I was recently on a short business trip, and I was sort of dreading the whole trip, including the country of destination. I was aware of this, of course, but was still ashamed of myself when – upon hearing any piece of news related to either the project or the country – I would jump to the irrational conclusion that that might be enough to cancel the trip. Like I said, I was ashamed, but there it was. In the end, there weren’t sufficient reasons to derail the trip and I found myself, plainly and simply, traveling.
Among the coping skills I’ve learned as an adult, I put on a brave face and tried to seem un-phased by this non-turn of events. I believe I was doing this so well that I almost seemed callously indifferent. That is until we were in the car, driving on a sleek highway next to a sweet hillside that was spotted with airbrushes of orange and yellow. Oh my goodness – autumn!! One of my favorite seasons that is beyond brief in my beloved Lebanon, where the leaves don’t linger and fade, they opt instead to just drop at the first sign of wintery weather. I looked again to make sure it wasn’t just a type of boring tree, perhaps a breed that was too lazy to carry full-colour leaves to begin with (you may be puzzled by this notion since, as far as I know, no such tree exists, but that might just describe to you how un-excited I was about visiting this country). By that second look, my cynical callous indifference had all but withered and I found myself goofily smiling at this beautiful hillside holding autumn for me, for me to enjoy.
How ironic, I thought, that it would be this beautiful nature that would make me like this country again. This is when I realized that it wasn’t the first time. I could remember being on a bus from London to Oxford, upset and depressed by the usual gloomy, wet weather, when I looked out at a field with edges that disappeared over the horizon, and seemed to reflect a tinge of lush, rich, deep green onto the otherwise non-descript sky. All I could think of was ‘emerald’, and how, for the length of that field, I felt as if I was inside one.
I thought back to one of my many walks in Sri Lanka, when I would reach the point of saturation with all the dust, sun, heat and shriveled, dried up bark (which would give you the feeling that the sun practically peeled it off the trees and sucked the moist life out of it). Just around then, I would feel a slight, delicate cool, and would look up to find I was walking next to a majestically upright coconut tree, bending just so at the top out of its easy-going and kind shade-y character.
I would think of a perfectly smooth, wavy sand dune in Sharjah’s otherwise lifeless desert where I grew up, of a lake appearing like an oasis beneath the narrow, winding roads somewhere between Sanaa and Taez in Yemen, and so on and so on.
So there it was, a self-realization revealing itself to me for the first time, that it isn’t always my lofty notions of anthropological curiosity, courteous interaction with people, or self-disciplined motivation that keep me connected to places, and thus people. It was something much simpler all along and for which I can claim no credit whatsoever – but I'm happy to take a back seat to nature any day!
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Write, dammit!!
The home page for one of my browsers, the one I use most often, is this blog. I did not do this out of egoism, but rather as a reminder for me to write, write, write. Whereas this reminder was pleasant in the past, it has now become a plainly annoying nag. Why do I do this to myself?
But the truth is that I do miss writing, so I came here today equipped only with my virtual pen and this blank page, with no particular idea, inclination or direction… let’s see where we end up.
I’m in a coffee shop with free wifi, decent music, and a strict non-smoking policy, there are a handful of these around town that have become my makeshift workspaces when I get too restless (and undisciplined) to work from home. I actually do have a cool set-up at home – I custom-designed my desk, have a couple of my favourite Klimts hanging right above to keep me calm and inspired, have broken in my office chair just so, and am at the perfect angle and distance from the air conditioner to remain perfectly cool/warm, depending on the weather. My coffee-shop workspaces have none of these traits, but they all share one feature that is sometimes central to getting any work done: they force me to stay seated. At these coffee shops, there are no TVs and shows that come up and “who knows when they’ll be screened again” (who am I kidding, I know they’ll be back on in 4 hours). There also aren’t any dishes in the sink, or laundry in the hamper that I can suddenly decide to feign a heightened hygiene conscience and feel propelled to clean right this instant. There aren’t any rooms to tidy up, even though they have been comfortably neglected for weeks, or any phone calls to make, or plants to water, and so on, and so on.
No, these coffee shops are the closest type of workspace to my offices. And the procrastination they offer is also quite similar – websurfing, emails, and – wait for it – blogging!
