Father

It's so late to talk about my dad, now that he's passed away about five years ago, but yesterday, it kind of hit me that he's no longer around. I elaborated on my relationship with my dad so many times in my head, and I discovered that I made an angel out of him when all he was is a human being, with faults and virtues. It struck me that I kept saying, if you're still alive dad this and this wouldn't have happened, if you lived dad I'd tell you so and so. I don't know for a fact if this would be true, if I'd be able now to talk candidly with him and consult him, maybe instead the gap would've grown wider and deeper between us. To be honest, I think that if he would've told me something I would do the opposite just to tease him. The truth of the matter is I was a rebellion and was never pacified by the words of the people around me, specially my dad, so ever since I was 13, he couldn't force me to do things all the time, mostly I did what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. We had our huge differences and fights, we spent so many days not even talking to each other, whether it was my fault or his. I even defied him and planned to go to any faculty except medicine because he me to study medicine. That's the pro and con of growing up, you have your own mind and you can revel in the state of illusive independence, and this eventualy form who you grow up to be in the future. But you'll hate authority, and you'll clash with anyone who assumes authority over you, which is mostly the father, so you have to fight with him if you're a rebellion by nature. He was in his youth as I was in mine, so we're so alike, maybe that was the reason we fought a lot.
Anyway, I got carried away in the memories, but what triggered these thoughts was that I made a perfect figure of him, all because he's dead now, and I can see clearly all the good things I loved in him and none of the things that irritated me. It's as if death creates a state of "denial", which is ironic considering death is the only absolute fact in life. I deny that he was ever "not good", and keep a holy image of him that would've never been there if he was alive. Maybe this was for good, because this way I get to know him better and love him better without being harsh or defiant. Yet sometimes I think, maybe I would've come to the same conclusion with time because this is a part of "growing up" and maturing, you get to realize the vanity of youth and how it's so silly, and you learn to appreciate the wisdom of your parents and teachers, even imitate it. I really miss the intellectual part of my dad, I want to have those evenings back when we used to talk about the philosophy in the books he taught, about life lessons, and I wish that I didn't let him down. I wish he could know this, that I cherish him now even though I was so stupid before, that I love him now in spite of everything. I wish he could forgive me for everything, but moreover, I wish I can forgive myself.

The Painting

A painting is composed of two completely opposite elements: creativity and discipline. Creativity is the inspiration that comes to the artist when he "thinks outside the box", a metaphor for original and not ordinary thinking. Discipline, on the other hand, is the restrictions that the artist has to practice when doing his work. One can look at these two elements in three dimensions:

• The first one is the projection of these two ideas on our lives in general, creativity is a treat that's born with us, maybe with different degrees among people, but we can still say that all kids are born with a degree of creativity. Discipline on the other hand is "imposed" on us; by our parents, by our teachers, and by the laws of religion and the social system. There's no harm in too much creativity as long as it does not cause harm to others. Too much or too little discipline, on the other hand, will pretty much cause negative effects on creativity. Too much discipline will kill creative thinking and thus slow or even stop progress (both of a single person and a whole nation), and too little discipline will cause creativity to go wild and probably be more harmful than beneficial.
• The second dimension is related to the painting as a work of art that "needs" to be done. If an artist is left to his creativity alone without the restrictions of providing for a living and meeting the demands of art lovers, he may not finish most of his works, because a true creative artist will probably never be satisfied with his work of art since true creativity has no limits. The rules of discipline are somewhat necessary for him to find a stopping point and deliver a final product.
• The third dimension is about the final product; the painting itself. No matter how wonderful and original the painting is, it will wear out and fade with time unless it is enclosed in a frame with a glass cover. After all, the frame is like the discipline to the final product which is the result of wild creative talent.

How is all this related together? Well, this is a metaphor for every single thing we do in life, we have to understand that creativity must come first and be unleashed. We must break the mental walls that may have been planted in our minds since we were young and became so strong that we do not dare think wild and act wild. By thinking and acting wild I mean to think out of the usual and ordinary and expected. After we learn to release the immense power of creativity and imagination, we can restore our inscribed rules of discipline to structure and organize this power, not to suppress it; to direct it, not to stop it. And whatever comes out of our creative imagination should have the grace and beauty of a painting: it should be awe-inspiring and mind-stirring, and it should be framed well, not too tight and not too loose. This will most probably be an excellent work of art.

