Tag: Personal

Walking The Concrete Jungle

.Reading time 11 minutes.

I wanted to send a warm update that I am writing a book! It is incredible what I have managed to do the last two weeks as though the book was already written in my mind and I am simply just typing it out, and I have only just scratched the surface. I am writing about my new ethical system in similar vein to Henry David Thoreau when he left to find peace in the woods, but doing so while working and ultimately practicing a modern form of transcendentalism where I am in harmony with the chaos of this concrete jungle. I have learnt from my recent experience in Syria where all the horror I witnessed taught me that it was time to re-think my ethical system that allows me to be effective and helpful, but in a sustainable way and especially without losing myself in the process.

It also reminded me of the past, where I have been able to see myself in my reflections through others, both the good but especially the bad. I have spoken here of my father and my family, but also of the men who bullied and harassed me in my job that had a tremendous effect on me, so much so that I could not properly work for years from all the fear that I felt. I wanted that fear to finally end and make a decision about what long-term career I wanted to pursue. I confronted them recently to try and close that door, tired of the damage they caused to my confidence. Only one decided to respond.

Indeed, he apologised, but it was clear that his apology was rehearsed, and not practiced toward me but rather someone used to and thus comfortable with apologising. It was all coming a little too fast for me, I needed time to really think it through, but I felt something was wrong and could sense the possibility he was only apologising as a tool to reverse the situation and fault back to me, a skill those who gaslight often do to others. It then came out, the real him where he said “you are just jealous” to me, which immediately reminded me of his viciousness while at work. What exactly was I supposed to be jealous of, I thought to myself. That he sold drugs and did some decrepit activities with others? That he was a cowardly man who harassed and was cruel to kind person? That he followed the crowd and assumed that doing what was popular by the group meant some superiority over me? Read More

Brentano: On New Beginnings

.Reading time 7 minutes.

The phenomena revealed by inner perception are also subject to laws. The laws of coexistence and succession of mental phenomena remain the object of investigation even for those who deny psychology any knowledge of the soul.

As a law student, I was called The Lioness because it was obvious that within me burnt the fierce fire of justice. My commitment to righteousness can be so intense that I would not hesitate to fight to the death for it, to remain alone, lose the people that I love, all my material objects, even my own life. From large scale offenses to very minute actions, goodness and good behaviour matters to me.

In some cases, however, my interpretation of some of these offenses have been incorrect. My own psychological perceptions become exhausted and embedded into the interpretation that confuse what I may call an offense with something that I personally find offensive, two very different realities. How can we understand the difference between this subjectivity and objective reality, to separate ourselves and our personal interpretations with universal concepts of justice and righteousness?

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The Death of Love?

.Reading time 5 minutes.

I believe that romantic love does not exist. Our interpretation of love is socially constructed and re-imagines co-dependency to be synonymous with a deep, intimate connection. For me, there is only one type of love and that is moral consciousness, the ability to give love to all things.

Capitalism has commodified love, marketing the idea that selling ourselves will enable us to receive love and attention, but selling is not the same as giving ourselves to love. Selling ourselves does require us to give – our time and energy, our efforts to be patient and tolerant under unhappy circumstances – so there is indeed an element of moral goodness since one is being dutiful, but the underlying intent is to receive from that effort and thus entirely dependent on the reciprocal exchange.

These socially constructed archetypes breed an efficient network of mindless drones who all believe in the same thing and who act in the same way enabling this sense of familiarity and unity, but all entirely founded on narcissism. Is this exchange ever real? Is there such a thing as romantic love? Read More

Tired

.Reading time 1 minute.

It feels like my heart is tied to a braided jute rope,
Like a broken cleat left dangling off the boat,
And the propellers speeding out of control through the liquid enclave,
As my heart slaps to and fro over the transverse waves.

My crystalline mind lying gently on the surface of the ocean,
Whistling eerie echoes of ice, gentle tunes, harmonic motion,
The cosmetic shimmer glistening over it from the sunset gleam,
Now assaulted by the pollution of this maritime machinery. Read More

The Facsimile

.Reading time 1 minute.

“Wake up!” she cried, slapping his cheek.
A lifeless head, still, limp.
“I am here.” Startled, she slipped.
Taken aback.

A facsimile? She turned to this galley slave,
His half body standing out from the grave,
Shovel over his shoulder, insolent gaze.
Smooth as tarmac.

She looked back at the lifeless soul,
His red lips, green eyes, etched into cuneiform
Across his sinless face. Cold, but warm.
Hair jet black.

“That part of me is now dead,” snorted the renege,
He shovelled deeper and deeper as he digged,
Raining black moulded loam, his arms a drilling rig.
Dirt track.

“A grave for who?” He disappeared,
His pride, his vanity, the hubris all engineered
His futile end when his soul was auctioneered.
Memorial plaque.

Khalil Gibran: Broken Wings

.Reading time 8 minutes.

“Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation.” ~ Broken Wings

Sometimes, very briefly, I wish I could empty my identity, to dissolve any sophistication of thought and be mentally frozen like most of society around me who seem content living within these false facades and who dumb themselves down until they actually forget how to use their own minds, just so this heartache could end.

The impossibility to find a friend seems almost obvious now, someone at the same level  as me, reading the same page. I can’t read backwards. The most dangerous in our society tend to be the most ignorant and I can’t risk being hurt again, but the arid desert in front of me is frightening, the mirage of my own corpse standing in the hot distance singing captivating tunes of death. Read More