A few months ago, I lost my entire life. I lost all my photo albums starting from 2004. Eight years of my life have been deleted for life, from life and my hard drive. Every “first moment” has been demolished - the captured moments of every first time I ever had: my first years in college, relationship, job, project, trip, and many more. There are absolutely no ways to retrieve those Kodak moments except relying on my memory- which will eventually weaken with age. Sad I must say, but while I was writing this, I realized that as I am starting to write, there will be a new form of witness to my life. My words, my writings, my blog. And this time they will mark my second times around in my second chapter in life. Maybe this will be the way I will be able to recall the new memories, acquainted along with lessons learnt, the discoveries found and the emotions felt. As you read the words I write, you are reading right through me.
The thing with me is that I love everything the people offer in the world. I try every kind of cuisine and various platters of food they make. The arts, from music to literature to meditation, I find colorful wonders in. Risk taking doesn’t run much in the family, but I taught myself to enjoy attempting and experiencing, so that I could never look back and say there are regrets and I wish I could have tried this and that. I am enthusiastic about love and interested in learning about new sciences and technology. I find a new world in everyone around and many worlds in the lands of culture. I am excited about the different lines of fashion and subtle with my taste. Beauty lies everywhere and in everything we make with our hands. Messy and neat both at the same time, you could determine that through my handwriting-sometimes cursive, sometimes print and often in caps; I like to say that it's a flare reflecting my inner emotions. I am faithful and respectful to faiths whilst I hold my own. I find danger in contradiction yet have compromised with it. I fall as I firmly stand- there are many weaknesses in me as I learn to make myself stronger. I get lost in my thoughts and speak boldly when it comes to truth. Confident, yet sometimes find myself not believing my whispering soul. I have been exposed widely to diversity and yet I preserve my roots and culture. I am considered to be a very open minded girl and find myself still struggling with double standards, limitations and expectations I must abide to. Passionate about history and politics- I will always have something to share and a word to say. I am a determined woman and just recently learnt when to stop, kick back, relax and let go. I like to say that I am purely of nothing but purely a little bit of everything.
I’ve been asked what inspired me, or what the source of inspiration in writing is. It’s really quite simple. It’s life. In which I would also like to show gratitude to because without it nothing else could come into life. I usually observed people and heard their stories. I lived through my own life so far and went through my own share of experience. I found that humans in general seem to go through similar experiences and when we share our troubles, challenges and achievements, we all have a different version. We say it differently, we feel it differently, and we encounter it differently. I always said that people from all over the world say the same things everyday to one another. The only difference is the way we see it, the way we express it, the way we react to it. Maybe this is why we have quotes from famous people, not only to inspire us, but also to remind and teach those who are going through the same experiences the ways to face it, embrace it, overcome it, believe in it, learn from it etc. Life is the one common thing that lies between the diversity people of the world. The lives of others and my life are my inspiration. And it is really because of all the troubles I went through that I found my deep well of feelings and expression. It is through frustration in trying to figure it all out, understand why miracles aren’t happening to me as it seems to happen to others, and the fall of the last domino named “reliance” or dependence which really made me finally spill it all out.
There was a point I reached when I got tired of waiting for miracles to happen and exhausted myself in relying on others to make me feel happy. I always wanted to be happy and find my own happiness- which now lies within ink and paper. But until then, I waited for love to make me happy, money for stability, I was confused in how to satisfy my family and myself at the same time, I waited for a man to accept me with my faults, and marriage to start building a future, I waited for support to make it through and for the world to believe in me. I blindly leaned and depended on everything and anticipated to find balance. I thought my balance is split into two: my own stability in finding all of the above and the happiness of the people I am surrounded with in my life. I learnt it the hard way and was mistaken when I sought balance through others. Balance comes from within- between your mind, heart and body. All of the mentioned have to meet and agree to simultaneously make the next step forward. It is indeed a lot of effort and for someone who didn’t yet get all the pieces of the puzzle together, it seemed like I was starting halfway through – I was just wobbling in between ‘knowing it’ and ‘not grasping it’ all at once. But patience waited for me long enough to start taking action. And the past year of my life was eventful enough already that so much was ready to be shared. I was already sharing it with whom I love and trust. Never ashamed of my past, my thoughts, my weaknesses or moments of failure, I felt the unbeatable urge to finally announce myself to the world. I simply got tired of saying it over and over again, and time got tired of my idleness. I had it all bouncing inside my mind and playing melodies through the strings of my heart. I had what it takes to express, I just needed to start writing. I had to make the effort in untangling the knots of tangled thoughts swirled inside of me and ultimately liberate my soul.