Three Categories of Students

I've been working as a TA for six years and four months now, and I've seen the graduation of six classes since 2001, some of them are now colleagues and best friends. But what I want to share today are two things; an observation that raises a question, and another question. The observation is that I could roughly divide the students in each class into three main groups: students who are self-reliant and have a good instinct that enables them to study on their own, students who are very smart but wasting it, and students who don't give a damn about studying at all. The first category of students are mostly very smart or very independent or both, they do not want to count on anybody to study, understand, and get the grades they want. They do not come to you asking for silly questions, they wait until they encounter very difficult problems and then maybe they'll ask you for advice. I like those ones and think they have the highest potential to make something important out of themselves. The second category is the students who are mostly smart but think that it's not "cool" to be interested in studying and doing what it takes to get the grades, or they're just uninterested. I developed this belief that this is the category that needs most of the work from professors and TAs because it is a real challenge to get students in this category to be interest and if the challenge is conquered in the right way, they'll constitute a great gain in the value of the whole teaching process. The third category is the "don't care" condition. I really "don't care" about doing too much effort with this category, but I want to emphasize that by this group I mean students who do not want to learn and do not believe that learning holds any value to them. Maybe in their future when they're confronted with life choices and work requirements they'll realize their faulty beliefs, but at the current time, they do not believe in the whole process of education. Well, this specific category has caused me to think repeatedly and ask myself this question: is there something that can be done to shift their attitude, or are they a hopeless case? I couldn't find an answer to this question after six long years in service. All I could hope for is that I might have contributed to the shift of some of the second category. At one time I really thought that the second category is the one professors and TAs should focus all their efforts on, but this wouldn't be fair to the first category who need to know that they have a support system they can rely on when need calls.
As for the question, it's whether or not I should explain all the details of a subject in class. I believe that a margin of questioning and unanswered problems in class should be allowed in order to let the students test themselves and think of the possible ways of solving problems and finding outcomes. But it seems as if by doing so, I caused myself a headache of continuous "nagging" and bafflement among them. It seems that students of today -with fewer and fewer exceptions as the years pass by- do not want to make an effort on their own, they either do not want to exert that extra effort to think on their own part of the time, or they're afraid to do that because they are not sure of the validity of the method their minds work! So I found myself keeping this margin "marginal" as much as possible, and I don't think this contributes positively to them, but I'm tired of the headache they cause me.
I do not know the correct answer to those questions, nor to every single question in the various subjects that I taught, but I believe that when you're willing to break the mental blocks inside your mind, you can try and answer any question, and the chances are high that you'll get it right, is this how humans discovered fire?

A deeper look at self

In the early years when I realized I had a brain that I can use to think, I didn't have external stimuli to divert me from talking to myself and taking a thorough look at my inner thoughts, fears, and hopes. The school year was the closest I got to excitement in my life, and so I had a life between September and May and I was pretty much void the remaining months. During the summer, I used to set with my dad at 3 in the morning, silently looking at the starry sky(we lived in a half-roofed house.) I used to form shapes out of stars not knowing that these are actually known formations by astrologists. My dad and I seldom talked during these moments, but it was as if we knew what these moments were all about. For me it was about opening to the world, thinking of the limits and how to look through them, clearing my mind of the mental webs of early adolescence. For him, I think it was about the twists of life, and how nobody ever got what they really wanted, and whether anybody really knows what they wanted. At these times, going to school was to me like going to the movies, I built my whole life around it. I thought a lot, and talked to myself a lot, and it was as if the winter weather was the perfect frame for my mental state. I'd go home to my great tasks of doing homework and thinking about the day, thinking how lucky I am to have this life and at the same time dreading it! It's a complicated thing, because when you're estranged in your country and estranged in the country where your parents live, you get confused as to where you should belong and who should embrace you. I didn't know people in my country so I didn't care about them, but the people in Libya I cared about and wanted them to accept me. Well, this happened the hard way, by sometimes making a fool of myself, by sometimes denouncing my country, and by all the time working hard to stand out and be likable even if this involved doing stupid things. I had so much dignity and pride, but I crushed them willingly to be accepted and loved by my school mates, and I know I can't call them friends now because friendship is a whole different dimension.
At that time, I used to talk to myself about what I'd like to be, I used to write plays and stories reflecting my inner state of mind about life, heroism, friendship, and leadership. And suddenly I found myself here and now, wondering where did these past 13 years went. I realized that in Egypt, you get into a frantic race to get something decent out of life, you have to fight all the time for a slot in happiness and a bit of success. You can't afford to talk to yourself or you'll be crushed by the running crowds. In the first three years after I came from Libya, I was so stunned by the transformation in people and the pace of life that I could for a while preserve a slight contact with myself for the expense of being stepped over by the "crowds" of students wanting to score high for college. I was so baffled by the frantic families pushing their kids to extreme limits and the frantic kids crying over a degree or five degrees. For me, life was about the little enjoyments as much as the great achievements. When I got into college, I began to understand the game, and I had one of two choices, either get in the track and run, leaving behind me all the little bits of my mind that kept me alive all those years, or hang on to them and find myself again baffled by a style of life I'm stuck in for no body knows how long. I unconsciously chose to "hop in" and leave myself behind, only to realize now that it's hard to reestablish the connection again. I postponed this step until I could be a bit secure about my Master thesis, and said to myself "then you'll reassess yourself, then you'll take the time to know how much you changes and whether it was for the best, then you'll read all the books you want, then you'll play all the music you want, then you'll correct all the wrongs you see in yourself, and then you'll try to take a trip and simply enjoy lazy life for a while." This is not happening though, and I find myself to be unwillingly caught in a spiral of duty after duty and pushed again to the race. Tonight, I began talking to myself only to find that it was a way to practice my English, and to my surprise I found out how shallow and superficial I became, how empty my mind is in spite of all the technical data stored in it, and how weak my shell became because over the years I ignored to add an internal strength to myself and instead added the garbage that's called "social intelligence" that's only good to deal with others in order to gain extra points to my credit. I can't even seem to have organized thoughts anymore, and this is pathetic, after studying logic and science all these years.
I don't know how I'm going to restore myself to a state that I like, I don't like me to the degree that I really see nothing good about me and always have this impression that even when people say good things about me, they either don't mean them or I don't deserve them. But realizing that something is wrong is half the way to get it right, or so I hope.