The Right Fool at The Right Time

There comes a moment in rarely any person's life when they realize how little their opinions really matter and they decide to shut up.

Now I don't know anybody who has come to realize this fact yet. And even though I pretend in front of myself that I've finally reached that degree of wisdom and peace with myself and the world, that I've risen above all the foolish fever of having an opinion that I would cry my heart out to prove right on matters which are beyond the scoop of my full understanding, just at that glorious moment while I congratulate myself for being smart enough to understand that nobody cares what my opinion is on the constitution or the constituent assembly or the strikes, just at that moment, somebody says something that suddenly doesn't seem right to me, and before I can stop myself I blurt out my objection, and the next thing I'm right in the middle of an idle debate muttering to myself that I'm not really as smart as I thought I was. What on earth did I ever learn of politics or law to be able to form a correct opinion on such a matter? On what basis other than my natural human ignorant arrogance did I consider my opinion right enough to defend it? Then I think that I needn't be that hard on myself, it is just human nature, I should take it easy on my already mortified self anyway.... etc.

It's not an easy matter though to speak of only what you know, an impossible errand if you come to think of it. We are set to automatically try to figure out where we stand from any debated matter that we hear of, without necessarily asking ourselves why we chose that particular side. Things just "seem" right to us in that certain way. Why remain silent and bored when I can always spend hours fully entertained discussing with full conviction things that I know nothing of? It's the time of revolution and we all have a right to speak up our ill informed uneducated minds. After all if we really do think before we speak, hardly anybody would speak at all, let alone if we speak only of matters that we properly understand, and truly few are the things of which one can say "I properly understand" with a clear conscience.

The right to remain silent. How little appreciated, how little fought for it when compared to all other rights which are meant to preserve the dignity of a human being and protect him from looking completely foolish among his other fellow humans.

That could be a relatively harmless human nature if it hasn't been for the critical times. Times when already the air is fully charged with tension and one word is enough to set everything and everyone on fire. History has always been made this way. A fool with marvelous powers of oration speaks (a power which makes a fool particularly dangerous), and happens to speak of something that deeply touches people's life at a time that happens to be a critical time, what he says "seems" right to the audience and a mass movement is on the move. The right fool at the right time, that's all what it takes.

It's amusing though how the exact opposite is true. When it comes to matters of taste when there are no rules and we have a certain right to have an opinion based on just the appeal of things to us, we usually prefer to shut up. You are reading a book, a poem, or hearing some music, or looking at a painting that is widely regarded by people of sense, culture, taste and education as a master piece. The problem with these people is that their opinions are regarded as a sacred law that only a simpleton would dare disagree with. You are sincerely turning  "the master piece" upside down trying to find out what is so mind blowing about it but you can't help seeing it as meaningless or stupid or artless. But do you have the courage to declare your humble opinion against theirs, even to yourself? In this case you'd think they must know better. The majority of people will probably end up questioning the validity of their own opinion and quit their views to adopt the views of "those who know better".

How to tell if you have a credible opinion or not on any given subject? No one but you can really know. So pray for the wisdom to know, and the power to control yourself when you know you don't know!

The Big Meltdown

To talk -or even worse, to write- you need to concentrate, and that's where all my current problems arise..

Any human wouldn't be holding his brain up to impossible standards if he asks it to, sometimes, focus on only one thought at a given time. I mean that's the least you would expect of an ugly looking fleshy convoluted substance connected to all sorts of wires and tubes that you are very nice to waste the only spacious room in the only head you have on accommodating it, giving it all priorities of protection, nutrition and survival over all the other put together substances that make you you. After all what you do for it, you would expect it to show minimum gratitude by doing that little thing called concentration, but no, that mass of ungrateful proteins and fats won't. At first I thought it was mental exhaustion because of 3 months of exams and intolerable stress. Maybe my brain had a right to break down, go on strike and refuse to perform any complex function properly for at least another compensatory 3 months. But now I know I won't easily get away with just "won't perform a complex function". My brain is refusing to simply "function" at all.

Concentration can be materialistically felt as it happens. You can feel all parts of your brain holding up more tightly as if some cement material dries up to bring them closely to each other. You can almost sense the rapid firing of signals as they whoosh across it. You can almost hear the extra amount of blood your brain is ordering as it vibrates through the vessels. You are very conscious of your own self fully present inside your head. You are fully conscious that you are here.

That thrilling awareness inside your head! The confidence that comes along with it in your own judgement, your own processing of all input data and your ability to completely trust the deduced output. Knowing that you can hold a pen and write a complete page that won't look ridiculous or incoherent at the end when you're reading it. The command over your speech, over your feelings, over your gaze that becomes targeted in purposeful movement and not just aimlessly shot everywhere.

That feeling is not here anymore. Loosening is the word. I can feel the loosening meltdown in my head. The cells are hanging out in the swimming pool of fluid surrounding them (another privilege that brain has) as if they have no job they should be doing. I can't remember when was the last time I felt that way, may be because that was really long ago, and may be because the meltdown loosened my memory too. I didn't give up though. I told myself that if brain can't do it, may be I can tempt some of the other organs I accommodate to do it if I offer it the privileges that brain has. But that apparently is only another loosened thought produced by the molten cells, it turned out that I don't hold the right to redistribute the privileges and that brain is to continue to have them whether it decides to function or not.

So I finally decided to embrace the new me. That one who can't read 4 pages in a row in any book, can't finish writing a single article, can't see herself through a conversation to its end, can't rely on the output coming out of her head for daily use for fear that its processing has taken a wrong turn in the molten tracts in her head. May be if I stop fighting brain, it would eventually feel ashamed and go back to doing the job it was created for doing.

Until then, from the meltdown, greetings..

Babbling at Six Months, Extremely Talkative at Twenty Two Years..

I had a very strict non-negotiable schedule for today: stare at the ceiling. The only allowed variation from the plan was to stare at the wall or the closet. But then you realize that you became physically incapable of being still and that you have to be always moving or doing something, it's writing then..

We are taking the Fifth year exams! We've been planning and working for these days all year that they have turned into a myth that we doubted  would really happen, but here we are. Now I understand why my high school friends who have seen older siblings or cousins take the fifth and sixth years med school exams have completely eliminated med school from their choices. They told us we won't have a summer vacation and we thought: "Meh.. so what?". Nobody really saw this mountain of stress and work coming. It kind of reminds me of Coldplay's song: "Nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be this hard!". We've been under-warned.

Two very valuable things you build up through your years with medicine are exaggeration and a passionate love for drama, and what could give better display to that better than exams? We wrap our lives around it and turn it into a matter of life and death. It's a misery to have to cram that endless amount of information in your human memory in that impossible time of the year, and we know how to rejoice in our misery! We take exams too seriously, too personally. Twitter has showed me that it's not just Egyptian med students who do that as I previously thought, we are a clan of obsessed maniacs who exist literally all over the world. I can't blame us though, we give away too much of our time and lives to medicine and we want to give it a proper ending. We're exposed to levels of stress that not everybody can handle, and if what it takes to get through it is screaming around a little bit, so be it. Sometimes you've got to stop calling yourself silly and dramatic and just do what you do, and that's just the perfect timing.

