Uncle Usama

One of my dad’s very good friends is Uncle Usama. We’ve known him our whole lives. Ever since I was a child the things I would remember the most about him was that he was a doctor who took your blood (a phlebotomist I later learned), that he smoked a lot, and that he had the crinkliest eyes when he laughed, which was all the time. He is one of the kindest men I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, so let me tell you a story about Uncle Usama.

My sister sent me this photo a few days ago, asking me if I remembered this envelope. She’s spending the summer with my dad in Egypt and Uncle Usama came to visit them for dinner, bringing this letter along with him. Unopened, this envelope has been with him for at least 17 years. On the front of the envelope, in English and Arabic, it says: From Susan to dad. There’s also a gruesome-looking heart with an arrow going through it, and a pool of “bloud” (blood) draining out of it.

I had no recollection of this mysterious envelope whatsoever. Uncle Usama handed it to my dad, apologizing for the superbly late delivery, and told him that a very long time ago when my dad had gone to Egypt for the summer without me, I found out Uncle Usama was going to Egypt as well, and asked him to give my dad this envelope. Inside the envelope is a letter to my dad, sealed, and signed with a gruesome heart on the front of the envelope. For unknown reasons, Uncle Usama was never able to give my dad this letter, and it has been sitting in his paper collection for almost two decades. He apologized profusely and said that for whatever reason, every time he would see my dad he would forget to bring along the letter. But this time he remembered! The envelope is still sealed and the gruesome heart is just about starting to fade away, but Uncle Usama remembered this little letter from a little girl to her beloved dad.

As my sister was telling me this on the phone, tears welled up in my eyes. I remembered that as a child I used to love writing little letters and giving them to people, usually with candy and chocolates inside the envelopes as well. I specifically remember drawing this heart on many envelopes for some bizarre reason, and just the beautiful fact that Uncle Usama held onto this letter for this many years, reaffirmed in me that great people still exist in the world.

I talked to my dad on the phone and he was so happy, I could feel his happiness from thousands of miles away. He promised to hold onto the letter and not open it until the next time I see him so we can open it together.

Incredible people still do incredibly small things to make this world a better place. Thank you Uncle Usama.

The Paths to Respect

(Sunrise from the top of Mount Batur, May 2011)


I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. Inspiration often arrives in unlikely places, but almost always at the bookstore, and I have serious difficulties in reading just one book at a time. I recently picked up the new anthology of short stories, Love, InshAllah about the secret love lives of Muslim American women. In the imminent rush to read the book, I inhaled it instead. Yes, it has generated much controversy. Yes, it’s about all types of loves and intimacies. Yes, it’s about all types of self-identifying Muslims. But at the very core of each story is a woman’s search for her place in the world, and that’s what makes it such an interesting book. One particular story that stuck with me ended with this quote: There are as many paths to God as there are people on this Earth.

A few days after finishing the book, I attended a leadership discussion with The Leaf Network, an organization supporting community and social action projects, where we reflected on the importance and difficulties of staying true to yourself at the intersections of faith and leadership. One of the speakers, also at the end of his talk, which focused on staying true to faith, said the same phrase as above: the number of paths to God is the number of people in the world. In two very different contexts, within a few days of each other, the world was handing me this idea to contemplate, and so I must.

In its vastness, it’s sheer size, and the number of people on it, our world is anything but uniform. It is anything but narrow. It is anything but a straight line from point A to point B. I like to imagine that when the author and speaker said the phrase above, they meant God and Love to mean the same thing because, in my mind at least, it’s one and the same. So what is this path they speak of so fondly? The path to Love is, I believe, a journey inwards. A quest to define what exists within (which reminds me of another favorite book, The Quest for Meaning). And as each one of us looks inwards, reflecting on the life that is outwards, we are each bound to come to realizations that are very different from one another. With that idea in mind, I am naturally confused by those who want to define an ideal, ultimate, or universal path in life. How can there be one type of path, one idea or goal of a path, that somehow applies to every one of us? When did we start focusing on building such narrow paths with such high, limiting, borders?