As a matter of fact, there are so many similarities to my previous routine of working in an office that I have begun to doubt my level of productivity during all those years of employment. I mean, was it truly an achievement to respond to around 50 emails a day, playing a virtual ping-pong game of ideas, that take much longer to see tangible fruition sans ping-pong? Did I really need to spend late afternoons writing comprehensive reports that would later be butchered into one-page briefs general enough to be relevant to just about any other project? I’m not sure… I often feel that, at the end of the day, I get things done within roughly the same period of time, but there is much more ‘camouflaged wasted time’ in an office than there is when I call it a day and decide to, say, cook or go for a walk.
What I don’t often get to do, sadly, is just write… The biggest downside of not being in an office and full-time employment is that you never have those lulls where your mind just gets to wander aimlessly and not immediately get roped back in by to-do lists and deadlines. When in an office, there are always some episodes that are just so mind-numbingly infuriating or boring (think back to just about any meeting that has gone too long) that they set my mind free to daydream, and that’s usually when the first lines of a blog entry come to mind. I’ll have to work on creating some daydream episodes, preferably without the infuriation!
But the truth is that I do miss writing, so I came here today equipped only with my virtual pen and this blank page, with no particular idea, inclination or direction… let’s see where we end up.
I’m in a coffee shop with free wifi, decent music, and a strict non-smoking policy, there are a handful of these around town that have become my makeshift workspaces when I get too restless (and undisciplined) to work from home. I actually do have a cool set-up at home – I custom-designed my desk, have a couple of my favourite Klimts hanging right above to keep me calm and inspired, have broken in my office chair just so, and am at the perfect angle and distance from the air conditioner to remain perfectly cool/warm, depending on the weather. My coffee-shop workspaces have none of these traits, but they all share one feature that is sometimes central to getting any work done: they force me to stay seated. At these coffee shops, there are no TVs and shows that come up and “who knows when they’ll be screened again” (who am I kidding, I know they’ll be back on in 4 hours). There also aren’t any dishes in the sink, or laundry in the hamper that I can suddenly decide to feign a heightened hygiene conscience and feel propelled to clean right this instant. There aren’t any rooms to tidy up, even though they have been comfortably neglected for weeks, or any phone calls to make, or plants to water, and so on, and so on.
No, these coffee shops are the closest type of workspace to my offices. And the procrastination they offer is also quite similar – websurfing, emails, and – wait for it – blogging!
As a matter of fact, there are so many similarities to my previous routine of working in an office that I have begun to doubt my level of productivity during all those years of employment. I mean, was it truly an achievement to respond to around 50 emails a day, playing a virtual ping-pong game of ideas, that take much longer to see tangible fruition sans ping-pong? Did I really need to spend late afternoons writing comprehensive reports that would later be butchered into one-page briefs general enough to be relevant to just about any other project? I’m not sure… I often feel that, at the end of the day, I get things done within roughly the same period of time, but there is much more ‘camouflaged wasted time’ in an office than there is when I call it a day and decide to, say, cook or go for a walk.
What I don’t often get to do, sadly, is just write… The biggest downside of not being in an office and full-time employment is that you never have those lulls where your mind just gets to wander aimlessly and not immediately get roped back in by to-do lists and deadlines. When in an office, there are always some episodes that are just so mind-numbingly infuriating or boring (think back to just about any meeting that has gone too long) that they set my mind free to daydream, and that’s usually when the first lines of a blog entry come to mind. I’ll have to work on creating some daydream episodes, preferably without the infuriation!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
You Never Forget the War…
For cultures like ours that are prone to drama, we hold onto and mark all sorts of dates that – mostly – refer to a dramatic event. When speaking of national memory, this is at a whole different level to the “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” question for a few simple reasons. Firstly, we don’t linger too long at the ‘it was just a regular day’ part of the story and choose to go into much more depth at how the world changed as a consequence. Second, although the Americans probably posed the question as an opener for a shared experience and shared grief, we tend to slip into a somewhat competitive discussion of which of us was affected more, closer to the event, or understood it at a whole other level and was thus more intimately touched by it.
