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.

:D:D:D

ماذا أقول له

من فيلم الشموع السوداء كانت تقرأ له مطلع هذه القصيدة، و كانت الكلمات تنساب في رقة و استسلام المحب المعذّب، هذه القصيدة لنزار قباني

ماذا أقول له لو جاء يسألني إن كنت أكرهه أو كنت أهواه؟
ماذا أقول ، إذا راحت أصابعه تلملم الليل عن شعري وترعاه؟
وكيف أسمح أن يدنو بمقعده؟ وأن تنام على خصري ذراعاه؟
غدا إذا جاء .. أعطيه رسائله ونطعم النار أحلى ما كتبناه
حبيبتي! هل أنا حقا حبيبته؟ وهل أصدق بعد الهجر دعواه؟
أما انتهت من سنين قصتي معه؟ ألم تمت كخيوط الشمس ذكراه؟
أما كسرنا كؤوس الحب من زمن فكيف نبكي على كأس كسرناه؟
رباه.. أشياؤه الصغرى تعذبني فكيف أنجو من الأشياء رباه؟
هنا جريدته في الركن مهملة هنا كتاب معا .. كنا قرأناه
على المقاعد بعض من سجائره وفي الزوايا .. بقايا من بقاياه..
ما لي أحدق في المرآة .. أسألها بأي ثوب من الأثواب ألقاه
أأدعي أنني أصبحت أكرهه؟ وكيف أكره من في الجفن سكناه؟
وكيف أهرب منه؟ إنه قدري هل يملك النهر تغييرا لمجراه؟
أحبه .. لست أدري ما أحب به حتى خطاياه ما عادت خطاياه
الحب في الأرض . بعض من تخلينا لو لم نجده عليها .. لاخترعناه
ماذا أقول له لو جاء يسألني إن كنت أهواه. إني ألف أهواه

Codes Of Conduct

For the last couple of days, I repeatedly stated some principles that I condiser an "unconscious" code I act by in real life. These principles are:

1. Never ever trust anyone 100%! You never know if and when he/she will be your enemy.
2. Always assume "malicious" intentions from people around you and beware and take precautions, but on the exterior, behave as if they have good intentions. "Act good to people until they proove you wrong then get away from them, but in the inside, always be cautious of them until they proove you wrong, then you can trust them."
3. Try to avoid telling the people you love that they did wrong by you!
4. Swallow your bad and black thoughts and keep analyzing inside you head how and why you have them instead of acting upon them.
5. Shut up more than you talk!
6. Don't only listen to people, study what you listen to and try to conclude whatever they're not telling you.

Of course, these codes of conduct didn't come to me from my parents :) , they came the hard way; from bitter experience. But I'm not gonna talk about situations; instead, I'll talk about the principles themselves cuz I kinda like them!!

Number one is really self-explanatory, and as I keep saying: "the most beautiful relief you can have is talk about everything you go through to youl close friends, and the most painful feeling is to hold back your feelings and troubles from your dear ones. BUT the latter is less harmful than the former. Discreetness will never expose your "soul holes" to others, and this makes you stronger."

Number two is my own invention :D, it's really a defense mechanism that I use to avoid paradoxes. Imagine that you first impression about someone "which is by the way 90% true" is that you hate him! if you act clearly upon the hatred feeling, and he's "bad news", then you got yourself an enemy. But if from the beggining you dealt with him nicely while raising your "internal" alerts to his actions, you're relatively safe. If he's otherwise a nice person or at least not harmful, then you'd be rude and lose a potential aly. On the other hand, if your first impression is that he's nice and start taking confidence in him, and he turns out to be "trouble", then you gave away your weaknesses for the enemy. But you can't act rude either, so act nice but don't let down your guard. I applied the same strategy in my research by the way :D:D:D