The point here is simple. Assuming that only one type of journey will lead 7 billion people to one goal is not only unrealistic, but also unforgiving. It makes zealots out of well-meaning people and builds our walls higher and higher against each other. It is high time we recognized that each person is on a different quest, journey, and path. Whatever the ultimate goal is - Love, God, power, success, wealth, compassion, or any other - there truly are as many paths to it as people who are trying to get there. Each person needs the time and space to find and create their own while realizing that it will be completely unique and different from any other person’s. So while we come to recognize these different journeys, we must also learn to move beyond tolerance and into the realm of appreciation, celebration, and respect. Because once we truly understand the concept of respect, mere tolerance becomes such an ugly idea. The paths are many and all are beautiful so let’s celebrate differences and respect individualities.

(A version of this article first appeared on the SpeakOut website)

Parisien Stranger

(Monsieur Eiffel, June 2012)

So many stories to tell about Paris I dont know where to start. Perhaps the end is as good a place as any other.

Just as I was walking into the train departure waiting area in Paris heading back to London, I look out of the window down onto the street outside. We’re only about one floor up and it’s a smaller street. A young man and a young woman are sitting on a step smoking. The man happens to look up right at me just as Im looking down at him, and then, he smiles a big smile and waves. It takes me half a second to register that it’s me he’s waving at and so I smile back and wave. Im sure my smile was too big but he kept smiling up at me anyways.

This is why I love strangers.

Melanie Nind

Melanie Nind took us on a small private tour of the back streets of Oxford after our official tour guide proved ineffective. She talked about hoping the weather will be nice in Southampton this summer so she can go swimming in the ocean a few times. She must be in her 60s. Healthy, vegetarian, quiet, funny, serious. Professor of sociology I believe, and a researcher to boot.

I remember thinking very clearly, I want to be like this woman when I grow up. Calm, dignified, respected, humble, down to earth, with sensible shoes, living near the beach, and working at something I love.

This was at the ESRC conference a few weeks ago in Oxford and Ive been thinking about the impression this woman left on me ever since.

I wrote down a new goal today: to grow into a dignified, respected woman who has achieved something that has positively impacted others in the world, who radiates peace and is filled with contentment.

In sensible shoes.

Professor Abbott

I met Professor Andrew Abbott of the Chicago school of Sociology at the 2012 ESRC Research Methods Festival. I was sitting having breakfast at the large dining hall the morning of the last day of the conference at Oxford University and there was no one sitting in the two seats in front of me. Long tables all set together to encourage interaction. He came and sat diagonally across from me, said good morning, and proceeded to take out his own croissant and pain au chocolat from a paper bag. He offered me a slice. He said he couldnt be this close to the best bakery in Oxford and not have some, so he went over there this morning and bought this. Maison Blanc. I said thank you and promised to go over there myself later on the day. It rained. He was a great storyteller.

We chatted and he told me a few stories. I was very quiet for some reason. After having attended the Lyrical Sociology morning session with him the morning before, I knew I was in the presence of someone very intelligent. And very peaceful for some reason. Perhaps it was his age, even though he wasnt that old.

He had a 'valley girl' student. "Like oh my God Professor Abbott!" He even imitated her voice and hand actions. She was in his class and was doing fine but then one day emailed him and said she wont be returning to the fall semester as she has to undergo chemotherapy. His valley girl had cancer. Professor Abbott told me he sent her an email every day during her radiation with a job posting in each. "What do you think of being an air travel controller?" Anything to keep her going, he told me. But anyways, she was a valley girl with cancer, but she was still a valley girl. She came back the next semester. I was sitting with a master storyteller.

The point he was trying to make was that we have to question why we shy away from being critical of someone’s work just because they have some sort of condition, that they often can’t help, for example AIDS or cancer. We fear that people will think we are criticizing the illness or the person themselves, when indeed we are critiquing the work constructively.

The only point that came across to me was that I was not only sitting with a master storyteller, but with a master teacher as well.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

~Robert Frost, 1915

Seven Steps

Take back your life in seven simple steps - read this article.

Schwartz suggests:
1. Focus on what you're doing with your attention.
2. Spend a few minutes every day writing down what you want to accomplish the next day
3. Do the most important activity in the morning (really important, I think)
4. Eliminate as much insecurity work from life as possible
5. Keep a running list of everything on your mind
6. Ask yourself "Is this the best use of my time?"
7. Train your attention systematically.

But really, it's a short article so go read the whole thing.

Restlessnessnessness

Yesterday, somewhere between loving my post graduate education and hating exams and wanting to hear the sound of the ocean and having no idea where I'm going to be living in three months, I was overcome with a very sharp and overwhelming sense of restlessness. My brain was frazzled and I couldn't keep a single thought in my head for longer than about 5 seconds. So I did the only thing I could imagine doing: curled up on the couch with a good book for a while then watched a movie. They helped calm down the frazzled nerves for a bit. But why did I feel the need to control this restlessness?