All sarcasm aside, the main difference in our region is that we have far too many days to mark and remember, far too many events that provoke the question “where were you when…?” For stretches at a time, our lives were (are) defined by these rather than by our own regular life events. We don’t remember the year a cousin underwent surgery to remove his appendix because it was the same year that our 6-year-old lost her first teeth, but rather that that was the year of a particular conflict or bombing and the roads were closed, or the electricity was out. I suppose this is why you can never quite forget the war: it’s part of our calendar.
And, of course, the list goes on: I remember when one conflict broke out because it was exactly a week before the date of my PhD defense and almost threatened my chances for traveling. Similarly, I remember the years of a particular reunion, and a friend’s wedding, because I managed to slip out of the country and back right before the airport closed in both those years. This naturally brings back memories of the first time the airport closed because we were not so lucky that time around and fled the country by land. Yes, I remember that year as well for the same reason.
You never forget the war because fireworks continue to make your hair stand on end, and you recognize the sound of tanks rumbling through the streets at night. Because every summer reminds you of one you spent under siege, where you couldn’t go near the beach and, even though you’re not a regular beachgoer, you can’t forget how much your body missed the sun that year. You never forget the war because, every time you travel out of the country, you still can’t chase away that fleeting thought that something might happen while you’re away, and are you prepared in case it does.
I think, however, that what most compels us to remember the war is that we lived to reflect on it, we survived. After the war in 2006, one of my expatriate colleagues was part of the first convoy to go down to the ravaged South after the war had ended. For a week, most of what they saw in the villages was funeral processions for those who had been found amidst the destruction and rubble and this naturally overwhelmed him. During one phone call, he kept repeating that we (the national staff) really had to go down there, searching for the words he tried to explain “you have to come down and stand witness to this part of your compatriots’ history”.
So, yes, you never forget the war for all your personal reasons, but it is not (just) that we are unable to forget - we are actually duty-bound to remember.
All sarcasm aside, the main difference in our region is that we have far too many days to mark and remember, far too many events that provoke the question “where were you when…?” For stretches at a time, our lives were (are) defined by these rather than by our own regular life events. We don’t remember the year a cousin underwent surgery to remove his appendix because it was the same year that our 6-year-old lost her first teeth, but rather that that was the year of a particular conflict or bombing and the roads were closed, or the electricity was out. I suppose this is why you can never quite forget the war: it’s part of our calendar.
And, of course, the list goes on: I remember when one conflict broke out because it was exactly a week before the date of my PhD defense and almost threatened my chances for traveling. Similarly, I remember the years of a particular reunion, and a friend’s wedding, because I managed to slip out of the country and back right before the airport closed in both those years. This naturally brings back memories of the first time the airport closed because we were not so lucky that time around and fled the country by land. Yes, I remember that year as well for the same reason.
You never forget the war because fireworks continue to make your hair stand on end, and you recognize the sound of tanks rumbling through the streets at night. Because every summer reminds you of one you spent under siege, where you couldn’t go near the beach and, even though you’re not a regular beachgoer, you can’t forget how much your body missed the sun that year. You never forget the war because, every time you travel out of the country, you still can’t chase away that fleeting thought that something might happen while you’re away, and are you prepared in case it does.
I think, however, that what most compels us to remember the war is that we lived to reflect on it, we survived. After the war in 2006, one of my expatriate colleagues was part of the first convoy to go down to the ravaged South after the war had ended. For a week, most of what they saw in the villages was funeral processions for those who had been found amidst the destruction and rubble and this naturally overwhelmed him. During one phone call, he kept repeating that we (the national staff) really had to go down there, searching for the words he tried to explain “you have to come down and stand witness to this part of your compatriots’ history”.
So, yes, you never forget the war for all your personal reasons, but it is not (just) that we are unable to forget - we are actually duty-bound to remember.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Dunya's Bahrain
Since the unrest in Bahrain started, I could only think of my Bahraini friends and what they were going through; I would recall their thoughtful quiet concern for me and my family when we were facing our own forms of conflict in Lebanon, and I shuddered at the analogy. That sweet island nation that I had always held as the pride of the gulf (from the opinion of an expat who grew up in one of the gulf states), that country and those people were too sweet and, well, innocent to become jaded like us.
The twist that drove me completely mad was when the ripple effect of a Lebanese leader’s speech led to the discontinuation of all flights between our two countries, also cutting off phone connections. We were left to the one last channel of communication – the gracious internet.
