Advice on Starting Therapy: Written for Queer Desis (possibly useful for other queer people of color as well)

                                                                   Art by Kaviya Ilango (@wallflowergirlsays)

My therapy background:

I got cheap and free therapy starting when I was 18. I started because a friend of mine was dealing with an eating disorder and I met with her therapist to learn how to help support her, and then kind of stayed with that therapist, focusing on caring for that friend mainly but talked about myself as well. It was free school therapy with an older white woman, who honestly didn’t know what to make of my cheery disposition and exuberance and lots of friends and good grades- she missed how high functioning depression and trauma works. She didn’t really believe that I could have problems or trauma history because it didn’t show up in the usual markers it does for white folks (if you have a great looking life but don’t feel good inside, know you’re not alone). I got therapy with other white therapists at the second college I attended. Same problem. I was an A student who wore colorful clothes- and they made it feel like I was using up space for students with “real problems” (I had “real problems” that had also been accumulating my entire life- I was just really good at performance). I had two white women therapists at my Master’s program as well (free therapy via school again). Again, same story. Maybe it should have been a sign that five white therapists had explicit conversations with me about how they were worried that I wasn’t finding therapy with them beneficial. I think it was a mix of the fact that I knew I wanted/needed therapy, but they didn’t know how to help people with my life experiences/identites, and I really also didn’t know how to help myself by being able to put down my performance/self-defense armor. Then I qualified for free therapy at a queer friendly place, and again, got white therapists who didn’t really know what to do with me. The white therapists didn’t understand Islam. Had one therapist call my queerness a “phase.” One pitied my “oppressive culture.” One tried convincing me I didn’t have depression even though I met all the DSM criteria. Had one therapist tell me she felt I was “assimilating” and “trying on an American coat," and that it was like her daughter’s kneecap readjustment in that it would sort itself out with some minor adjustment shortly.  While all of these are some pretty terrible therapy bloopers and I acknowledge therapy is a western medicine model with a ton of flaws, and often is an individualistic prescription for structural issues, and can also sometimes cause harm- I still can't recommend it enough to people as a support tool. I am incredibly grateful for the personal growth I have done through therapy, both in just taking that hour weekly just to talk about myself without being in care-giving mode, and to work over the years to build up greater self-awareness of my own emotions and get supported through a lot of challenging life circumstances.

Some advice (take everything with a grain of salt):

