XOXO

"So love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don't, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said that it'd be easy, they just promised it would be worth it."- Meredith gray, Gray's anatomy

Picking up & Dropping off

It's what hospitals and airports have in common. Everyone essentially goes there for only two reasons, arrivals and departures. Both those places always give me that strange feeling that I can't really put into words. I find it amusing how one place can bring about such different emotions. It's the same with New Year's Eve. Excitement for the upcoming year and everything that it will bring with it is mirrored by the sadness for all that was done and over with in the past year. It always makes me reflect on where I was at that time the previous year and then I compare it to where I stand now. It's safe to say 2007 was a pretty great year for me (mashallah), in nearly every aspect things got significantly better. Leaving 2006 was like breathing a sigh of relief, but this time around I will actually miss '07; lots of great memories were made :) But, I'm looking forward to '08, definitely a lot of changes and accomplishments will occur, all of which I'm optimistic about.
Inshallah let's see what happens.

Mystic's message

Heart,

Sit at the foot of one who understands hearts

Rest beneath the tree whose branches bud fresh

Don’t wander all around the market of perfumes

Sit in the stall of him who has a stash of sugar

You’ll be swindled by every seller –

Without a scale to take their measure

You’ll mistake the gilded slug for golden render

They’ll make you sit inside the shop

Sweetly promising “Just one moment, please”

Don’t sit there waiting,

There’s another door goes out the back

Don’t wait with bowl in hand for every pot to boil

What stews in every pot is not the same.

Not every cane-cut pen drips with sugar

Not every under has an above

Not every eye’s possessed of vision

Not every sea conceals a pearl

Sing your little heart out, nightingale

For your famed intoxicated lamentation

Echoes and transmutes the stony hills and granite boulders

If your head cannot contain you – lose it

You can’t pass through the needle’s eye a knotty thread

The awakened heart’s a lamp

Cloak it from contrary airs beneath your mantle

For the windy air will do it harm.

Pass beyond the winds and reach the spring

Become a secret confidant, welling with emotions

And then like a green tree you will swell with sap

And come to fruition as it courses through your heart.

- Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi

Stuff

" Experience is 1% of the things that happen to you and 99% of how you react to them"


Everything is built by how you perceive it. There are good experiences and there are bad ones, what carries weight is how the situation is dealt with.

Seriously???

"We do not get unlimited chances to have the things we want. And this I know, nothing is worse than missing the opportunity that could have changed your life. "- a different smartypants surgeon

Opportunity has been knocking, I think I'll finally open the door.

Pressure

Pressure..its constantly building and it sure takes a lot out of you...sometimes life feels as though you are constantly struggling to reduce the amount of obligations and requirements demanded of you. To check one thing off the list so you can have one less thing left to do. But the list is endless, so then why are we rushing? Constraints of time and the urgency of the moment makes us feel as though we are facing a point of no return, where we must choose or die. That sounds pretty drastic, but yea thats how it feels sometimes. Faced with pressure, with the demands of everything else that must be done, and the daily naggings to add on top its a wonder that most of call ourselves sane human beings. But at the end of the day, it all does get done...the project is handed in, the paper is written, the exam gets taken, the body gets fed, the brain gets to sleep, the heart aches, it all happens just in the nick of time. So the best way to really maintain your sanity is to focus on all the non pressuring parts of life...to drive slowly even if you have somewhere to be, to close your eyes for just a second longer, to breath in just a little bit deeper and to thank god just a little more for everything that is still standing. Sabr, we all lack it so intensely...or maybe I just do....but then that must be my test, to find the sabr to deal with it all and take each struggle with stride.

Tap on my window...

"too often the thing you want most is the one thing you can't have...but as tough as wanting something can be, the people who suffer the most...are those who dont know what they want."-the smartypants surgeon I love watching on TV



...knock on my door