I was ecstatic to see Dunya appear online and could not find larger letters in which to greet her. Her sweet subdued greetings were immediately followed with a sardonic “See, we can’t come to Lebanon these days”. I could imagine her mirroring my disappointed restrained smile at her end of the connection, and a simultaneous unspoken thought “thank goodness they managed to come for a visit to Beirut late last year”.
I wanted to know how she and her family were, if the images we were seeing on the news were accurate or exaggerated, and I wanted her to write about it. I so desperately wanted to hear the inside voice of someone as secular and balanced as her infusing the overriding discourse with simple humane insight. She had already started it with a short poignant email that she sent to her friends, simply saying “My name is Dunya, I’m not Sunni and I’m not Shiite: I’m Bahraini; I want to live in peace and justice”. This would be the sentiment she would repeat when I asked how she was, “we are all a mix in Bahrain, you see it in my family and others (families of mixed religions) and we are all okay… (how can) we have a clash between Sunni and Shiite? We never thought of it that way, we were always only Bahraini.” She was upset at this instigation of sectarian confrontations, insisting that they represented a smaller portion of Bahrainis trying to change the system, which was not accepted by all of them. “Even here”, she continues, “we say that not all who acted were Shiite”. And right then came the exclamation that news reporters and politicians often overlook, “I just hope everything will finish soon”, she sighed, “so we can get back to normal life.”
These are the voices that people needed to hear, I insisted, and went on trying to persuade, push and goad her into writing something, at how important it was for the outside world to access what was actually happening on the ground. “We are trying”, she would say, “but we need them to be stopped first…” I would insist, then she would demure “I am not a good writer”, I would continue with offers to assist, trying hard not to push her too far. I paused, waited for a response, a little silent lapse was followed with “will try, but writing is very emotional these days”.
I stopped. I just continued with our chat instead, and found myself asking her when we were wrapping up if I could share what she had told me with others.
“I know you know more thank you think, you met my family which gives you a sample of what it is in Bahrain. I am Bahraini, the thought of being Sunni or Shiite was irrelevant, we live in one house and you can see that I am Sunni, my sister is Shiite, but quite simply we are all Bahrainis.” She continued, “We all need more rights in Bahrain, as everywhere, but we want the royal family because we don’t want the country to be ruled by religious men, like in Iran or Saudi Arabia. When I was in the UK, I hated it when people looked at me suspiciously because I am Muslim (because of my veil), as if I was the one who had a hand in what happened in the US or the undergrounds, so I will never do that to a Shiite. I believe that in this world we have two types of people: good people and bad people, regardless of religion and ethnicity.” Dunya was raised in a Sunni-Shiite home and I asked whether that balance from inside the family and home might have had the larger influence on her. “I’m sure it has”, she said, “but this is how we all lived in Bahrain. I might have been more affected, but you will see that even Bahrainies today, when this is passed and forgotten, they will get back to how we were. As we always say ‘al deen lillah wal watan lil jamee’ (religion is for God and the country is for all)”.
But if that was the overriding Bahraini sentiment, then why were some people resorting to protests and clashes and touting them as rights along sectarian lines? “Politics is a dirty game”, she said simply, “people play it for their own agendas.” As much of the protest was against the royal family, I wondered for a moment what would happen to Bahrain without them, “We would be like Lebanon”, she stated plainly, the analogy that I had chased away at the beginning of our chat re-emerging on its own. “We would end up in civil war, because the Shiites and the Sunnis will fight for everything, and religious leaders will rule. So, yes, we do need change, we all say we deserve a better life, more freedoms, more rights, but removing the royal family is not the way to get those things. Besides, those factors are not all controlled by the royal family, and if you compare us to other gulf states, it’s clear that Bahrain is better off than the others.”
With that insight, I was suddenly a little more confused and had to ask what other factors were there, then, that stood in the way of reforms? My wise diplomatic friend lobbed it back at me saying “people like you will know the truth without me saying it; some will only believe what they want.”
The subject somehow changed, could have been by either one of us, as we both needed a breather to take in all that was said. I was still bewitched by her response when I asked her what it meant for her to be a Bahraini. She was quiet for what seemed like a very strained minute and replied “Bahrain nour el ‘ein (Bahrain is the light of my eye)”. That statement took my breath away.