Stress, boredom and bad levels of physical and mental exhaustion make you appreciate lots of little things, makes the life you take for granted all the time seem so pretty and glamorous  Like how suddenly you notice that you can watch forever the fan in your room as it moves slowly producing a magical hypnotising low hum with a soft air current  that can send you to another peaceful world.. Like how it's unbelievably comforting to have two buddies around who don't share a single care of yours, and even better, can't share it even if they wanted to. I get into the room and find both the hamster and the guinea pig standing motionless like statues in anticipation of the foot steps they've heard, and unless you're allowing the former out of her cage or have a cucumber or a neck scratch  for the latter, then they can't possibly care less about you. They are my constant reminder that whatever problem I have has no global impact; no one else in the world cares, it is not the end of intelligent life on this planet and so it definitely can't be that dangerously serious.. Like how you recall every event and every person your memory has recorded since it could ever record leaving you in a nostalgia for everything and everybody you remember.. Like how you not only effectively scan your exhausted brain for solutions for national political, economic and social problems, but also you find your solutions brilliant enough to call them applicable. Life, the universe and everything seems pretty close at hand and graspable to understanding, and the only thing you can't grasp is how you've fallen into that mess in the first place.

Some days I can snap out of all of this meaningless drama and be a normal person who is just doing her job. A difficult job but still just a job. On other days I speak of fans, consoling small animals and nostalgia. And some better days I just think of how good and right it would feel after this job is accomplished. I think of the beautiful taste of exerting yourself that much, handling it and getting through it. It's sort of pushing yourself to the extreme to find out what you're really capable of getting done. And my prayer is that when I discover how much I can really do, I won't be very badly disappointed.

Of Fear

"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake.
Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."

From Life of Pi, Yann Martel

Five Years as A Med Student: Evaluation Time!

Here comes one of the dreaded days (among a long list of dreaded days) when all of our high school class has graduated except us, Med students. Not only are we not graduating this year, this year also doesn't end! It's 12 long months almost linked to the sixth year, which also happens to be another 12 long months.

Now this could be frustrating. It's no secret that specially the last month has been hard on everybody. The atmosphere smells very strongly of stress, irritation, boredom and fatigue. If we have been working hard through the first four years, certainly it doesn't even come close to the hard work we've done, and still doing, through this fifth year. The back to back clinical rounds each consisting of 2 weeks, you being expected through each to learn a new science of Medicine and master, as far as possible, the basics of its clinical skills and then take an exam. The unbelievable amount of information that you have to learn by heart, understand and "digest" properly and apply to use. Add to that the dissatisfaction with the quality of education we're receiving and the fear that we won't turn out half as proper as Doctors as we have expected we would be. Add also the terrifyingly approaching finals (less than a couple of months away), the frustrating political national and regional atmosphere and  the recently fulminating hot weather as summer gets started. Well! Who, under such circumstances wouldn't be burnt out?.. All very tangibly felt through the last month. I've noticed how I have been turning into this chronically tired and bored creature, which affected my attitude towards everything else; people, events, plans. I even  haven't really had the time or the patience to process thoughts before coming to decisions but I have rather "gone with the flow".  A sort of apathy has crept into everything and got me wondering if I even like my life the way it is any more.

So as my friends prepare for graduation, I feel the need for some time out -just few minutes- to sort out my thoughts. To take a look at what we've accomplished through that time, and what a long way we've come! From the 18 years old kids who couldn't believe their wide opened eyes burning with the fumes of formaldehyde as they faced the cadavers in the Anatomy classes for the first time, to those young men and women in the wards taking history from patients and learning how to examine them. It's not just our brains that has become far more knowledgeable than they have formerly been, but also our personalities have been greatly altered. For the better or the worse, we are definitely not the same people who stepped into Med school five years ago.

At the expense of good health and peace of mind, what have I really learnt? What have I become?

All of the required hard work at Med school demands sacrificing time and effort for doing things you may not be very interested in doing at the expense of other things you would have loved to do. As bad as this may be, it kind of teaches you to grow up. You learn to make choices and categorize things in your life as some of high priority that deserve all attention and sacrifices, and other things that may be saved up for a little while later after the high priority stuff have been accomplished, and other things that must be given up completely and left behind forever. That's the most vital process you must learn to do at Med school, and not being able to do it will literally tear you up all the time and put your life in ruins.
19 months away from graduation, Do you feel all responsible, mature and grown up? Do you realize that you're expected to be so before an even greater responsibility, somebody's life, would be entrusted to you?

The minute you step into the hospital and put on the white coat, people call you "doctor". They have blind faith in your knowledge, in your ability to help them, in your honesty and high principles. You have probably heard many of them pray they would see their children turn out to be just like you some day. They tell you details and secrets about their lives they wouldn't normally share with a stranger. They undress and let you examine their bodies. They swallow these chemicals you give them to take. They go to sleep while you cut through their insides. Such unbelievable trust! Such unbelievable responsibility! Have you learnt to appreciate being trusted to people's bodies and secrets? Did you come to full conciousness of God watching your every move, every thought, every given -or ungiven- attention? Did you strengthen your principles solid and deep enough to be tested by such blind helpless trust?

Through the last couple of years we've come to very close contact with the patients of the university hospital. We see them every morning with their pale faces worn out by illness, poverty and hardships. We listen to their stories and write them down everyday when taking history for our sheets. That, along with the lack of resources and deterioration in the medical services in the public hospitals, combined with a sense of responsibility towards these patients as their future health care givers and a conviction that it might be within our power to help lessen their suffering, has brought out the best side in many of us: the compassionate and charitable. Charity has become year by a year a principle daily event. Whether raising money for the hospital, throwing parties and fun days for El-Shatby children and even extended activities outside the campus to help those in need where ever they are after such constant contact with the some of the millions out there who need help.
Have you felt grateful for being in a position to give help rather than receive it? Have you felt an urge to exert effort and go a little out of your way for the sake of some one who is not you? Do you understand that the so called "troubles" in your life are actually nothing compared to theirs and might even be blessings you should be thanking God for?

Medicine as a science gives you a detailed view of God's most sophisticated creation, humans that is. I can't recall how many lectures or clinical classes have we studied a very accurate highly complicated physiological or disease process, and finding ourselves unable to fully grasp at once its sophistication, our minds have wondered at the quality of the brains which have discovered for the first time such a process, at the Mighty Creator who has created the process and created the fine brains capably of discovering and understanding such miraculous beauty. How many times we have felt with owe how extremely weak and fragile we actually are, brought down to sickness and death in all our greatness by creatures too tiny to be even seen, or by a seemingly trifle defect in a very long pathway (a detail that you may easily forget to write down in an exam paper without considering it a big deal) and yet brings the whole pathway down?
Do you feel the passion for this science? Have your mind and soul been elated when learning of such beauty and order? Have your soul been humbled when learning of the weakness of the body that carries it around? Has it brought you closer to God?