I woke up this morning and remembered reading this post on Prolific Living last week and the best sentence ever:

Your greatest regret will be to ignore your hunger and to deny your restlessness a chance.

What are you restless for? There is a common obsession with living calm lives. Why is restlessness shunned? Why is it deemed a negative source of energy? Being restless doesn't mean that your inner peace has somehow vanished or that you are aimless.

Not all those who wander are lost.

So I have made a decision today. I will love my restlessness. I will harness its power and feed it into positive change. I will utilize this beautiful effort and energy and I will stop telling my brain to calm down. I know that I am at peace within and if my energy decides to flux and go insane for an afternoon or a whole week I will just let it be and use that energy to stay positively restless.

Change the mindset. Learn to view what makes you tick in a positive light and it will be so.

Paris vs NYC

I saw this photo on a tumblr last night and immediately wondered if this book was real. My teenage dreams of living in NYC (even though I have yet to visit) and my constant love of all things Parisian collided into one book! And what's more is that this book is not just real, it's also a visual memoir. C'est plus que parfait. Merci to Vahram Muratyan and his dandy blog for reigniting my love of both huge cities :) Can't wait to get my hands on this inspiring book!

The Pale Blue Dot

Did I ever tell you that I wanted to be an astronaut when I was younger? I used to draw the solar system and make planet models and wonder about how far the stars are. I wanted to go to Pluto and look out to see if there's anything else behind it. I then discovered that physics was a lot more difficult than it sounded, so that dream ended quite fast. But still, what lies beyond this Earth remains one of the world's unsolvable mysteries; actually, we've barely begun to know anything about our own Earth at all. Such a humbling place, such an experience. The video above has been one of my favorites ever since a friend showed it to me a good few years ago. I watch it every now and again to remind myself that at the end of the day, we humans spend much more time bickering over a fraction of a pale blue dot, and that in the grand scheme of things, we really need to stop that.

Reminisce

Where did we go
And what did we do?
I don't remember it all
But it was just me and you
We lay on our backs
And watched the stars
And promised we would stay like this
For all of our times
Don't ask me if I remember
I don't remember it all
But what I do remember
Is all of those stars
And no matter how much has changed
And how much time has passed
What we had was golden
Yet we'll never be the same.

Siwa Oasis, Egypt

January 2011, right before the Egyptian revolution, I was hanging out in the Siwa Oasis and went hiking in the desert with some friends, way out near the Western boarder of Egypt. I took this photograph and my university picked it for their monthly photo gallery.

It's a lovely memory.

On Simplicity

Honestly, if you can't declutter your life, it will take you so much more time to accomplish anything you set your mind to. Inefficiency and un-productivity will rein supreme. Guaranteed. Here's a quick summary of a great 99% article.

1. Simplify access: de-clutter your physical space and centralize your materials.
2. Simplify your space: there's a reason yoga studios don't look like your grandmother's attic.
3. Simplify your tools: when was the last time you actually used pen and paper?

Of course, the master of simplicity is Leo Babauta at Zen Habits. So much love.

Be simple, live the moment, do the work, accomplish life.

Lois Weisberg

Hey, can you do yourself a huge favor and read this article? The Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg is a must read for anyone interested in networking, social work, social research, community organizing, human beings... Ya. It's longish. It's delightful. Go forth and read lovely people.

A Small Coastal Village

Such simple beauty.
(sorry it's a bit blurry, didn't write this but Ive seen it around a bunch of times)

Butterfly

Dedicated to my mother, forever.

Article

Beautiful morning inspiration on the Spring in Palestine by Joseph Dana. The daily stories of real people - we need more of that. Do read.

On Appreciation

Why do we take people for granted?

A question I’ve been wondering about recently. We seem to fall into this vicious cycle of losing someone, vowing to appreciate our loved ones, forgetting that vow, losing that person, and on and on and on. But why?

I don’t believe that it’s a human flaw. I believe appreciating the people around us is a cultivated habit and most of us have just not learned it properly.