We got a little distracted with news of impending storms when she said, “You know, when the tsunami happened in Japan, I told all my friends (Sunni and Shiite) that it would be very bad if we died hating each other, so let’s work for improvement instead.”
Well said.
The twist that drove me completely mad was when the ripple effect of a Lebanese leader’s speech led to the discontinuation of all flights between our two countries, also cutting off phone connections. We were left to the one last channel of communication – the gracious internet.
I was ecstatic to see Dunya appear online and could not find larger letters in which to greet her. Her sweet subdued greetings were immediately followed with a sardonic “See, we can’t come to Lebanon these days”. I could imagine her mirroring my disappointed restrained smile at her end of the connection, and a simultaneous unspoken thought “thank goodness they managed to come for a visit to Beirut late last year”.
I wanted to know how she and her family were, if the images we were seeing on the news were accurate or exaggerated, and I wanted her to write about it. I so desperately wanted to hear the inside voice of someone as secular and balanced as her infusing the overriding discourse with simple humane insight. She had already started it with a short poignant email that she sent to her friends, simply saying “My name is Dunya, I’m not Sunni and I’m not Shiite: I’m Bahraini; I want to live in peace and justice”. This would be the sentiment she would repeat when I asked how she was, “we are all a mix in Bahrain, you see it in my family and others (families of mixed religions) and we are all okay… (how can) we have a clash between Sunni and Shiite? We never thought of it that way, we were always only Bahraini.” She was upset at this instigation of sectarian confrontations, insisting that they represented a smaller portion of Bahrainis trying to change the system, which was not accepted by all of them. “Even here”, she continues, “we say that not all who acted were Shiite”. And right then came the exclamation that news reporters and politicians often overlook, “I just hope everything will finish soon”, she sighed, “so we can get back to normal life.”
These are the voices that people needed to hear, I insisted, and went on trying to persuade, push and goad her into writing something, at how important it was for the outside world to access what was actually happening on the ground. “We are trying”, she would say, “but we need them to be stopped first…” I would insist, then she would demure “I am not a good writer”, I would continue with offers to assist, trying hard not to push her too far. I paused, waited for a response, a little silent lapse was followed with “will try, but writing is very emotional these days”.
I stopped. I just continued with our chat instead, and found myself asking her when we were wrapping up if I could share what she had told me with others.
“I know you know more thank you think, you met my family which gives you a sample of what it is in Bahrain. I am Bahraini, the thought of being Sunni or Shiite was irrelevant, we live in one house and you can see that I am Sunni, my sister is Shiite, but quite simply we are all Bahrainis.” She continued, “We all need more rights in Bahrain, as everywhere, but we want the royal family because we don’t want the country to be ruled by religious men, like in Iran or Saudi Arabia. When I was in the UK, I hated it when people looked at me suspiciously because I am Muslim (because of my veil), as if I was the one who had a hand in what happened in the US or the undergrounds, so I will never do that to a Shiite. I believe that in this world we have two types of people: good people and bad people, regardless of religion and ethnicity.” Dunya was raised in a Sunni-Shiite home and I asked whether that balance from inside the family and home might have had the larger influence on her. “I’m sure it has”, she said, “but this is how we all lived in Bahrain. I might have been more affected, but you will see that even Bahrainies today, when this is passed and forgotten, they will get back to how we were. As we always say ‘al deen lillah wal watan lil jamee’ (religion is for God and the country is for all)”.
But if that was the overriding Bahraini sentiment, then why were some people resorting to protests and clashes and touting them as rights along sectarian lines? “Politics is a dirty game”, she said simply, “people play it for their own agendas.” As much of the protest was against the royal family, I wondered for a moment what would happen to Bahrain without them, “We would be like Lebanon”, she stated plainly, the analogy that I had chased away at the beginning of our chat re-emerging on its own. “We would end up in civil war, because the Shiites and the Sunnis will fight for everything, and religious leaders will rule. So, yes, we do need change, we all say we deserve a better life, more freedoms, more rights, but removing the royal family is not the way to get those things. Besides, those factors are not all controlled by the royal family, and if you compare us to other gulf states, it’s clear that Bahrain is better off than the others.”
