Tag: random thoughts

  • Where Will This End?

    I wonder at times what the point is. Not of life. Of living. The worst distraction I’ve ever experienced in life has been my obsession with people’s opinions and affirmations. As much as I appear aloof or independent of it, it influences my behaviour in ways that disgust me at times.

    I’m in the process of killing my Tumblr blog. The dashboard on Tumblr seems to drive the same kind of behaviour as Facebook. It turned me into an attention whore seeking desperately to carve a niche for myself in a sea of uninterested acquaintances. But being the naive fool that I am, any seemingly sincere engagement with a stranger leads me to believe that I am being appreciated for the essence of me. The essence of me? I barely know what that is yet I fool myself into believing that others may be able to appreciate it.

    I sometimes feel like I’m primed for a mid-life crisis, although this crisis has already been in effect for the better part of my life. Responding stereotypically towards a stereotypical event hardly holds any appeal for me, but the tedious tendencies of society to label everything and everyone is rubbing off on me. I can think of no other reason why I continuously attempt to define my state of mind and my phase of life although arriving at a definitive term is quite simple. Dystopia. This is what it is, but hopefully will not be when it ends.

    The struggle then is aptly defined as my grave attempt to turn dystopia into utopia whilst still remaining morbidly functional in a dysfunctional society. Why do I keep measuring myself against society? I must be mad.

  • You and your wife seem like wonderful people. My questions are: have you lived in South Africa your whole life? What's it like? Which important life experiences shaped you into person you are today?

    Thank you…I’ll definitely pass on the compliment. 🙂

    I’ve lived in SA my entire life, with two short stints living abroad as well. I spent a year in Saudi and 6 months in Tunisia. South Africa is often under estimated, over simplified, and grossly misunderstood. It’s beautiful and horrible at the same time. We spend an insane amount of money on personal safety, but still have a generally good quality of life. Personal freedoms are usually respected, including religious, political and philosophical differences.

    I guess the most prominent life experiences that come to mind would include my extremely dysfunctional relationship with my father. It forced me to be independently minded, and made me realise that horrible labels and condescending names didn’t define who I am. So I was forced to realise at an early age that my life was up to me to shape, because I never received any hand-ups or hand outs from him or anyone else. 

    The death of my first wife was a turning point for me as well. It forced me to look at life differently, and for the first time, despite my isolated childhood, I realised exactly how alone we are in this world, and how temporary everything is. 

    There’s a number of other incidents that have left some beautiful scars in my life, but they’re too numerous to mention here. I generally shy away from talking too much about the challenges I’ve faced because it generally solicits the same response from people which is this glazed disbelieving look of ‘yeah right’. But I’m not one to overly embellish a life experience in search of sympathy, so that’s why I prefer to share just selected details about my life experiences because most people think I’ve just got an over active imagination in my search for attention. 

  • Living Selflessly

    The more I engage with others, the clearer becomes my view of my own dysfunction. Surviving abuse at so many levels across such a broad spectrum of my life while still maintaining my sanity comes at a cost. Only, the cost is rarely discernible by any around me, and often, not even me. 

    I could write volumes about my coping mechanisms and my insane ability to still believe in people and having hope in humanity, but it will make me vomit. And if that is the response it will elicit from me, I’d hardly want to put anyone else through a similar trial.

    People will disappoint and betray as long as there’s stars in the sky and a sunrise tomorrow morning. We’re designed to collide in our needs versus the expectations of others. The more we need, the greater our disappointment. The more we expect, the greater our pain. 

    A selfless life is impossible, because by design, everything we do is motivated by a selfish desire. While those desires may be honourable, noble, or commendable, they’re nonetheless selfish. Altruism is a lie, and philanthropists are just people that trade wealth for respect and appreciation. So it stands to reason that our value must be judged not by our apparent intent, nor our vested interest, but instead it should be judged by the impact we have on others. Regardless of what my selfish motives may have been, if the outcome is positive, it makes no difference what drove me to achieve it. 

    I’ve often realised that even my conscious efforts at maintaining a specific focus in intent or motivation later revealed a less honourable desire lurking beneath. And so I abandon my self-hate and self-loathing so that I can one day be judged more fairly by the one Who created me. Until then, everyone else is just wasting good oxygen offering their opinions about who I am and why I do what I do. They’ll forever be wrong, even more wrong than I.

  • Random thoughts about scholars, Islam and Ramadaan

    The Imam that gave the khutbah on the Friday before Ramadaan started said something that was really concerning. It came across as his interpretation of what was being stated in the verse or hadith that he referenced, and has left me feeling uneasy ever since. Even more so because I spent the better part of the first week of Ramadaan unable to fast due to illness.

    He claimed that those people who did not fast, or at least did not observe the benefits of the month of Ramadaan, it was Allah’s way of excluding them because Allah didn’t need their contributions. This concerns me because it seems to go against the principle that Allah will guide anyone who chooses to be guided. If we disagree with this view, it would imply that Allah will actively misguide someone, and if that happens, then two key issues arise. Firstly, what chance has a person got of achieving Jannah if they are being misguided by Allah? None. Secondly, if Allah is misguiding them, then how can they be held accountable for being misguided? They can’t, since they have no power against Allah’s will. 