After five years, it is definitely about time our answers to these questions would be a YES. If not, then we are doing something the wrong way or yielding more than we should to all the negative energy that surrounds us. If we manage to have "yes" as an answer to these questions, then we've gained everything in the world that's worth sacrificing some health and peace of mind for its sake and it's never too late to start turning all your negative answers to positive ones. But if they never turn positive, then you've have successfully thrown away the best years in your life for no reasonable cause at all.

Tweeting Your Life Away!

Twitter gives you a sort of window through which you can scream all day at the world saying whatever you want, and with time, screaming turns into a compulsion. The compulsion of screaming and the pressure to say something original, witty, funny and daring all the time gets some people to cross certain lines to fit in or appeal more to the audience. I've had a Twitter account since 2010 that I hardly ever used. I've hated it because every time I logged into it, it literally made me fear people! Public figures and random people I knew in real life and respected where completely different on Twitter regarding thoughts, opinions on different events and even the sort of language they use. It was like they transformed on Twitter into talkative, ill mannered people so unlike the people I liked and respected from real life.  Many of the accounts I came across with very high number of followers and high rates of getting re-tweeted, had nothing to say all day but a series of word play tweets which seemed witty but had no actual meaning or use at all except trying to impress the world by how cool, tough or daringly arrogantly confident they are. The rates by which the owners of these accounts tweet tells you that their faces and fingers are stuck to their phones or computer screens all day, which makes you wonder if they are living out their awesomeness only virtually, contradicting any possibility of time to get a real "that awesome" life at all.

So my final impression of Twitter was it being a thing that gets people to say too much until they start saying things they probably shouldn't be saying and get used to seeing nothing wrong with it. Or gets them to say too much until the "real them" appeared, and I disliked the real them enough to make me not want to know about it.

Then it was exams time! It's common knowledge how any thing can seem adorable during exam times and Twitter is definitely not the worse thing on the list. So as it was my duty to study, it became equally my duty to give Twitter another shot!! This time I came across a few very interesting accounts, and browsing through the accounts they followed I came across more and more interesting ones. I got to find amazing talented inspiring dedicated people who I never imagined could exist that abundantly at all. Respectable people from a diversity of political views with striking reasonableness and tolerance without a trace of extremism or blinding enthusiasm. People committed to social causes. People of culture and knowledge. Religious people who take da'wa to Islam to a whole different level of commitment, originality and still keep it funny and interesting all the time. I've learnt a lot from them all specially the last group, including recent followers of Islam who impressed as well as pained me with how they had a lot better knowledge and understanding of Islam along with a sincere degree of attachment to its ideas and obligations that many of us born as Muslims sadly don't have.

It was inspiring and refreshing to get to meet these people even if only virtually, and I've tried to keep my Twitter timeline mostly composed of them so that may be it would become a little daily reminder of how much one could still find space for self improvement on both spiritual, intellectual and achievements level.

I am not saying that having fun on a social network is wrong. I am saying that time spent on social networks, specially if you spend so much of it, is not time outside of real life but time cut off  real life. And words said still count as words held against you or for you. And it's always up to us how we choose to spend this time and these words. So if you're spending your whole day reading nonsense people say or talking to people about nonsense, then may be you might want to consider squeezing in some meaningfulness.

To Change, To Accept & To Know The Difference

Muslims are required to see life through Islam. That's why on every personal encounter in the life of a Muslim, whenever a joyful or tearful event occurs unexpectedly against all his calculations that would require meditating on why and how such a thing has happened, which may not seem very much relevant to religion to a non-Muslim, you would find that a Muslim philosophizes, or sees, what has happened to him from Islam's point of view referring his philosophy mainly to these Islamic principles: Everything in God's universe happens for a good reason. Nothing ever happens except if God wills. God is all fair and justness. God inflicts no harm upon His creation.
According to these principles one would think that it means that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, a deduction that is obviously contradicted by what we know of life; how then do we explain sadness, pain, injustice and sorrow? That would be attributed to another principle which states that the human view of things is deficient. We can't see how the event that we are living part of it at this moment would continue in the future. We are completely oblivious to what other people do and how their lives cross and intersect with the path of ours. God has an incomparably wider and wiser view through place and time of how this universe is to be run, so whatever happens and doesn't seem like just or logic to us we explain it by telling ourselves that there is some unknown, definitely for our own good, reason that explains it all but our deficient minds can't realize.

Going more deeply into this algorithm of thinking, you would see that's not an easy job as it sounds for everyone at all. It entails that you have to do good, do your best, and detach yourself completely from the results of your work, block yourself completely from reacting with sorrow that you sometimes reap of a good thing that you have pushed yourself so hard to do. Accept series of disappointments and try and retry and retry again never giving up on attempts of opening doors of goodness no matter what comes in through these doors.  It means you are going to depersonalize yourself from your own life. Watch things happen to you and patiently calmly wait for the future to show you, or not, the good reason behind them as long as you are confident that you have done all the goodness you possibly can. It entails a very high degree of spirituality, self-control and deep faith in God that the above stated principles are above questioning, they are definitely undoubtedly true.

That's where the mix up comes in.

The only reason why these principles make sense although they rely only on faith is that God has built up this world as a complex system of fair reward and punishment. We obey God and believe in His principles because we trust Him, we have faith in Him, we aspire to his rewarding jannah, and we have mortifying fear for His hell-fire. That complicated way is what renders us loving and obedient for God, that's if we commit ourselves to His system as He orders us.

All absurdity lies in building up a human Earthly system that demands hard work of you and gives you nothing in return. That looks away every time you do something good and punishes you very strictly for your mistakes while easily allowing those who are more powerful than you to get away with theirs. The powerful members of this system also have the face to demand order, hard perfect work, patience, loyalty to the system from the less powerful members who they imperil. Have the face to rob you off your rights and talk to you of "patience" and "faith in the goodness of God" as an attempt to confuse your belief in the above stated principles with silencing you to endure their injustice.

Apart from the foolishness of believing that every member of the community has that deep sincere faith in God to be able to constantly live virtuously having nothing to support him but his faith, and foolishly expecting a healthy balanced happy community based on "the kind heartedness" of the people who the system robs off everything and gives nothing in return. Apart from that, the atrocity of the confusion in itself between faith in God and submission to injustice is the most heavily promoted confusion in our culture. You wouldn't only submit, you would also do it happily. And not only would you do it happily, but also rebelling would be considered immoral or an indication of weakness of faith.

These systems in themselves as a whole with every imperilling detail about them are the trial of God (That's if you can call a system in which you have no trust, aspiration, fear or faith a "system" in the first place). Goodness and faith are in forcefully attempting to change these systems. Patience is when asking God to give you the force and power to change them. Persistence is in never giving up on these attempts. And if you are absolutely positive there is nothing you can do to bring about this change, then wait on the first chance to walk out and turn your back forever on such a chaos that wastes all your goodness over the undeserving, before you watch your whole life thrown away.

The way I see it, there is no virtue or heroism in submitting timidly to injustice, a supposition that's basically against the homoeostasis of this world.