With that insight, I was suddenly a little more confused and had to ask what other factors were there, then, that stood in the way of reforms? My wise diplomatic friend lobbed it back at me saying “people like you will know the truth without me saying it; some will only believe what they want.”
The subject somehow changed, could have been by either one of us, as we both needed a breather to take in all that was said. I was still bewitched by her response when I asked her what it meant for her to be a Bahraini. She was quiet for what seemed like a very strained minute and replied “Bahrain nour el ‘ein (Bahrain is the light of my eye)”. That statement took my breath away.
We got a little distracted with news of impending storms when she said, “You know, when the tsunami happened in Japan, I told all my friends (Sunni and Shiite) that it would be very bad if we died hating each other, so let’s work for improvement instead.”
Well said.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
You Get Proud by Practicing - A poem by Laura Hershey
I feel sad that I found Laura Hershey's work so late in the day, after she had passed on. I have not been able to let go of this poem since I read it, and felt it really needed to just keep spreading.
You Get Proud by Practicing
by Laura Hershey
If you are not proud
For who you are, for what you say, for how you look;
If every time you stop
To think of yourself, you do not see yourself glowing
With golden light; do not, therefore, give up on yourself.
You can get proud.
You do not need
A better body, a purer spirit, or a Ph.D.
To be proud.
You do not need
A lot of money, a handsome boyfriend, or a nice car.
You do not need
To be able to walk, or see, or hear,
Or use big, complicated words,
Or do any of those things that you just can’t do
To be proud. A caseworker
Cannot make you proud,
Or a doctor.
You only need more practice.
You get proud by practicing.
There are many many ways to get proud.
You can try riding a horse, or skiing on one leg,
Or playing guitar,
And do well or not so well,
And be glad you tried
Either way.
You can show
Something you’ve made
To someone you respect
And be happy with it no matter
What they say.
You can say
What you think, though you know
Other people do not think the same way, and you can
keep saying it, even if they tell you
You are crazy.
You can add your voice
All night to the voices
Of a hundred and fifty others
In a circle
Around a jailhouse
Where your brothers and sisters are being held
For blocking buses with no lifts,
Or you can be one of the ones
Inside the jailhouse,
Knowing of the circle outside.
You can speak your love
To a friend
Without fear.
You can find someone who will listen to you
Without judging you or doubting you or being
Afraid of you
And let you hear yourself perhaps
For the very first time.
These are all ways
Of getting proud.
None of them
Are easy, but all of them
Are possible. You can do all of these things,
Or just one of them again and again.
You get proud
By practicing.
Power makes you proud, and power
Comes in many fine forms
Supple and rich as butterfly wings.
It is music
when you practice opening your mouth
And liking what you hear
Because it is the sound of your own
True voice.
It is sunlight
Wen you practice seeing
Strength and beauty in everyone,
Including yourself.
It is dance
when you practice knowing
That what you do
And the way you do it
Is the right way for you
And cannot be called wrong.
All these hold
More power than weapons or money
Or lies.
All these practices bring power, and power
Makes you proud.
You get proud
By practicing.
Remember, you weren’t the one
Who made you ashamed,
But you are the one
Who can make you proud.
Just practice,
Practice until you get proud, and once you are proud,
Keep practicing so you won’t forget.
You get proud
By practicing.
More can be found about Laura Hershey, including her publications and how to order them, on her webpage: www.laurahershey.com
You Get Proud by Practicing
by Laura Hershey
If you are not proud
For who you are, for what you say, for how you look;
If every time you stop
To think of yourself, you do not see yourself glowing
With golden light; do not, therefore, give up on yourself.
You can get proud.
You do not need
A better body, a purer spirit, or a Ph.D.
To be proud.
You do not need
A lot of money, a handsome boyfriend, or a nice car.
You do not need
To be able to walk, or see, or hear,
Or use big, complicated words,
Or do any of those things that you just can’t do
To be proud. A caseworker
Cannot make you proud,
Or a doctor.
You only need more practice.
You get proud by practicing.
There are many many ways to get proud.
You can try riding a horse, or skiing on one leg,
Or playing guitar,
And do well or not so well,
And be glad you tried
Either way.
You can show
Something you’ve made
To someone you respect
And be happy with it no matter
What they say.
