Moments in Time – Views on Life
I remember the warm sweaty nights and the long hungry days.
I remember the busy early mornings, the lazy afternoons, and the restless evenings.
I remember the prayers, the good intentions, the virtues and my sins. And the hope for forgiveness.
I remember the desire to grasp purpose, and to embrace it.
I remember longing for a glimpse of my desire. A reason for my joy.
I remember the brief hellos and long goodbyes.
Life is rules. Your own, or others’, no matter where they come from. And living by those rules. Moment by moment. Breath by breath. As time passes by.
Life is compromise. In anything and everything that comes your way. It’s the grey mix of realities rather than the black and white of dreams.
Life is happiness, and dreams. And belief in realization of those dreams. And to see them cut short by the very reality with which you meant to wave the tapestry of life
Life is a journey. Sometimes you walk by yourself, sometimes among a crowd. But every time you stop and look around, you are always alone. Frightened, you quickly look ahead and once again start walking.
Life is surprise. So unexpectedly sweet that it takes your breath away. So emotionally painful that it sucks your heart right out of your chest. And life carries on, until that last, expected surprise, and the end of dreams.
Life is love. The one that is strong but has to be sacrificed. The one that slips away. The one that you have but cannot appreciate. The one that you want but cannot have. The one that you see from far away. The one that leaves you, and there is no one left to whom you can complain.
From the very first time I read this poem, I knew I was going to blog it. I just wasn’t sure when. As time passed by, it kept changing. Drawing energy from events around me, and from me. Always draping itself with shades of sadness somehow familiar if I only dared to slip beneath the calm surface of the ocean that fills my heart.
Today, although transformed, it is just as pure and deep as the first time I read it. Today, it has many meanings, woven together, just like life’s tangled relations. And just like life itself, happy or sad, you just have to endure it:
Two planets meeting face to face,
One to the other cried ‘How sweet
If endlessly we might embrace,
And here for ever stay! how sweet
If Heaven a little might relent,
And leave our light in one light blent!’
But through that longing to dissolve
In one, the parting summons sounded.
Immutably the stars revolve,
By changeless orbits each is bounded;
Eternal union is a dream,
And severance the world’s law supreme.
Life is making choices, some easy, some hard. Sometimes knowing and sometimes unknowingly, and then living by those choices. And always being wise after the event.
Life is a test. No, a series of tests, big and small. And you are taking them, like it or not. You’re taking them and may not even be aware. And the results? Well, by the time they are known, it will be too late for any retakes.
Life is wanting to be brave. Then realizing that happens only in movies, and the only time you can really be brave is when life itself does not give you any alternatives. And you have a feeling that doesn’t really count, but you move on.
Life is acting. A role play to the world as time passes by. A pageant of smiles and frowns, sometimes on the outside, sometimes on the inside. The trick being never to let anyone distinguish between the real and the fake.
Life is a road, twisting and turning. Ever descending into the twilight at the far end of the valley. And you keep moving because stillness is not an option. Maneuvering unexpected turns and frightening overpasses, you hope to keep on the path as you proceed.
Tied up, locked down is my desire to fly. Like the instinct of a caged bird.
I have been told that freedom is the perception of reaching the impossible. Did not make much sense to me at the time. Today I look back and I see all the impossibles that knocked on my door and I did not open. I did not answer, I was not there. My flesh was present, my spirit was not. Where did my freedom go? I ask. Who is there to answer? No one.
Freedom, the scariest feeling of all. Beyond love, faith and desire. Freedom, the bridge between my hand and yours.
About Eid, the Prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, `They are days of eating, drinking, and remembrance of God.´
(Reported by Bukhari in his Sahih, an authoritative collection of the sayings of the Prophet)
I wish all Muslims a happy and blessed Eid!
I am the tree.
Always rooted strongly to the ground, looking up at the sky.
Always staying still, while others pass me by.
Some times things get caught in my branches.
But that they will stay with me, there are little chances.
Because all it takes for them to fly away,
is a gust of wind on a stormy day
They leave me behind alone,
and go to places to me unknown
I stay back, right or wrong,
because this is the place to which I belong.
With time I will grow old.
All my stories untold.
Until the day of the big storm.
My roots too weak to perform.
Memories will flash me by,
as I try one last stretch towards the sky.
BEAUTY asked God one day
This question: ‘Why
Didst Thou not make me, in Thy world, undying ?’
And God replying-
‘ A picture-show is this world: all this world
A tale out of the long night of not being;
And in it, seeing
Its nature works through mutability,
That only is lovely whose essence knows decay.’
The moon stood near and heard this colloquy,
The words took wing about the sky
And reached the morning‐star;
Dawn learned them from its star, and told the dew—
It told the heavens’ whisper to
Earth’s poor familiar;
And at the dew’s report the flower’s eye filled,
With pain the new bud’s tiny heartbeat thrilled;
Springtime fled from the garden, weeping;
Youth, that had come to wander there, went creeping
Sadly away.
All my life I have been tethered. To the tree that gave me life. To the park that was my universe.
There were good days filled with sunshine, bright and warm. There were days where all I prayed for was for them to pass. These were dark, rainy, cold, days on which the wind almost seemed to succeed in tearing me away. Eventually they all passed, the good and the bad, and I was still here. My time had still not come.
Time never discriminates. No matter how cruel or how gentle the days, neither stood a chance against its steady trot, never looking back, never hesitating, always moving forward.
I heard stories of other places, near and far. Tales of wonderful sights, terrible fates, daring adventures. And I imagined myself being part of the unknown, the mystery.
I started to feel the change some time ago, the coldness in the air and the shifting of color around me. Changes even in the way I feel. Then, on a crisp Sunday morning in early October, a strong gust of wind took me by surprise and tore me away. In a split second, something happened that could never be undone. I was tethered no more!
Of all the stories I heard about near and far, of other worlds, none were as surprising as my new reality. I am free! My home is anywhere and everywhere. Bonded only to the unpredictable will of the winds that carry me, I feel reborn and energized. Every day bringing new adventures under blue skies.
But I see angry clouds in the distant horizon. New adventures, no doubt. I am alone. This much I know: No matter how dark and angry, they will eventually find tranquility. Time does not discriminate, and it always triumphs. With it, I will see happiness again.
When we wake up, it will feel like a dream. A very real and vivid dream. All alone in blind darkness and utter chaos, the final passageway before us, we will pray for our light not to fade until we are safely on the other side.