Once Upon A Dead Friday Afternoon

It is really bad when you always want to express what you think and there is no talking yourself into thinking of something and moving on. Yourself forces you to muse over whatever thoughts that occur to you till you have to write them down just to get them off your mind. A far worse self to be stuck with is a self that would want to share these writings! As if what she had thought hadn't occurred to anyone else before! As if there aren't already at least twenty dozens of books on every thought that occurs to her!

Things get absolutely worse when you can't disguise these thoughts at all. You always have to write them down straightforwardly just like you think them. And we have agreed before that they are repeated silly thoughts, so it is sort of obvious that they would definitely need some disguise! If you could write poetry, your ridiculous self would have been your key to everlasting happiness. Where else could silly thoughts hide except between beautifully written verses? At least you could have given yourself some credit for creating beauty from absolute nothingness. But no, you don't have that sort of talent at all. Not even able to write something much easier and shorter like songs? You know, songs give you the advantage of repeating the same words over and over within the same 3 minutes and throwing in some pretty tune and you're set to go. But even this sounds-so-easy-job is out of your miserable reach.

Then there is always writing a story! You can turn your thoughts into the highest form of complex symbolism as characters, events, lines that your characters say and everything you can possibly do with an imaginary world that you create from scratch under your own command and according to only your own views. Can you even dream of anything better than that? And you have read tons of stories! You surely have learnt something about that art, haven't you? But how can you confess that inspite of how much you've read, your mind is completely unable to tailor such complexity that doesn't really exist? How can you confess that all your previous attempts to peruse that line have been very harshly criticized by yourself, laughing at the shallowness of your characters, mocking every stupid silly story line or ending you wrote?

It's a lost cause. Your completely talentless self dooms you to absolute frankness. Blunt, crude, straightforward, undisguisably silly is the way it is, is the only way you'll ever get to express yourself.

But why do you have to do it at all? Isn't there a way to change? To think things and then get over yourself? Just consider how much time it would save you, the peace of mind it would bring you, and best part of all, consider how you would think yourself so much less silly than you currently do! But it would just mean abandoning something you like doing so much for the sake of not being silly, and in your silly way of evaluating things you would evaluate that as foolishness. Since abandoning "silly" for "foolish" doesn't sound very right either, then I guess on such a boring dead Friday afternoon, you'll just decide to stick to the old familiar highly esteemed silly anyway.

But You Could Have Dodged That Bullet

If only we could realize how our future can be better if we don't spend all that time in the present worrying about the future! All the bad things that could happen, all the good things that could fail to happen, all the ongoing things that could cease to be, we hunt these thoughts all the time... And to make it all worse, we particularly worry about things in the future that are completely out of our hands with nothing we can do about them, which distracts us from working on other things we can do lots of things about! And then when the anticipated future finally arrives, we would be experiencing another sort of pain which is far more worse than the pain of worrying about the future; that's the pain of regret. We would remember all sorts of things that we left undone or half done just because we were so busy hunting the unhuntable. At least the pain of worrying can be soothed by the hope that things might turn out in our favour after all, but the pain of regret, after the time for doing the right thing has escaped forever and there is no hope for its coming back to soothe you, that would be unbearable. If only we had seen this moment. If only we had seized the day.

Our priorities, whether we like that or not, are the things we wake up in the morning thinking about, are those we frequently dream of, are the things we spend most of our time planning or working on. They are not, contrary to what we sell ourselves, the things we name as our priorities all day to everyone. Some people can get the "thinking, doing, talking" triad straight, pull their lives together and move forward. Others think and do one thing, and convince themselves and others that they are focusing on something completely different. This way you are torn up between what you're doing and what you think you're doing, ending up arriving at nowhere at all. If only you hadn't lied to yourself at the very beginning, if only you had put first the things you really wanted to put first.

 If only we could get right the balance between the right amount of self preserving next to the right amount of self sacrificing. The prevailing rule of self preserving is only broken at certain correct times, for the sake of certain people or certain principles and beliefs. At times, we get just one chance to decide when to shoot and what target to hit. Shooting at the right target at the wrong time, or the wrong target at the right time is not tolerated. That mistake means a prevailing vital rule has been violated for nothing, a lifetime thrown away for nothing. If only we had the wisdom to recognize the right time. If only we had the wisdom to recognize the right target.

If only you hadn't listened to others when they told you that you can't, that you are not strong enough to take the path you've chosen for your life. If only your will hadn't weakened, if you hadn't given in. If you had had the courage to believe that you have enough sense in you, just like them, to judge for yourself and peruse your judgement, and have used their words as the force that pushes you forwards to prove your view of your own life right, instead of allowing them to make you turn your back on your dreams and then blame them for your failure. If only you had faith, if only you had persisted.

If we could understand that the consequences of what we do in the present may not show until very late in the future. If we hadn't looked around us at all those who have won because they have chosen the wrong easy way, and thought that we've lost because we have chosen to do things the right difficult way. What seems now like their winnings will turn out some time later to be just their ruin, and your losses will turn out to have placed you where you most properly fit. If we could lead our lives with full faith that God is all justness, that we can never be punished for doing the right thing and other can never be rewarded for their wrong. If we had stood steadily, if we had trusted Him.

But it is still the present and the future is yet to come with all its possibilities and strange turns. We still have time to set things right.

Of Dostoyevsky's Idiot

I'm thinking how everyone who knows me knows how obsessed I am with that man and yet there is almost no trace of him in my very own blog! Weird! So now let's get that fixed! The problem with reading Dostoyevsky's books is that it will ruin your taste for books forever, you'll never get over it. You'll keep searching for other writers' books that would be as good, or even close to that good, but you won't find any! That sort of complexity of ideas and characters, the fact that your mind floats away for days after finishing each book pondering over every thought that has been a direct insight into your own mind and consciousness. No other books have ever been such a blow to the mind. I've been tempted many times to re-read his books. They are just the sort of books that you would discover something new about every page every time you read them. I'm sure I'll do that one day inshaa Allah, but just not yet. BUT, I can still go through the very first book I read for him 2 years ago,"The Idiot". What goes on in that book briefly? Prince Mushkin ("prince" is just a title, a good family but no wealth at all so don't get carried away) returns to Russia after spending nearly all of his childhood in Switzerland being treated from severe epilepsy that affected his brain so much and made almost a retard of him, an idiot. Almost recovered he returns back to life, just as an innocent pure child as he had left it, just to be placed  among the strangest group of twisted acquaintances with their complicated lives and troubled minds and souls, and gets trapped in it all. He falls in love most strangely with both Nastasya and Aglaya, two women as different from each other as the word different can mean. How did it happen and how did it end? Read the book to know! I think I can also share some parts of the book and may be later some of the other books too, can't I? No commentary will follow any quotation, no more words will be needed indeed.

"In every idea emanating from genius, or even in every serious human idea - born in the human brain- there always remains something -- some sediment -- which cannot be expressed to others, though one wrote volumes and lectured upon it for five-and-thirty years. There is always a something, a remnant, which will never come out from your brain, but will remain there with you, and you alone, for ever and ever, and you will die, perhaps, without having imparted what may be the very essence of your idea to a single living soul."