• Beginning therapy is a huge step!! Congratulation!! It is super daunting, will take so much work and energy and you’ll hate it a lot of the time because of the revelations that you’d rather keep buried inside yourself. However, you can make the choice of when to go and when to stop and what you want to work on- and doing self-work is a radically brave decision to make that you should give yourself a lot of love and cool points for!! It is ingrained in us for generations not to share personal thoughts and feelings and to not talk about emotional struggles or traumas– we just ignore the symptoms and push through and that becomes such a practice in our cultures that anyone trying to change the cycle is often shamed and condemned. So be sure to validate yourself for wanting to do self-growth work with intention, even with all the shame and stigma! That is a huge deal!!
• You do not need to share that you are seeking therapy with anyone. It is okay to lie about where you went/go, if you want and are able to do so. It does not make you a bad person. There are ways in which therapists offices try to sometimes work with you in regards to billing/coding if you share bank accounts with family members/partners. Be sure to ask.
• It is okay to get or not psych meds! It is and should always be your choice. If your therapist keeps pushing you to see a psychiatrist, you have a right to tell them to stop! If you feel that using psych meds will help you, know that it’s your choice and it takes a lot of courage to take meds and they do not indicate that you are weak or messed up or any of the terrible things people say. I drink chai every morning and it has caffeine, which alters my brain chemistry! The same as eating chocolate or red bull or alcohol. Why shame chemicals that help you have a more stable life but be totally fine with other chemicals? Why that double standard around self-care chemicals? You do not lose who you are with meds! In the ideal world (though good meds cocktails are hard to get to), they should help you be a more present version of yourself! You on caffeine is still you! Same principle!  
• If you are a desi (queer) femme or woman, you are probably particularly socialized to handle difficult life situations without as much as an “uff,” and look glamorous in the process. We are particularly socialized to never show any flaw and to always be serving with a smile. That level of performative existence takes a toll on your insides. You, too, deserve to receive therapy and care. It is not selfish to care for yourself, as if you’re taking away from some finite resource (even if you’re getting free therapy from grants or school, I promise, you attending therapy is helping to pay for therapist’s salaries through these grants. So chill out!).
• You are allowed to interview your therapists and see if you feel there is a fit. You’re allowed to trust your gut and instincts about the fit (but be sure that you’re listening to your gut about the fit with the person, and not the anxiety around trying therapy for the first time or talking to a new person in general. Your body could also be feeling hesitation not around the therapist in particular, but in the ask of you to be authentic and vulnerable in therapy. Trust your gut. And if you truly can’t figure out which it is, maybe try three sessions and then make up your mind).
• It is normal to fear letting your therapist down. It is normal to want your therapist to like you and find you special. It is normal to feel a connection with your therapist. It is also normal to develop romantic feelings for your therapist. It is normal to question whether your therapist cares about you at all or whether you are just a random client for them. As someone who has been in therapy for many years and who works with many therapists at my workplace (I work at a mental health facility) and who has many case management clients, I wanted to share that therapists are regular humans with their biases and judgments but also that just because someone is getting paid for a job does not mean that they are leaving their emotions at the door. I see so many therapists who do genuinely care about their clients and think about them and worry about them outside of therapy in their own time. I see therapists thinking of and looking up ways to help clients in unique ways because of their care for their clients. Therapists also do develop fondness and irritation over clients- because again, they are human. But as someone with clients (though I am not a mental health provider), I know that even when I am overwhelmed and annoyed by certain clients, I still adore my clients over all, and wish the best for them.
• Race and sexuality and gender (and other marginalized identities you might belong in) matter. Which of your identities matter to you more is based on who you are and what you are seeking at the particular time. We don’t live in a world where it’s very feasible for multiply marginalized folks to find therapists with similar overlapping identities- which is not ideal. So we often have to choose which identities we don’t feel well-equipped at this time to explain to someone who may have possible blinders around that identity of ours. It’s useful to ask yourself whether you’re in a space to handle microaggressions around a particular identity that the therapist may not share. For me, being misgendered (someone using the wrong pronouns for me) is annoying but doesn’t trigger me or deeply hurt me. However, someone calling my culture  “uncivilized” or saying “third world country” is deeply hurtful in a way that I could not tolerate in a therapy setting. For me, as I was working more towards navigating my sexual identity more, it helped to have therapy in a queer affirming environment. At this particular time, explaining queerness and my Muslim identity feels much easier to me than explaining being a desi immigrant, and my need is of a therapist who is a person of color with trauma training, who is also queer affirming. And I recognize that my needs might shift over time, and that’s okay. I don’t need to stick to the same therapist forever.
• Having a desi therapist is sometimes daunting when it comes to talking about things that are shamed in desi culture (similar for whatever poc culture you’re from, I think). It is hard for me to talk about sex or trauma or nonmonogamy with my therapist because she is a Pakistani Muslim immigrant. As desis, we’re often culturally taught not to talk about these topics, and that pressure to hide those components from other desis is even stronger. I think what helps if you feel anxious talking about a particular topic with a therapist, is to tell them you’re feeling anxious around the topic and interview them about their comfort level and experience with those topics. However, sometimes, when beginning therapy for the first time, it might feel much easier going to a non-desi therapist, and I totally validate that decision. The last time I had a white therapist, during the first session, I told her I wasn’t sure I could trust her to understand my cultural experiences due to her whiteness and that made me nervous about starting therapy with her. She totally validated my concerns, and we worked together to figure out how we could collaborate on this journey best and in what ways could I inform her that her statements felt that they were coming from a place of whiteness rather than understanding of what I was saying. The thing to remember here is that therapists are not perfect! They are fallible, they have their own judgments and biases that pop up in how they might question your sharing or where they might push you, and you have the right to push back because it is their job to serve you and hold space for your identities in a nonjudgmental way. Sometimes, it’s worth working with a therapist to establish an understanding of your needs, and other times, if you feel that a therapist doesn’t get it, it’s okay to either choose to not talk about that certain topic with the therapist or to get a different therapist overall. I know for me, I was really worried about talking about nonmonogamy with a therapist of mine because I feared her pushing back with questions that were rooted in me lacking commitment or some other ignorant reason. My therapist turned out to be super affirming, however, because that identity of mine is not a huge one for me to figure out in therapy, if I didn’t enjoy how she pushed back, I was prepared to not bring up the subject with her since I didn’t have much interest in teaching my therapist about how to becoming affirming towards nonmonogamy- it just wasn’t that important for me. The point here is to choose what you want to discuss with your therapist, and figure out which topics are negotiable for you and which topics are things you need your therapist to have a better understanding over. 
• Sometimes, especially if we have very complex lives with multiple marginalized identities, it’s a natural tendency to just share everything all at once while being checked out/dissociated/numbed so you don’t have to relive your experiences. It is important to remember that your therapist is not entitled to your entire life story. You also don’t have to force yourself to share more than what you are ready for. You can also share all the intense things in your life with your therapist if that is helpful for you to have someone listen. But sometimes, we force ourselves to share more than we are ready for and then leave ourselves triggered. Somehow, it is not on the forefront of my mind that I am an immigrant all the time and the pains of that journey are not floating on the surface always. And sharing details for me often gets me lost in the past where I have to work to get back to my regular day, so I have to ask myself what I am willing to share with my therapist at what time and what purpose is that sharing going to have. Therapy is not meant to be a quick and easy fix- because we are not broken people. We are complex humans doing really difficult work around emotions. "Slow and deep" is often a phrase I keep reminding myself to remember around therapy work. As much as I have the tendency to rush through things in life at a faster pace than everyone else, therapy, of all things, is not a competition of best mental health or a race to get to "fixed."