Here are four things we can do to break that cycle and teach ourselves to appreciate:
1. Break arrogance: learn to say sorry, stop holding grudges, stop building walls to keep people out. These things will carve out our egos.
2. Learn to trust: be brave enough to give people second chances and trust people with your appreciation. Don’t do it to gain their appreciation, do it for yourself. And if they drop the ball, pick it up and show them more appreciation for being human.
3. Balance in everything: showing someone you care does not mean allowing that person to trample all over your life. Find your balance. Avoid excessiveness, give compassion, strive for excellence. Balance is a reciprocal and reiterative process.
4. Nurture hope: find the strength within you to push yourself towards continuous compassion and appreciation in order that your own spirit may grow.

But why bother? Learning the habit of being appreciative and compassionate is hard work and, fair warning, will almost never be recognized. So what is it all for?

Love.

It’s always been about love and it always will be about love. True, capital letter, Love. To know the Love, to show the Love, to share the Love. It is a process. A long and difficult and daily process to not only feel that true Love within you for another, but to be able to transform that into true appreciation as well. Before it’s too late.

The good news is that it is very achievable. Let’s put in the effort and together we will learn to break the cycle of taking people for granted and we will create habits of Love instead.

Steal Like an Artist

I read a lovely post on Brainpickings on this book, Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. I dropped by the bookstore for some procrastination and found they had the book, which to my happiness turned out to be more of an experience than a book and turned out to be absolutely steal-worthy. Except that I bought it. Cuz that would be criminal activity where I live. And I finished devouring it in less than an hour.


Anyways. Here’s the low-down:
1. Steal like an artist
2. Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started
3. Write the book you want to read
4. Use your hands
5. Side projects and hobbies are important
6. The secret: do good work and share it with people
7. Geography is no longer our master
8. Be nice (the world is a small town)
9. Be boring (it’s the only way to get work done)
10. Creativity is subtraction

Dispersed with interesting quotes, this one was my favorite: “The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.” - Jessica Hische.

What do you do to procrastinate? I read and make up conversations and scenarios in my head and talk to myself and daydream. Don’t psychoanalyze that.

OK this book is inspiring, get on it!
www.austinkleon.com

Always

I was thinking about you
Thinking about me
Thinking about us
What we’re gonna be
Open my eyes
It was only just a dream

Traveled back
Down that road
Will you come back
No one knows
I realized
It was only just a dream

(Nelly - Just a Dream)

Shadow

Yesterday I was the Porcelain Doll and you were the Shadow, and I wish it wasnt so. Nostalgia is painful. I dont want to live in the pandora's box of y(our) memories anymore. Wake me up from this beautiful mess and let's create something new.

Step outside.

Happiness is a state of mind.

I'm trying out this new thing where I learn something new on a regular basis. Outside of formal education, life-learning is much more exciting. One of the things Ive recently been teaching myself is to drink milk. Ya, it's not a very exciting learning process, but my mama would be proud. 23 years later, Im realizing how milk-deficient my life is. My addiction to cheese is detrimental in many aspects unfortunately, but Ive never been able to enjoy milk. But for some reason Ive decided it's the challenge of the month. Ive had four full cups so far, and not gagged. Progress I believe. Slow and steady.

Everything you want in life is right outside your comfort zone. - Robert Allen.

What are you challenging yourself with recently?

Article: On the Road

From the very lovely 99 Percent website, an article on how to produce great work while traveling. A talk with some of my favorite authors Rolf Potts and Chris Guillebeau.

Morning inspiration from me to you :)

On Excellence

(In the garden of a Buddhist temple in Singapore, May 2011)

Excellence is a common theme in many spiritualities and religions. It is the intention to strive to do your best in every act you do.

I recently went to two theatre productions here in London, The Lion King and the Shen Yun Chinese folk dance performance. Both of them completely breathtaking and absolutely brilliant. And they got me thinking about the amount of effort and sheer excellence that artists put into their work. This happens every time I attend any sort of artistic performance. Spoken word, folk dances, story telling circles, it's always just pure creative energy. Rehearsed and practiced for hours on end attempting to reach human perfection, attempting to reach something deep within each of us.

What if we made a decision today that every action in our lives would be taken with purpose, every action will strive for excellence. This is not a call for an obsession with perfection. It is a call to try harder. To make every action an excellent performance. What if we woke up every day and decided today would be our best performance yet?

If that doesn't change the world, I don't know what can.

This is how your brain ages

Check out this awesome Infographic on how our brains age.
Love it.
Presented by: Term Life Insurance Resource

PS: They should have included Traveling as one of the things to keep your brain active. Trust.