"It wasn't the New World that mattered...Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all."

"Sometimes you dream strange dreams, impossible and unnatural; you wake up and remember them clearly, and are surprised at a strange fact: you remember first of all that reason did not abandon you during the whole course of your dream; you even remember that you acted extremely cleverly and logically for that whole long, long time when you were surrounded by murderers, when they were being clever with you, concealed their intentions, treated you in a friendly way, though they already had their weapons ready and were only waiting for some sort of sign; you remember how cleverly you finally deceived them, hid from them; then you realize that they know your whole deception by heart and merely do not show you that they know where you are hiding; but you are clever and deceive them again—all that you remember clearly. But why at the same time could your reason be reconciled with such obvious absurdities and impossibilities, with which, among other things, your dream was filled? Before your eyes, one of your murderers turned into a woman, and from a woman into a clever, nasty little dwarf—and all that you allowed at once, as an accomplished fact, almost without the least perplexity, and precisely at the moment when, on the other hand, your reason was strained to the utmost, displaying extraordinary force, cleverness, keenness, logic? Why, also, on awakening from your dream and entering fully into reality, do you feel almost every time, and occasionally with an extraordinary force of impressions, that along with the dream you are leaving behind something you have failed to fathom? You smile at the absurdity of your dream and feel at the same time that the tissue of those absurdities contains some thought, but a thought that is real, something that belongs to your true life, something that exists and has always existed in your heart; it is as if your dream has told you something new, prophetic, awaited; your impression is strong, it is joyful or tormenting, but what it is and what has been told you—all that you can neither comprehend nor recall."

“Do you know, to my thinking it's a good thing sometimes to be absurd; it's better in fact, it makes it easier to forgive one another, it's easier to be humble. One can't understand everything at once, we can't begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan't understand them thoroughly.”

"At such times I felt something was drawing me away, and I kept fancying that if I walked straight on, far, far away and reached that line where the sky and earth meet, there I should find the key to the mystery, there I should see a new life a thousand times richer and more turbulent than ours.”

"I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction- if a house is falling upon you, for instance- one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, come what may . . ."

"Once he went into the mountains on a clear, sunny day, and wandered about for a long time with a tormenting thought that refused to take shape. Before him was the shining sky, below him the lake, around him the horizon, bright and infinite, as if it went on forever. For a long time he looked and suffered. He remembered now how he had stretched out his arms to that bright, infinite blue and wept. What had tormented him was that he was a total stranger to it all. What was this banquet, what was this great everlasting feast, to which he had long been drawn, always, ever since childhood, and which he could never join? Every morning the same bright sun rises; every morning there is a rainbow over the waterfall; every evening the highest snowcapped mountain, there, far away, at the edge of the sky, burns with a crimson flame; every little fly that buzzes near him in a hot ray of sunlight participates in this whole chorus: knows its place, loves it, and is happy; every little blade of grass grows and is happy! And everything has its path, and everything knows its path, goes with a song and comes back with a song; only he knows nothing, understands nothing, neither people nor sounds, a stranger to everything and a castaway."

“There is nothing so annoying as to be fairly rich, of a fairly good family, pleasing presence, average education, to be "not stupid," kindhearted, and yet to have no talent at all, no originality, not a single idea
of one's own—to be, in fact, "just like everyone else." Of such people there are countless numbers in this world—far more even than appear. They can be divided into two classes as all men can—that is, those of limited intellect, and those who are much cleverer. The former of these classes is the happier. To a commonplace man of limited intellect, for instance, nothing is simpler than to imagine himself an original character, and to revel in that belief without the slightest misgiving. Many of our young women have thought fit to cut their hair short, put on blue spectacles, and call themselves Nihilists. By doing this they have been able to persuade themselves, without further trouble, that they have acquired new convictions of their own. Some men have but felt some little qualm of kindness towards their fellow-men, and the fact has been quite enough to persuade them that they stand alone in the van of enlightenment and that no one has such humanitarian feelings as they. Others have but to read an idea of somebody else's, and they can immediately assimilate it and believe that it was a child of their own brain. The "impudence of ignorance," if I may use the expression, is developed to a wonderful extent in such cases;—unlikely as it appears, it is met with at every turn... Those belonged to the other class—to the "much cleverer" persons, though from head to foot permeated and saturated with the longing to be original. This class, as I have said above, is far less happy. For the "clever commonplace" person, though he may possibly imagine himself a man of genius and originality, none the less has within his heart the deathless worm of suspicion and doubt; and this doubt sometimes brings a clever man to despair. As a rule, however, nothing tragic happens;—his liver becomes a little damaged in the course of time, nothing more serious. Such men do not give up their aspirations after originality without a severe struggle,—and there have been men who,
though good fellows in themselves, and even benefactors to humanity, have sunk to the level of base criminals for the sake of originality.”

Women: The Same Old, Same Old Story

This is hardly a topic to be discussed at such a time and yet it is just the topic to be discussed at such a time! Strikes.. Political dilemmas.. People constantly and most easily speaking of the definite advance of this country towards its complete ruin, a saying that takes away my ability to breathe every time I hear it and I wonder how can they endure repeating it so calmly as if it's not the ruin of our very own lives they're talking about.. And meanwhile no reliable facts or dependable figures anywhere in the horizon. Discussing the most urgent current issues seems only to stir disagreements and end up with each party claiming the other's heads. This state of instability hardly makes the subject of position of women something of interest at the time, or any other time if you ask me, but it's just that! You have to take your mind off all of this and think and speak of something else, and when "something else" is wanting, this topic is just as good as any other topic can be.

Women have been the most overly discussed topic of all time. If an alien has been discovered wandering about, I doubt it would have stirred up that much interest in analyzing its behavior and motives, classifying its types and psyching its emotions. And yet women, as long living on this planet as humanity is, are strangely still till date so much debated!

I don't bother at all with whatever anyone has to say on that subject. Call women hysterical, jealous, unreliable, untrustworthy or even stupid and whatever else may please you, because this is just stereotyping of the meaningless almost harmless type that does harm to people's estimation of the intellect of those speaking them more than it does harm to women . Stereotyping can be dangerous when applied to a small sector of society that may suffer prejudice and ill treatment based on it. But when attempting to stereotype nearly half the inhabitants of the planet! Good luck with that! Your opinion hardly matters or makes anything different. You'll still have to deal with women and find out for yourself how different everyone is, because "different" is just the way God made people regardless of their gender. Mostly when people burst out saying these stuff, they only mean to tease you and see you burning with anger trying to disclaim these accusations, and I hate giving anyone such pleasure.