You can say
What you think, though you know
Other people do not think the same way, and you can
keep saying it, even if they tell you
You are crazy.
You can add your voice
All night to the voices
Of a hundred and fifty others
In a circle
Around a jailhouse
Where your brothers and sisters are being held
For blocking buses with no lifts,
Or you can be one of the ones
Inside the jailhouse,
Knowing of the circle outside.
You can speak your love
To a friend
Without fear.
You can find someone who will listen to you
Without judging you or doubting you or being
Afraid of you
And let you hear yourself perhaps
For the very first time.
These are all ways
Of getting proud.
None of them
Are easy, but all of them
Are possible. You can do all of these things,
Or just one of them again and again.
You get proud
By practicing.
Power makes you proud, and power
Comes in many fine forms
Supple and rich as butterfly wings.
It is music
when you practice opening your mouth
And liking what you hear
Because it is the sound of your own
True voice.
It is sunlight
Wen you practice seeing
Strength and beauty in everyone,
Including yourself.
It is dance
when you practice knowing
That what you do
And the way you do it
Is the right way for you
And cannot be called wrong.
All these hold
More power than weapons or money
Or lies.
All these practices bring power, and power
Makes you proud.
You get proud
By practicing.
Remember, you weren’t the one
Who made you ashamed,
But you are the one
Who can make you proud.
Just practice,
Practice until you get proud, and once you are proud,
Keep practicing so you won’t forget.
You get proud
By practicing.
More can be found about Laura Hershey, including her publications and how to order them, on her webpage: www.laurahershey.com
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Remembering Usama…
“I should go…”, still seated, he pauses for a moment, looks towards the people walking in and out, almost as if he expects to see Usama among them, then finding him in a unique Usama-story or fond memory, he turns back to tell me all about it. He needed to talk about you, and I needed to listen and remember you and mirror the conservative smile lightening his sad grey face. It felt like we were two survivalists huddling around our memories of you to keep warm. The somber arrangements were very fitting of your stature, but they were too contradictorily dark to your generally buoyant nature. We missed you and we needed to bring you back through your stories.
It was natural that you were thus the hero of our stories, but what quickly emerged was that you were a hero in each of the stories. Calming one crisis with absolute logic, or wittily restoring dignity in another; deflecting our irrationality with kind humour, and encouraging us instead to colour outside the line and look at it all a little differently. When my brother first met you and asked what it was that you did, your spontaneous response was “I play”, and that’s how you made everything seem. I always thought I’d arrived on the scene too late to have had stories with you, but as I started to cling on to what my memory contained of you, I was happy to find that there were a few there… What I will hold on to most avidly is that excited feeling in the last few minutes as I would be approaching your house, when the same thought always came to my mind: “I wonder what Usama will be teaching me today…” Any day that revived my anticipation of wonder and reminded me just how vast the world was, was a good day.
I will miss you, Usama.
It was natural that you were thus the hero of our stories, but what quickly emerged was that you were a hero in each of the stories. Calming one crisis with absolute logic, or wittily restoring dignity in another; deflecting our irrationality with kind humour, and encouraging us instead to colour outside the line and look at it all a little differently. When my brother first met you and asked what it was that you did, your spontaneous response was “I play”, and that’s how you made everything seem. I always thought I’d arrived on the scene too late to have had stories with you, but as I started to cling on to what my memory contained of you, I was happy to find that there were a few there… What I will hold on to most avidly is that excited feeling in the last few minutes as I would be approaching your house, when the same thought always came to my mind: “I wonder what Usama will be teaching me today…” Any day that revived my anticipation of wonder and reminded me just how vast the world was, was a good day.
I will miss you, Usama.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Abandoning Hope
I am going to throw out a theory that collections are outcomes of good intentions. Perhaps a better, and less politically correct, synonym for collections is ‘piles’. The piles that grow around your desk, next to your favourite armchair, or on top of the laundry hamper in the bathroom, on the kitchen counter, next to the washing machine, or just behind the door. These piles of newspapers, articles, missing parts, slightly broken pieces of unrecognizable function, bags, gift-wrapping paper, ribbons, half-used notepads, pens you didn’t like and have been meaning to pass on to someone who might – let’s face it, they really are just piles of stuff. They were not accumulated with the mind of a collector or archive-r or any such noble notion, but simply out of the pure good intention that they will be read, used, fixed, distributed.