    So, logically, I cannot accept that interpretation to be true. It further got me reflecting on the benefits that I may be losing out on because I was unable to fast. Was I being deprived of Allah’s mercy for a fasting person, or was I in fact being blessed with having my sins expiated during a month where every good is increased tenfold? Trusting that Allah’s mercy precedes His anger, I am inclined to believe the latter. 

    The ‘fire and brimstone’ approach of encouraging people towards good was never a hallmark of the advice given by Rasulullah (SAW). This is something that I most often notice from ‘scholars’ (and I use that word lightly) that mimic their non-Muslim counterparts, and often, it stems from the cultural tendencies of the East where kids are raised by fear of repercussions rather than love for compliance. I am of North Indian descent, so this is my first hand experience, and not conjecture. I’ve witnessed many rituals being contaminated by this same mindset, especially where the issues border on mysticism, or include the jinn. The amount of cross cultural contamination of Islam amongst Indians and Pakistanis is extremely concerning. And I guess the words of the Imam on that Friday just raised all those alarm bells again for me. 

    This is not a generalised swipe at all Muslims of Indian or Pakistani descent. There are many that are actively involved in clearing the misconceptions about what is Islam versus what is cultural baggage. I guess I just despise the approach to Islam that seems to focus on the potential punishments behind every non-compliance rather than focusing on the beauty and benefit that can be gained from complying. The mind set is vastly different between the two, and chances are we’ll see a lot less rebellion in teenagers and adults alike when they eventually grow old enough to be immune to the threats of their parents and teachers if they don’t do what is expected of them. 

  • The Odd One

    One of the problems of assuming familiarity with people too easily, especially online, is that I tend to volunteer my opinion on very personal and sensitive issues without realising that I’m probably still a stranger to them, or at best, an acquaintance. My ability to sometimes grasp the essence of people’s current state, especially emotionally, often leads to me feeling more deeply concerned for their well being than would ever be considered normal. As a result, I tend to freak people out when I formulate an opinion about what they’re experiencing and how they should deal with it, despite them hardly having discussed the details with me. 

    I feel like a weirdo at times. Perhaps I am. But it seems to work for me, most of the time anyway. Perhaps I’ve just grown comfortable with being the odd one out, and as a result, I’ve had enough time and a really good vantage point to see the tediousness of being normal and fitting in. Conformance has rarely appealed to me, and given that conformance most often leads to complacency, I tend to loathe it, quite visibly at times as well. But it’s not just loathing it to be difficult, but because I see how lethargic people become about life when they grow complacent and try so hard to fit in and be accepted. They give up everything that makes them beautifully unique and only hold onto that which is overtly celebrated by others. 

    Ramblings of a madman indeed. 

  • Handwriting Analysis

    I used to have some fun when interviewing candidates for various posts in IT at a previous company that I worked for. The standard process would be for them to complete and sign some forms before the interview commenced, so I would normally ask to see the forms before even meeting the candidate. 

    By looking at their signature, I would tell the other members of the interview panel what I thought the individual would be like, and often I would even guess the duration of the interview. I was right every single time. It was hilarious. Eventually, I had managers walking up to my desk before they went into an interview that I wasn’t involved in to find out if I thought it would be worth their while to interview the candidate before they even met him. 

    Poor candidates. Finding a job is tough these days. 🙂

  • Lazy Thoughts

    Lazy thoughts are weird. Not only do they suck every last ounce of energy that I have in me, but they’re even more difficult to express. It’s that whole intellectual constipation thing again. That urge to want to say something deep and insightfully meaningful but coming up with a few straggling lazy thoughts instead.

    So I end up reminiscing about days gone by because nostalgia is always best indulged in when I lack energy to deal with today. Not enough energy to care about tomorrow either, so I’ll leave it nagging at the door in the back of my mind waiting to be let in. Tomorrow is an energy sucker just like yesterday. They both demand a level of attention and indulgence that yield no immediate benefit.

    Ugh…blankness becomes me right now. So many blogs, so little inspiration.

  • Writer’s block sucks. So does the feeling of being philosophically constipated. I’m not even sure what that means, but I have this urge to want to write something meaningful about all the changes in my life recently, how it impacts me, and how it’s turned out relative to what I expected, but nothing. I’m anaemic. I sit here at my keyboard waiting to bleed and nothing trickles out. 

    I’m an impatient man. I’m constantly contemplating the consequences of what we’re contemplating now, and instead of accepting that a long term goal is in fact a long term goal, the moment it takes a shape or form in my head, I feel compelled to realise it now against some ridiculous self-imposed deadline.

    At least I can still ramble nonsensically without much effort, so perhaps not all is lost yet. It still sucks though.