What society expects from women though is very different from one society to another, and I speak mostly of the middle class. In some societies girls are brought up to be only good mothers and wives. In most modern societies both a career and a family are pursued, with some succeeding in excelling both and the majority excelling eventually at some aspect at the expense of the other. Our society falls in a unique pit in between, girls are pushed very hard towards the brilliant career path all their lives and then when they reach a marriageable age, the pushing all of a sudden turns towards the family path alone! Properly raising your children, if you have any, is a main mission in your life that's no debate issue, but is it the only mission? You are allowed to personalize your phone to match your taste and needs but you are not allowed to personalize your life? The fact that there is no perfect universal scenario that fits to every one's life manages to escape many people's notice somehow. That you have a right to choose your priorities and choose what you want to place first in your life. That you shouldn't be condemned if what you want to do with your life is dedicate it to excelling at a difficult time consuming job, and shouldn't be called weak if you sacrifice a difficult time consuming job for the sake of having a family, and shouldn't be called dreamy if you want to try your luck with doing well at both. The right to CHOOSE any of these paths is what I'm talking about. To think women don't have that right is your own business, but to have that said at universities and applauded for? I can't even think of what it indicates.

As much as I don't care about what anyone says of what I'm supposed to be doing with my life or my time as long as I can get my own way at the end, I couldn't help being shocked today at the lecture, when our professor said that unless it's out of need for money, a woman shouldn't work. Too much education or career ambitions are just nonsense, and a sane woman should understand that her "sole" mission is to raise her children and tend to the house work, which is more than she needs to occupy her time, he said. He said that at the faculty of Medicine, a place where you need to work very hard to get to and continue to labor even harder to get through, to an audience constituted  of nearly 75% females. And what did the 25% male audience receiving the supposed to be finest education in the country do? They applauded! In the course of the previous week too, another professor said exactly the same opinions to the students during a clinical tutorial, and said that girls shouldn't be allowed at the faculty of medicine at all. It's home only where we belong!

Now, it's true that every one has a right to an opinion, but I can't see how can any one have a right to broadcast such opinion in a university lectures hall! In a university! Telling students they shouldn't be getting that quality of education AND receiving applause for it! Should that be even allowed? A place where people are supposed to be encouraged to seek knowledge, to pursue the career they have worked so hard for, encouraged to keep their minds open for all the options they have for their lives and guided on how to choose the best for them and then giving them the freedom to make that choice. It's where these opinions have been said and what it signifies is the irony.

That's been said, now we have to be back to thinking about the puzzling current events.. or may be not....

Believing in God, The Aftermath

This is a sequel to another article I wrote back in January, Believing in God , which is meant as a reminder to myself most of all, as a moment of sensibility and wakefulness that needs to be recorded to refer back to it in other moments of weakness of mind and forgetfulness.

I talked before about how believing in the existence of God is a matter of the heart first and before any logic intervenes to confirm that feeling. If an unbeliever's heart is hardened against this belief, no argument no matter how logical can turn that heart, and to him God will only be a debate issue raised and resolved repeatedly without any definite conclusions unless God takes over that heart. 

Religion is a different matter. Once you've acknowledged the existence of God you have to use logic to choose how you would follow Him. That is, for a true believer in God, the most important choice ever made in life. If you truly believe in God, it follows that you recognize Him as The Creator of you, of humanity, of all other living and nonliving things, of time, of this universe itself. Follows this also that He knows everything that has ever been or will ever be in this earthly universe and what lies after it, He knows and sees it all, He is everything and He is everywhere. Lastly the recognition of the incomparable humbleness of your powers, your judgment and your knowledge next to His, meaning you should submit. The submission part is why following a religion is the most important decision to be made ever. It will reflect on every action and every other choice that will ever be made by you in your life. Following a religion means that you will have to consult with who you have acknowledged as the source of all knowledge, the source of all wisdom, and see everything through His eyes as He has created them to be seen and act based on that.

The concept of choosing a religion may not be very familiar in the middle east as almost all of us are born into a religion. Being born into a religion doesn't mean that you don't have to make that choice, on the contrary, we make that choice everyday. With the first lesson about religion we hear in our lives while our brains are old enough to understand and analyse things, we start comparing what we hear about who is God with who we suppose or believe God should be, and the comparison either brings you closer to God or pushes you away. With everything we choose to do or not do, to hang on to or let go, to indulge in tasting or to throw away, we make that decision. Some people's way of making that choice is by following a religion in name only, while nothing in their daily actions or choices submits to the power they have acknowledged as their Creator. Religion can never be confined to a prayer in a  mosque or a church or a temple, or just a feeling you carry around in your heart while making everyday choices that contradicts it. The whole point of religion is like the manual on how to know God and how to practice that in the life He brought you to. So, it's kind of a contradiction if you say you believe in God, and that you have chosen a certain religion as a way of knowing Him, but you refuse to act as He wishes and declare Him confined to where prayers are formally held only. It means something has went wrong with the logic chain of belief. You can't believe in Him as The Supreme Wisdom and refuse to obey Him at the same time and call that common sense. That means you haven't really decided on that subject yet, you need to revise your chain, you need to revise your basic choices, you need to make that unmade decision.

Note that I am not talking here about the mistakes, the disobedience we all commit everyday unintentionally or because of moments of weakness no matter how great the mistakes are, as long as we know ourselves in the wrong, as long as we repent, as long as we wake up everyday determined not to repeat the other day's mistakes, determined to try again. It means we acknowledge Him and His power even if we keep on falling out of pace because of our weakness, but we're on the right track. I am talking about refusing to call them mistakes in the first place. 

Many cultures have decided to put religion aside and "keep God in the heart", a statement that clearly contradicts itself as you can't carry a belief in your heart and put it aside at the same time, due to their experiences with eras through which religion has over-ruled. Religion has been the most commonly used tool by tyrants to oppress their people. There way has been through claiming themselves the executors of the word of God on Earth, and declaring anyone who opposes them as infidels. The problem has never been with religion itself but with the people themselves. If they haven't used religion as their tool it would have been anything else. Religion is but a constitution that its followers believe has been put by God Himself, which means it's the most proper of all, the more just than any other constitution that can be written by His creation. Denouncing a  divine constitution because we have allowed people to misuse it instead of denouncing those who have misused it and blaming the whole thing on religion is fatal, fatal to this life and fatal to the afterlife. As a Muslim I can only speak for Islam. Islam has proofed itself against its misuse by making us all equal. None of us is divine, none of us is sacred, none of us is to be followed blindly without further discussions, none of us has the power of declaring others infidels. Whenever Islam has been misused it has always started by breaking this golden rule of equality and turning a human figure into a sacred being who is almost worshiped and followed like God is. That actually falls in Islam in the category of polytheism and thus all the evils follow. It's not the fault of Islam itself then, it's the fault of those who have broken one of its basic golden laws. The answer then is not putting Islam aside, it is actually in committing to its laws and never underestimating any of its commands or giving ourselves the right to classify some as "important" and others as "to be followed only if you're in the mood for it" unless clearly stated in the book of God or in the sunnah of His prophet that a certain practice is optional.

Your life and consequently your afterlife depends on a basic belief followed by a basic choice. So do yourself the favor of allowing the mind and the time and the sincerity for making a solid decision on that unbelievably fundamental subject. Make sure you are aware of what you believe in your heart and be honest with yourself. It's never too late to reconsider. And at the end we take full responsibility for our beliefs, our choices and consequently our actions. 