Observations while teaching Kindergarten in Spanish (my life is always random): 

1) I hate that in training, we created a rubric where I'm supposed to take off points if their drawings of humans did not look realistic. Apparently, I'm also supposed to take off points if they don't color using the "correct" colors or if they draw dragons, or princesses, or clouds, or birds, or butterflies. "No fluff" they said!!! It reminded me of the time when I saw my second cousin's self-portrait for every month, and saw how she went from seeing herself as basically a purple alien (in August) to a regular human (about March) over time- and it felt like observing the unfolding of the destruction of human imagination over time (Ken Robinson's critique of schools killing creativity is so right btw)! 

2) It is so much easier to sit in the sidelines (or ivory tower) as we learn about teaching theory based on positive reinforcement and emphasis on the teacher always being kind than to actually implement the theories into practice. Seriously, I found myself being so stern with one of the kids that he started crying. And then somehow, like a crazy human, I was even more firm. What the hell?? And then later found out he's autistic!! Clearly I need classroom management training because learning to deal with children is not something that just comes naturally. While I am not excusing crazy teachers or parents, I do have much greater empathy for them and recognize the need for training in empathy and child psychology and stress management. Also, many of the teachers just let the kids continue crying if they're upset, to toughen them up- which breaks my heart. (Stupid John Watson messed up America with his cold-hearted theories about the pros of time outs and efficient loveless parenting!) 

3) The kids are ridiculously destructive and indestructible (Rasputin heirs much?)- they keep falling and poking and kicking each other (mostly by accident) and then they cry for a minute and continue as if nothing happened...what?? If I fall once, I need to like rest or take it easy for like 2 weeks!! 

4) Some of these kids write a random string of letters and when I ask them to read, they end up telling me an elaborate tale. Is that what they think people do when they read books? Pretend to hold a book with random symbols and spaces but mostly just daydreaming? I told one of them that she needed spaces between each word, and she basically erased some random letters in her string of words instead of rewriting what she had written. How do I respond to that? 

5) Like an idiot, I've been super stern with one of the kids who never listens and has been misbehaving the entire time! He's in a different part of the class every minute and it makes me lose my mind since he makes everyone distracted. Only after about 2 weeks, and after a suggestion from a friend, did it dawn on me that he might have ADHD and I'm expecting him to be a robot!!! I'm so ashamed! :/

6) I was teaching social studies to the kids, and couldn't get them to give me examples of what services adults provide, so I started asking what services their parents provide as well- and from the 12 answers I asked, I got about seven who said "cut plants," two who said "clean homes," one who said "drive a taxi," and one who said "sell ice cream in a truck." Clearly a very unique subset of the population. 

7) I already taught the science lesson plan, so I decided to give them a public health lesson on vaccines, flu shots and prevention. And well, A) The kids did not know what the word "prevent" or "symptoms" meant (how is that possible?? it's like the same shock I felt when my sister told me she didn't know what atoms where when she was in 5th grade! I thought it was innate knowledge somehow). B) I drew an injection on the board and some of the kids started crying because apparently images of injections are triggering for six year olds! C) The message really went across when I compared vaccines to spies which go into the body to give the body secret codes on how to fight bacteria/viruses. 

8) I was trying to help them understand maps, and clearly that's not an intuitive notion as well. A) I kept asking them what country we were in, and they kept saying "Houston, Texas." Like a totally inexperienced teacher, I kept just repeating the question- what country are we in? What country. Country!!! Exasperated, I asked what country they were born in and the answers included: Houston Tx, Mexico, Venezuela, Honduras, Peru...Clearly, one is not like the other, and I was the only one to catch that. Then I showed them Pakistan on the map and asked them what language they think we might speak in Pakistan, and most of them said, Spanish. I guess I can see that- English in America, and Spanish if you're not from Houston, Tx. 