Number 3 is a bit tricky, but I personally don't like telling people that they're wrong; either to me or in general; cuz people generally tend to justify their actions for their own benefit, and by telling them they're wrong, you're making them feel and accordingly act defensive. They'll try to place the blame on you or whatever other circumstances; you gain nothing. BUT my friend Amira, said that in pointing the people I really care about to what they did wrong, I'm either giving them the opportunity to explain any misconceptions I might have or try to avoid making the wrong actions in the future. Meaning that clearing the air is more important than avoiding to upset people. I have a counter statement which is this: if you really care about those people, you'd even do that for them in you mind before you absolutely need to confront them. Meaning that I'd make a conversation in my head and try to see if the other person is really wrong or if I misunderstood then what the real meaning of the action may be. And if he's wrong in my head then I "cashe" the mistake or wrong action in my back-mind and act normally until he makes another mistake "God forbids", then I'll analyze the now "accumulating" list to see if I'm the wrongful party or he/she is. If the list passes a certain "threshold", then I'll turn my categorization of this person into a "no state" condition; meaning I don't care no more about him/her, but at the same time I'll keep the relationship in a relatively positively communicative nature because I don't like to lose my connections. (Pretty crazy stuff ha?!)

Number 4 needs a complete blog entry cuz it's a constant nightmare and battle inside my mind of good against evil. People don't want to believe it but I'm really evil deep down, I just choose to fight it most of the time.

Number five is a direction given by our Prophet Muhammad (may prayers and blesses be upon him,) It's really a good thing to try not to talk a lot because you'll say wrong a lot.

Number six is something I'm trying to practice even though I don't think I fully master. But I think as you get to know people more, you get to understand their motives, and when you understand their motives, you'll become more knowledgable as to why they act in a certain way. This will ultimately give you the ability to give them a sounder opinion/advice when they ask for one.

Once, when I was talking to my uncle "mother's brother", we were talking about my "accumulative" nature, and I said "But this being part of my character is not a good thing." He said "The charater you created for yourself might be not good, but it's your own, not an imitation of others!"

Exhausted!!!

I'm nearly finished with my Master tasks, although I'm not at all satisfied with anything! But, the fact of the matter is that I'm not willing to put an extra ounce of effort into this project which took so much time and energy. I'm sure this means I'm not a great person, since great people don't quit enhancing their work. But really, the atmosphere in which one works affects his or her ability to excel, to take that extra mile to greatness. Well, without lingering on the bad circumstances that we worked in, I think my work is done in that area. I thought this will give me the willingness to do extra work into the traditional faculty job; you know, the sections and all..but on the contrary!! I'm so tired of half the effort I used to exert a couple of years ago..I'm not enthusiastic about new courses I'm assisting in teaching, nor about the fact that I can work in faculty without feeling guilty about my Master. The truth is I didn't take a real vacation since I was a student in the third year, this is about 8 years!! WOW..No vacation meaning with absolutely nothing to worry about..It's been so long..And I neeeeeed a vacation or the rest of me is gonna collapse! Not that I'm complaning about the job, it's not that hard anymore, but I need a break to renew my brain cells so that I can accept and embrace the job challenges from bad boys to hard excercises..
Can I get such a vacation soon? I think I'm gonna do whatever it takes to have it..or I'm gonna end up doing just like other less lovable people in the faculty do, get in, take attendance, get out!

The other face of Meryl Streep's movie quote!

