What would it be like if I had never met him? How would life be different if I had just stayed at that job? It is possible to fill your reflections with ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’ which eat away and darken the present moment. I would not erase any moment. Not the moment my brother died, not my divorce, not the abuse I have been through. They all create the present that I live now- with all its difficulties and challenges and that is what I have been given. But to bigger world events that in many ways are not mine to erase or not erase- the break up of the Ottoman empire, the Nakba, the industrial revolution- in my view all catastrophic events which have led to terrible inequality, exploitation and oppression… would I erase these? And the answer is, I don’t think so. I would erase present human suffering if I could instantly, but the events themselves, apart from the suffering form a part of history that shapes the direction of destiny. Regrets can make you mourn possibilities based on things that didn’t happen. As such, regret has never really shaped my way of thinking too much. Things are the way they are and difficult events shape existence as it is now. I miss my brother terribly. I bear the scars of abuse. And I know this is nothing compared to daily suffering endured by the Palestinians and other oppressed people. But to erase even the hardest of events would erase the present and I think God knows best.
dailyprompt
I remember my dad telling me when I was very young; ‘the only certainty in life is death.’ When I think of these wise words now I think they were a brave and true thing which must have stayed with me or else I wouldn’t be relaying it now. But do I always live by it? When I was younger, I think I did. As child, a teen and a student, even when I first became a teacher in my early twenties, I think I did. The point of change was having children. Suddenly, uncertainty just won’t cut it. You have societal pressures which you don’t necessarily agree with but feel the heavy weight of them, you have family expectations, you are juggling a thousand different things and you are doing it all because you place such profound importance in your children. At this point, uncertainty becomes intolerable. You try to build certainty through never forgetting anything and through making networks so that any issues will have a fall back plan. I guess it why so many mothers feel completely exhausted. At age 44, I am now a therapist. In my training I learned that Milton Erickson said that the greatest indicator of poor mental health was rigidity or an inability to be flexible. And it is all based on this need for certainty in a world where nothing is certain. Through my own therapy and reflection I have found that I can observe my discomfort with uncertainty and begin to reframe it so that it becomes a more tolerable element in life.
When did you realise you were officially an adult?
Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment when you realized you were officially an adult?
I officially realised I was an adult when the old school ‘Happy Eater’ restaurants, that you used to stop at on long car journeys stopped giving me a lollipop. It was a hard realisation. Because as soon as that happened, I began to notice the world around me redefining my identity. There were the fewer smiles, the greater expectations, the lack of acknowledgement for burdens that you have to bear though they are not necessarily yours. And as I grew, the more I found this to be the case. When you are a child you can truly believe that life should be fair, that people should be nice and that you have a place in the world. As you move to adulthood, those realisations fall away with what Jung called ‘the first death’. And honestly, it hurts. Adulthood requires you to operate despite unfairness in the world and despite the fact that you may not have a designated space in that world and your 20’s and 30’s can feel heavy as a result. But with effort, with reflection and time you start to realise that you can find your world inside yourself, you can create a fair system that works in the parts of your psyche. You cannot remove suffering, but you can alter your experience of it. So what starts with the withholding of a lollipop feels like a rather dark journey until I found that after that first death, I could be reborn again.
A stranger completely restored my faith in people.
Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment when a stranger completely restored your faith in people?
It was culture day at the school I work at. A beautiful event in a very diverse school of perhaps 60% Muslims in West London. Lining the streets on the way to the school for a couple of years now, since the London riots, have been St George’s cross flags- a sneering and deliberate message to the children at the school for a minority of locals, that they are not welcome. As a Muslim, I have felt that too. The greater divisiveness, the looks, the wondering whether the person in front of me is scowling because they’ve just had a bad day or if they’re ready to launch into an assault as to why I should not be in ‘this country.’ On this particular day, I was wearing a very bright Moroccan outfit and I was going for my lunchtime walk with my headphones on. As I rounded the corner, a white man indicated to me to take off the headphones because he wanted to speak to me. I didn’t want a confrontation, but I tensed and took them off. He beamed at me and said ‘that’s such a beautiful dress, you look lovely!’ This small gesture of connection meant so much to me. My shoulders relaxed and I felt tears come to my eyes. I beamed at him. I wonder if he knows how important that exchange was for me.