    

Of Things You Learn Along the Way

Half the time, or may be more, we are just being big mouths full of wise words, specially when we have so little experience with life. We keep imagining situations when our beliefs and ideals would be tested and we keep telling ourselves how we would act up to them. And then... BANG! It's time for testing your ideas! It's a situation that demands your acting up to your principals! And then you find out that living your ideals is not always as easy or smooth going as you thought would be. It's not that we are hippocrates, or that we intentionally build up our egos all the time, it's that we are truly so little experienced, with so little ability to imagine how difficult some things can be when it's time to really do them. Bottom line, no one is as ideal as they think they are, so take it easy when you judge the actions of others who God has chosen to test, and thank God if you have been spared from tests or have been allowed to pass them by His grace.

You are not always to be held accountable for everyone who thinks you are the cause of their unhappiness or misery. Sometimes you really are, but really, many times you are not. Many times the fault is not yours and it's them who should be out there working out their own problems instead of blaming them on you. How do we tell the difference? I guess we always know at heart But ironically, when it's our fault we choose to be heartless, and when it's not our fault we choose to indulge in senseless guilt.

They say that the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results every time. I say that's a stupid definition of stupidity! Some things do have different outcomes every time you try them people! Have you ever tried throwing a basketball at a basket? Exactly! So keep on doing those things! Don't stop unless you have reasons good enough that they could be written down on a piece of paper and look pretty on it!

This one is going to sound a little pessimistic, but when it's really the critical time, everybody looks out for themselves. The number of people who would sacrifice their own good to look after yours is zero or a number that can be approximated to zero. It goes without saying that you should cling tightly to those who proved they would. But again that's no guarantee that you would do the same for them! Remember not to have a high opinion of yourself unless you've been tested! That's the whole point of life; trials, tests and finding out what you're really made of through them.

Life is unfair. That's often very clear and it has happened to everyone. Except that we don't complain about it unless "unfair" has worked against our favor. Have you complained before because you have scored very high on a test you've worked so little for? I would confidently bet you haven't screamed out angrily that it was unfair. But when we taste the bitter unfair we forget how we have benefited from its sweetness before. But yeah, life "looks" unfair sometimes. And I say "looks" because as believers in God we believe that there is some supreme wisdom working out and arranging things for you, that all events would fall in some pattern that's in your favor at the end even if every little event didn't look "that fair" at its time. That's the only thing that keeps you going, the only reason you chew on that bitter unfairness, swallow it and yet bite another full chunk off life risking tasting the stinging bitterness again. And seriously I have no idea how people who don't have that belief tolerate life at all.

As a rule among the regular citizens you would meet everyday, including yourself, hardly anybody looks themselves in the mirror and tell themselves how vile they are. "I am unjust! I wrong everybody! Everybody I know is way better and I don't deserve them!". No. Hardly anybody says these things. They do say them at times, but usually people say these things so that others would start assuring them how good and great they are. Harsh but I guess true. Truth is most of the time we all see ourselves victims of everyone else's evils, and God! I wish there has been an indicator to tell when you are really a victim and when you should be on your knees asking God for forgiveness! Sadly, there isn't. It's always left for your subjective self-biased senses to judge. So I say just for the sake of cautiousness, always get down on your knees and ask for forgiveness anyway, the outcome will always turn out best this way.

In conclusion to this,  go eat something. That's one thing that can never hurt at the end of the day.

Wonderland

That's one chaotic idea..

So, I've been reading "The Curious incident of the Dog in the Night-time" few days ago:
"Siobhan says people go on holidays to see new things and relax, but you can see new things by looking at earth under a microscope or drawing the shape of the solid made when 3 circular rods of equal thickness intersect at right angles. And I think that there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly. And also, a thing is interesting because of thinking about it and not because of being new. For example, Siobhan showed me that you can wet your finger and rub the edge of a thin glass and make a singing noise. And you can put different amounts of water in different glasses and they make different notes because they have what are called different resonant frequencies, and you can play a tune like Three Blind Mice. And lots of people have thin glasses in their houses and they don't know you can do this."


That part really got me thinking. Despite the fact that the narrator of the book is an autistic (which means that  may be it would occasionally be weird to agree with his thoughts), I found this particular thought very interesting. To think of the wonders contained in every single object lying innocently in front of you all day but you just got so used to their presence that they don't interest you anymore! To think that some people dedicate their lives to studying the properties of these objects or manufacturing them while you don't pay them any attention at all!

There is an inexpressible joy in learning about diversities of things and sciences. And I mean really learning about them and not just reading a book or two on the subject.  A joy that is completely hindered by a rule that says that education has to be purposeful. Supposedly, you are learning so that you would be able to use your knowledge for the benefit of yourself and others and not just learning for the pleasure of it. That's basically why society invests in your education. This means that you will know lots of things about just one thing, and very little -or in some people's case, none- about everything else! As this sounds all mature and sensible and consistent with the purpose of our existence, I just can't help feeling a pang over all the things I'll never get to know.

I know it is not even in the human ability to know about everything. I've spent 5 years so far studying Medicine and I am supposed to have accumulated somewhere in my head an amount of knowledge equivalent to that spent time. An amount that's huge in itself as it might seem, it is nothing at all compared to all the amount of knowledge available in Medicine alone. So even if we forget about the morals and obligations of purposeful learning  and assume that you're going to divide your lifetime into 5-year intervals and spend each interval learning some science, you still won't be having enough time to be able to say that you know enough of it. And you would only have enough intervals to, say, cover for like a dozen of sciences and you wouldn't have enough time to know anything at all about all the others.

Still, a fascinating idea, that we are surrounded by the most amazing, most complicated universe of living and non living things, swarming with ideas and noise and languages and events. And that we get to be part of it for a short time, and only for one time, just one chance to experience it all, and we are destined to leave nearly knowing nothing of it.

Drop that childish nonsense and focus on reality. Reality says that I am fated to know so many things about one science that happens to be Medicine and that I won't even know enough of it. Reality says that I'll probably not know much about anything else because Medicine is a madly possessive science that clings to every bit of time and mind you have. And also reality says that all of these realities are perfectly normal and they shouldn't be bothering me at all. But me hopes that she would never give up to these realities, and that she would always curiously strive towards knowing more.

Believing in God

It has always been strikingly amazing to me how weak humans are, and yet they are leaders of that planet. We're physically very fragile, much weaker than many other creatures and can be overpowered to our death by microscopic creatures that we can't even see . Our senses are so deficient. There are frequencies we can't hear, light waves that we can't see, pressure that we can't feel. We are too tiny and yet we can't fully understand how our bodies that we live in everyday manages to run itself with breath-taking accuracy and coordination without us commanding it, let alone the limits of the universe we have been living in for millions of years.We only out do other creatures in the superiority of our brains. Creative, intelligent superior brains as they are, but still, like our senses and bodies have their narrow range compared to those of other creatures, our intelligence too must be limited. There must be things we can't possibly know, things we can't possibly understand their logic no matter how hard we try.