Inspiration played a role as the idea came into life like a miracle. The miracle happened in a moment of faith, passion and will. I trusted the unknown for once and am allowing it to lead me to wherever it may. However, I repetitively asked myself, “Why now and not later or even before?” Maybe the world wasn’t ready to answer another questioned person, troubled and weak. Maybe the world was waiting for one more person to find out the answer, slowly but surely. And maybe I wasn’t ready to face the world yet. The way I saw it was that maybe the world welcomed me only to its vast countries and failing disappointments. Unexpectedly though, it widely embraced me when I answered my questions to myself and by myself. The world may have wanted me to be chosen to become one of the people who really wanted to know who I really am, identify myself and start my life, satisfied that this answer would be sufficient. The long time search has made a discovery: the day I existed is not from the day I was physically born. It is rather a quarter of a century later after I made an entrance to the world, I finally discovered Noura. And just then she came to a consensus with herself; she will embrace it all at once, count them one by one, and show gratitude to both her sins and deeds. Just like a piece of writing takes time to publish, you have to edit, read, and minutely re-read countless times with precision to perfect it, it took me all those years to finally bring my voice to the world and be confident of my presence. I am in no form of perfection, but I am now the draft after many years of wondering, thinking, asking, answering the questions regarding my actions, words, and feelings, finding way to be more refined, graceful and accomplished.
I made choices in life, ones which were spontaneous, deeply thought of, impulsive, immature and calculated. I regret none of them. Throughout my depression, I realized that it’s not the choices and decisions we make that define us. It’s the way we handle and maneuver through them that reflects who we are. I have determined that distinct to the different natures we live in, undeniably, discovering life is a project always in progress. In life there seems a deadline for everything: nine months to have a baby, four years to earn a degree, sixty years to retire. And it seems unfair when a cat has seven lives to live (an old myth still narrated until today) whereas we only have one life to live and one shot to live. Although there are many lives to live in life we consider the end will always be at death. Death is merely the moment in which you stop living; it is not the end of life. Life will always live even after a person’s death. That is why I consider myself a guest in life. I have to live and accept life, as it is the host and I am the one who has to find a way to accommodate myself to life’s conditions. Just like we control the speed of a car, simply because man’s capacity exceeds his creation, life’s secrecy in being surpasses man’s control in events and manipulates most of our outcomes.
We tirelessly try to figure out the reasons behind, “everything happens for a reason.” I realized that nothing happens for a reason except that You are the reason, just so that you make sense and reasoning out of it. It is life, appearing as unanswered questions for you to find yourself, find your way to the pursuit of your own happiness and contentment. It is structured the way it’s given to us to discover the sources in belonging and touch the factors which make and break you. It happens the way it does so you confidently hold yourself as you preciously carry your heart, because whether you like it or not, life will throw things at you, good and or bad, it will then be up to you to in how to operate yourself accordingly.
Life throws the world right to our face so that we could learn how to receive. We are first taught by finding our sense of direction, knowing our way around, sorting out contradictions, accepting setbacks and coping with loss. And then we go deeper and learn guidance through our overwhelming pondering thoughts, wisdom in our exhausted reflective moments, and empathy from our unraveled feelings. During our lives, there are chances yet to love, there are reasons to have more babies, and there are urging objectives and countless opportunities to make more money. The world’s offers are limitless and there will always be chances in life. We have one life to live and many lives in life to live, yet the question still seemed incomplete. The only answer I reached to the remaining question is: the possibility to live with life.
Because I chose to live, I want to share with you what it feels like to live ‘with life.' I deducted that truce and peace are synonyms of each other but neither can fully happen without the other; they coexist. You must make truce with yourself and your inner combats, with the past, life and even the unknown so that you find peace within yourself and peace in your present time. Because I chose to live, live through life and live with life, as I walk through life and befriend the‘surprises’ and ‘challenges’ life introduces me to, I know that starting from today, I want to love the things I hate the most and save the things I love the most.
My source of inspiration turned out to be whom I just moved in and now live with everyday, who has taught me just enough to start writing about, whom has enabled my photos of my past to disappear so that my present words could shine on paper, and whom despite the falls of demise has led to the growth and the rise of my voice to a circle beyond those I know. And I thank life for it.
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