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.