I don't think that you can induce an unbeliever to believe in God by a logical argument because I don't think that logic is where belief originates. It is not the brain where belief is initiated, it is the spirit. Anything that is proved only by logic without any materialistic evidence to support it can be counter argued by another logic. Logic and common sense are not the same to everybody and they vary according to how you've been brought up, your education, the way your brain reasons things, and most of all, according to what you are inclined to believe as common sense. I think that believing in God depends entirely on something inside each believer that says there is a God that we ought to be worshiping regardless of any logical conviction that points to the existence of a Creator. You know it in your heart, in your spirit. You seek Him. You're certain that He is here although you've never seen Him. Where does that feeling come from? As a Muslim I believe that in some time before our existence on Earth God has made us all testify that He is our Creator so that we are born with that innate quest of Him and a vague knowledge that He exists until that feeling is ascertained when we are taught about religion.

"إِذْ أَخَذَ رَبُّكَ مِن بَنِي آدَمَ مِن ظُهُورِهِمْ ذُرِّيَّتَهُمْ وَأَشْهَدَهُمْ عَلَى أَنفُسِهِمْ أَلَسْتَ بِرَبِّكُمْ قَالُواْ بَلَى شَهِدْنَا أَن تَقُولُواْ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ إِنَّا كُنَّا عَنْ هَذَا غَافِلِينَ." الأعراف 172

To an atheist, that story doesn't make sense and I can't logically argue him into believing in it, because to believe in such a story you have to first believe that there is a God. An atheist would say that it's human weakness and precariousness that created religion to face the feared unknown future and the daily sufferings of life. Fragile and of limited powers of sense as we are, the knowledge of the existence of God who watches over us, sees and hears everything, knows the future and knows what's best for you and would guide you through it is exactly what we need to be able to face life, and that's , atheists say, is how religion started.

Unless an atheist can give that feeling the same interpretation that a believer gives, I don't think there can be any logical argument that would induce him to believe. The spiritual world of religion would seem so shocking to his logic that accepts only scientifically proved facts and rules that he has experienced on Earth. It's only God who can take over a heart, and get it to look at things the way a believer does.

"إِنَّكَ لا تَهْدِي مَنْ أَحْبَبْتَ وَلَكِنَّ اللَّهَ يَهْدِي مَن يَشَاء وَهُوَ أَعْلَمُ بِالْمُهْتَدِينَ" الزخرف 56

In my logic, I see that if the Earthly physical rules change and cease to apply by leaving this planet just to the outer space where a new set of rules would apply. If within our universe can exist two different worlds each with its own set of rules, then why can't another world as well exist too? If a human being floating in air is an absurd illogical idea on Earth but then humanity finds out that humans can float in space and then the idea wouldn't be absurd, Then who defines absurdity and logic? If logic changes based on what we know and if our ability to know is clearly deficient, then who decides?

I see that without God, there would be no right or wrong. Who says that stealing is wrong if you can get away with it without getting caught? If I don't go to jail if I lie and there is no God to judge me, then why wouldn't I? Who sets the moral rules? If there is no God to set these rules, no God to fear, why would I follow them? The fact that there is God is the only thing that makes the distinction between goodness and evil, and without Him it can never be, and it just wouldn't make sense. 

That's the way I see religion. A spiritual belief first and before anything else, that broadens your logic into accepting logics of other worlds. Worlds accepted for the goodness, the peace, the harmony they bring and after all, for their sensible logic.

Just a thought...

Continued: Believing in God, The Aftermath

At the Movies

TV is usually something as a student you would want to avoid. You sometimes go thinking "I'm not going to waste so much time watching TV, I'm only taking a couple of minutes to look at the TV guide and see what's on anyway." And of course you go crazy over something in the guide and end up watching TV instead of studying. Hardly does watching TV end up with you digging through your second year books, and in search for what? Your Medical Biochemistry book!

It was that movie "Extraordinary measures" which was all about a line we've read in the Carbohydrates Metabolism chapter without much attention. Pompe's Disease. (To refresh our memories here, that's a glycogen storage disorder. A genetic defect in the glycogen metabolism, an absent alpha 1,4 Glucosidase enzyme that is needed to degrade glycogen into glucose. The result is accumulation of the excess glycogen in different body organs leading to organomegaly, in addition to accumulation in the cardiac and respiratory muscles leading to cardiorespiratory failure and thus death). Based on the true story of a father who had two children with the fatal disease that had no treatment. But did he give up? He found the scientist whose research on synthesizing the enzyme are most advanced and together they raised money to found a biotechnology company, found investors to fund the project and went through all the drama till the drug came to life! The treatment worked, he saved his children's life and brought to existence a treatment to a fatal disease that had no available treatment before.

A true story, I said.

I tried to talk about scientific research. About preparing students with open minded creative mentalities who wouldn't take "There is no available treatment" for an answer. About waking up to see Medicine as a science, a  very soft mold that the world is still shaping and not just a school subject that you study to pass ill prepared exams that can't evaluate you. About funding. About research facilities. I was about to talk about all that when I thought how infinitely ridiculous it would be. Despite studying at the university hospital everyday (the supposed to be mother-ship of scientific research) and staring reality in the face, we dream away. We start criticizing the 50th floor of the tower while the 49 floors below it don't exist in the first place! Reality says that we can't afford providing the already available treatments for the patients who need them before we would consider funding for creating ones that don't exist. That our teachers can't teach us what's already well known to science so that they would be able to teach us creative thinking. The fact that patients learn how to turn their disease into a profession through which they make money. How stupid it is to even begin to think of research while you have a hospital with cats and cockroaches freely rooming all around the wards and the patients' beds.What facilities can you dream of finding in a place which has no facilities for placing the students during 9 am tutorials except in the wards with the patients who find it inevitable to leave the ward (if their condition allows it) until the students leave.

It's even more ridiculous to talk about all of that frustration. What's the point? Fixing the decaying distorted ghost of a health care system we have would require fixing the economic, social and political system of the country. A decent health care system can only be the final outcome of a decent community planning system on every possible aspect. And the fact that it is pointless to discuss it before the previously mentioned reforms take place only adds up to the unbelievable frustration.

The only thing left for you to do in the middle of that pointlessness is to figure out which place out of the very limited options of places do you want to stand. The pointlessness and frustration don't seem to strike everybody that hard anyway. There are those walking around completely satisfied thinking they are unbelievably important people for getting to be part of the leadership of that ghost of a system. As long as they're able to swim on the surface of the swamp then who the hell cares about its bottom? And there are those  who are trying to build the 50th floor in the air although they know it all falls at the end but contented with the good however limited they do through their attempts. There are those working on finding an exit for themselves and those working on finding an exit for everybody else except themselves. There are those at the bottom of the swamp like the helpless patients or the care givers who have completely given up on everything and surrendered. And then there are those who have decided to go through the fight for building the base, for reforming the head of this country's system so that the builders of the 50th floor won't fall as they always eventually do. All you have to do is just decide.