In "Shall we dance", starring Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon (Oh how I love both), a phrase said by Susan Sarandon's character pops up to compete with Meryl Streep's phrase in "The bridges of Madison county". Again, a simple plot outline is in order to understand the phrase context. The movie is about a lawyer who's caught up in a boring life style inspite of his love for his family. One day he sees a woman standing in the window of a dance school and decides to take dancing lessons to stirr his life a bit. He decides to hide his activity from his wife because he doesn't want to admit that he's bored of their life, he's ashamed of the fact that he's not grateful for their life and that he's seeking fullfillment elsewhere. His wife gets suspecious about his behavior and hires a PI to investigate her husband and finds out the truth. And the husband finally tells his wife why he kept to himself and teaches her how to dance (a symbol that partners should share whatever they enjoy). After the wife finds out about what her husband is doing, she meets with the PI and a discussion about why people get married takes place. She says this unbelievably well-put phrase:
"We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness' "
That's why people should get married, and that's why a person should marry a partner who enjoys being his or her witness, enjoys all the simple and trivial details of his or her partner, and basks in the mere existance of his or her partner.
I've always heard statements from my mom, my aunts, even some of my friends, that marriage is "3eesha welsalam", that I shouldn't be so picky in my scrutiny of men who wanted to get married, and I have seen men who want to get married "welsalam". I heard the statements that no matter how much you love a man "or a man love a woman", life will end up being the same as if you married anybody else. But that's not what I want to believe, I want to believe that I'll find a man who will appreciate my desire to move forward and do something important in life, and who will rejoyce in every detail of our life together, I want to enjoy every detail of our life together, his hopes, my hopes, his weaknesses, my weaknesses, our good moments as our bad moments. I want to be a good "witness" to his life and I want him to be a good witness to mine. And I want our ambitions to melt together and form one goal, as our separate lives will melt together and form one life. No matter what the people around me say, I'll keep believing in this hope, because I do not want to live "3eesha welsalam"!

فرح محمد صيام

This was written on 27/1/2007

امبارح كان فرح محمد صيام

و حضرت الفرح

و طول الفرح عمالة أقول لنفسي

طول عمري موش باحب بعض حاجات في الأفراح

الزفة الطويلة..و اصرار الدي جي على ان العروسين يرقصوا..و الصوت العالي

لكن امبارح بس..كل الحاجات اللي كنت باعتبرها سطحية كانت في منتهى الجمال

و أنا كنت في منتهى السعادة و عمالة أبتسم و أضحك من غير ما أقدر أوقف نفسي

و لما حللت الموقف لعناصره الأساسية (زي ما بتوع نظم بيحبوا يعملوا) لقيت ان ده صيام

ده فرح صيام..و فرح رشا..توأم روحه

فعلا كانت السعادة مالية الجو..و الاتنين ما كانوش خايفين انهم يعلنوا سعادتهم ببعض

ما كانش في التصنع اللي بشوفه في معظم الأفراح

كانوا الاتنين بيقولوا للدنيا كلها احنا موش خايفين منك لاننا مع بعض

ولان حوالينا ناس فعلا بتحبنا

ناس فعلا فرحانة بينا من غير مجاملة

و لولا الملامة كنت رقصت من الفرحة اللي كانت مسيطرة على الجو

كانت الناس فعلا موش عاوزة تمشي

و كانت الناس عاوزة تعمل أي حاجة عشان تبين فرحتها

كل الحاجات اللي دايما بتتعمل في الأفراح و باعتبرها روتين كان لها شكل تاني و طعم تاني

لان روح صيام و رشا كانت طاغية عليها فخلتها جديدة و جميلة

و كنت حاسة ان صيام و رشا حطوا بصماتهم الجميلة على كل حاجة في الفرح

حتى الأغاني اللي ماباحبهاش

الروح الحلوة دي ماحسيتهاش قبل كده غير في مناقشة أميرة

و ده دليل على ان الناس اللي روحهم حلوة و ضميرهم صافي ربنا بيكرمهم في فرحتهم قوي بناس فعلا بتعزهم

و الاعزاز أحلى من المحبة لان فيه احترام و اكبار للشخص

أميرة كانت تستاهل في مناقشتها

و صيام كان يستاهل في فرحه

عقبال كل أفراحهم و أفراح الناس اللي بعزهم تكون جميلة كده و أجمل كمان من كده

مبرووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووك لصيام و رشا

و يارب من قلبي تكون أيامهم كلها سعادة و فرح زي امبارح

و عقبال كل الناس

تكون أفراحها جميلة زي فرحهم