandly predictable, rather than unpredictably beautiful. But that’s because I tend to have a jaundiced memory that holds on to those experiences that caused me the most pain rather than those that caused the greatest elation. As ungrateful as that may seem, it makes perfect sense.

    By design, I seek to protect myself from harm and pain, not happiness and joyful laughter. So it’s inevitable that I would be cautioned before I am encouraged. Perhaps that’s why it requires courage and effort to make a life beautiful, because it requires fighting against the very nature that I despise within me. 

  • The Theme of My Life

    The theme of my life has been one of misunderstandings and assumptions about who I am and what I stand for, especially by those closest to me. So it’s little, or in fact no surprise that I am constantly misconstrued in my intentions or efforts to achieve positive outcomes in my engagements with many.

    I don’t subscribe to the stereotypical views of life or spirituality, and I question what most assume to be obvious. In this questioning I’m often seen as arrogant, difficult, uninformed, illiterate and even pompous. Regardless of extended efforts to establish understanding and context, the negative assumptions persist. And this, if nothing else, has been the core of my struggle in a hostile world. 

    I don’t refer to myself as anomalous because of any romantic notions that I harbour about my individuality. Being anomalous is not a pleasant place to be. It is often received harshly or responded to cruelly, simply because most don’t know how to deal with what is uncommon, or more commonly considered weird. That is me. And that has been the theme of my life. If current trends are anything to go by, then such shall remain the themes of my life for the rest of my days.

    I have ceased to live with expectations for a long time now. Expectations from others has been the cause of the greatest pain with the deepest wounds incurred by betrayal. Not always betrayals of trust, but most often betrayals of expectations. But I continue to live with hope, because hopelessness never appealed to me no matter how many feeble attempts I’ve made to embrace it. But this same hope causes me to believe in others more than they believe in themselves. I see potential where others see futility, and for this I have been scorned too often.

    I maintain the insane notion that I have something positive to contribute, and from this belief I derive hope that I may yet prove to be beneficial to a course greater than my own existence. I have very little that I hope to achieve on a personal front, for personal gain, but there’s much to be achieved on a human scale. Whether I will ever be accepted for the humanity that resides within me is yet to be seen. Right now, I see a waning moon and a setting sun, and while each offers its own serenity in the cycle of life, they both prove to be an unsettling reminder that the darkness will reach me soon, as it will us all. 

    The image of the pendulum’s arc swinging across the horizon of my life continues to grow stronger by the day. It’s brush against this ephemeral existence continues to provide perspective on my insignificance relative to the universe. Yet the ego will not be silenced into complacency. 

  • I am an anomaly

    I am anomalous by design

    But fragile by nature

    Harsh to the touch

    But soft to the embrace

    Gentle to the meek

    But arrogant to the fake

    I am disdainfully naive

    But endearingly innocent

    Absent when wanting

    But ever present when needed

    I am anomalous

    I am me

  • I Still Hear Her Heartbeat

    cynicallyjade:

    The realism of my dream tonight still haunts me. It wasn’t a bad dream, nor was it a sad one. But the reality that I woke up to is. I heard the gentle ticking of her heartbeat so vividly again. It’s a sound that I haven’t heard in a very long time. 

    It was a love story that we both seemed oblivious to when we had it. We were young, high strung, passionate, but stubborn. But there was so much about her that I loved. She had a poise that was naturally elegant, a smile that still warms me, the most beautifully soft hair, and a voice I would kill for to hear again. She lost her voice during one of the many operations she had for a heart condition that she was born with. But when her voice returned, it was with a husky tone that sent tingles through me each time we talked. I can’t remember if I told her that or not.

    We’d sit in the same room at opposite ends, and with others in the room I was still able to hear the ticking sound of the valve that was inserted into her heart when she was just 14. It wasn’t a clock-like tick. It had a soft resonance to it that made it oddly familiar but unique. I was so attuned to it that I could tell the thickness of her blood just by listening to the sound of it. She needed to take medication to control her blood thickness levels so that the valve could function optimally.

    And tonight, after almost a decade, she leaned into me again, rested her head on my chest, and just surrendered the full weight of her timid body into me. And that’s when I heard it. That beautiful ticking sound confirming every passionate beat of her heart. I still hear it. But it saddens me now. The tears burn. Sting. Because the reality that I woke up to is that she is gone. She has been gone for about 10 years now, and the hollowness that I felt when she died still overwhelms me now. 

    We fought a lot. We treated each other badly at times. We loved each other ferociously all the time. And without realising it, we made our peace with each other a few days before she died. It’s only after she died that I understood the sadness I saw in her eyes a few days before. I haven’t thought about her, nor dreamed about her in a while. But now it feels like I just lost her again. 

    I miss her.

    I posted this in May 2011…sorry for the morbidity, but sometimes, our minds truly have a heart of their own. Only the Almighty knows what plagues mine tonight.