In my attempt to organize one such pile, I bought a new wicker basket, carried it by hand when I travelled, and arrived to find that it did not fit under my coffee table, nor was it sufficient to hold my dusty and overflowing collection of newspaper supplements and magazines. Acting of their own accord, my hands smoothly switched from packing to throwing away. The time had come to abandon all hope – I was never going to find the time or the motivation to read all that was contained in what had become more than 5-years’ worth of collecting, nor was it necessarily interesting to read any more. It was time.
Having spent years with the misguided belief that I would miss these papers, or miss out on some nugget of wisdom or crucial knowledge for not having read them, I was a little surprised to find how oddly (and paradoxically) liberating it was to just eliminate them completely. This little epiphany unraveled an ‘energizer bunny’ sweep of the house and all its crevices as all piles, in all their different shapes, forms and functions, were duly eliminated or downsized to a bare minimum. And let me tell you something, not only did I feel liberated, but equally refreshed and rejuvenated.
As it turns out, abandoning hope is the flip side of embracing clean slates and clearing the ‘pending’ guilty conscience checklist, and truly could not have felt better. This got me to wonder what else was piling up somewhere in our worlds and would inevitably lighten our load and spirits if we were to abandon it?
Not surprisingly when living in a country such as mine, my first thoughts strayed to politics and politicians, and the daydream led me through the possibility of pressing an imaginary ‘reset’ button (more like an ‘eject’ button) and the clean slate that would follow. I am sure that we, as citizens and voters, would soon fall into the same patterns as I will with my slowly creeping piles, but I also know that having gone through the purging process, we would be wiser as to what we would choose to take a chance on and keep, and what we would throw out on the spot. Just picture the process devoid of any additional considerations of the length of time we’d held on to it/them, or the single creative but impractical idea (or hope) we’d had when we stumbled on it/them – elements that frequently give piles a false sense of value.
So before you discount abandoning hope as an escapist, defeatist measure, I suggest that you first gauge its ‘purging’ value, and assess if you really are holding onto treasures, or just deadweights.
In my attempt to organize one such pile, I bought a new wicker basket, carried it by hand when I travelled, and arrived to find that it did not fit under my coffee table, nor was it sufficient to hold my dusty and overflowing collection of newspaper supplements and magazines. Acting of their own accord, my hands smoothly switched from packing to throwing away. The time had come to abandon all hope – I was never going to find the time or the motivation to read all that was contained in what had become more than 5-years’ worth of collecting, nor was it necessarily interesting to read any more. It was time.
Having spent years with the misguided belief that I would miss these papers, or miss out on some nugget of wisdom or crucial knowledge for not having read them, I was a little surprised to find how oddly (and paradoxically) liberating it was to just eliminate them completely. This little epiphany unraveled an ‘energizer bunny’ sweep of the house and all its crevices as all piles, in all their different shapes, forms and functions, were duly eliminated or downsized to a bare minimum. And let me tell you something, not only did I feel liberated, but equally refreshed and rejuvenated.
As it turns out, abandoning hope is the flip side of embracing clean slates and clearing the ‘pending’ guilty conscience checklist, and truly could not have felt better. This got me to wonder what else was piling up somewhere in our worlds and would inevitably lighten our load and spirits if we were to abandon it?
Not surprisingly when living in a country such as mine, my first thoughts strayed to politics and politicians, and the daydream led me through the possibility of pressing an imaginary ‘reset’ button (more like an ‘eject’ button) and the clean slate that would follow. I am sure that we, as citizens and voters, would soon fall into the same patterns as I will with my slowly creeping piles, but I also know that having gone through the purging process, we would be wiser as to what we would choose to take a chance on and keep, and what we would throw out on the spot. Just picture the process devoid of any additional considerations of the length of time we’d held on to it/them, or the single creative but impractical idea (or hope) we’d had when we stumbled on it/them – elements that frequently give piles a false sense of value.
So before you discount abandoning hope as an escapist, defeatist measure, I suggest that you first gauge its ‘purging’ value, and assess if you really are holding onto treasures, or just deadweights.
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