9) I was teaching them about fairytales. In the fairytale they created together, a princess is stuck in a castle, then gets rescued by a unicorn who flies, then travels to reunite with her family!!! Can we please always have fairytales with no rescuing princes? A flying unicorn is a much better solution to being trapped in a castle!! 

10) One of the kids wrote about two queens getting married!! Another kid tried to correct her by claiming that queens can't marry each other! They most definitely do in my classroom and the kids sure got a piece of my mind! (I'm afraid I might get complaints from parents...the characters in our stories often defy traditional gender roles and gender expression...)

Random travel thoughts 1

A couple of days ago, I followed my “belly feeling,” (as my new German friend, Jessi, calls it) and wandered around aimlessly into the streets of Siem Reap. On this trip, I’ve seen this very bizarre reality where touristy streets are very developed and clean and fancy and maybe a kilometer away from the tourist areas lie in contrast, very underdeveloped streets with kids playing barefoot; cows, dogs, chickens roaming around; abandoned old machines and car parts on the road; and open homes with people never bothering to close their doors or open lights during the day when the sun is out. I particularly remember Gilli Trawangan, a very touristy island in Indonesia near Bali, which was packed with tourists drinking and partying and getting high and sunbathing by the beach. The town contained one main street, about three kilometers in length with the locals catering to ever tourist need and speaking English almost fluently. To find a quieter spot on the beach, I walked with my friend to the other side of the small island and was entirely shocked to notice how the paved and decorated roads turned to muddy unpaved streets with broken walls and trash and goats. I could not believe how the immense amount of money earned from the tourism did not reach the rest of the maybe 10 km circumference island. I’ve heard this peculiar argument countless times during my trip with travelers commenting on how their traveling was significantly benefitting the economies, and thereby the countries themselves. Yes, on a basic economic level, tourists traveling to a developing country and spending their money there rather than vacationing in their own countries does increase the overall GDP of a country. At the same time, to believe that the benefits of the increased GDP trickle down into the hands of those who actually truly need the money is quite an ignorant Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” fallacy. The idea that there is an invisible hand that governs an economy, thereby removing all needs of government intervention or conscious thought about expenditure, ignores the reality that tourists enter restaurants with the newest pop songs and cleanest fanciest looks and other features that cater to the new world hipsters. People who can afford to create these fancy hostels and restaurants and spas and cafes are either expatriates themselves or those who already had enough capital to invest in a fancy establishment. Sure, there is some trickle down effect with the wealthy owners hiring more poorer locals and getting their own dinner at smaller low budget restaurants, but that trickle down should certainly not be seen as western travelers saving the world with their money. This idea that there are rich countries and poor countries is a very strange way of perceiving the world. There are the global rich and the global poor populations. The proof of this is in every capital city, or major industrial city, I have visited in the world. There are always the fancy shopping malls for the local bourgeois where I can barely afford a meal, let alone any clothes. The prices for food can range from $15 to $50 for a meal, and everything is shiny and new. I am not advocating that these places not exist, simply because they are near impoverished locations. Just because America overall is an affluent country and for example, Sri Lanka, isn’t, doesn’t mean that Sinhalese people should ban or should not have access to a Prada store or Starbucks in Colombo, while there can be multiple in DC. I remember going to very fancy restaurants in Guatemala city with CDC staff and friends and realizing that we were not having some sort of “Guatemala experience,” we were just having a normal human life experience, with professionals eating out together in food areas with access to global cuisines and a fancy treatment. I remember a friend being surprised by Western music and the extent of white people in a night market in Melaka. White people and American pop are everywhere. People all around the world listen to American music even if they don’t speak English. I've heard Adele’s “Hello,” sung in almost every country with a wide range of accents.  If we exotify every “foreign” location, looking for what we consider as “authentic,” we are willingly blinding ourselves not only to  how similar humans are everywhere but also to the extent that globalization has already forever changed and influenced the world, in better and worse ways. English and what we consider “Western” clothing, no longer belong to the west. Pants and a shirt are easy to produce, very cheap and reduce restricting cultural boxes and are utilized everywhere. To be disappointed in seeing people not wearing “authentic” clothing, i.e funny weird clothing, is to be nostalgic for a reality that simply has not existed for decades. Traditional clothes still do have a place in many societies and are utilized mainly on special cultural or religious occasions and that is totally okay. Even in the US, I wear Pakistani clothes often when I visit my religious center, but I don’t insist upon wearing shalwar kamiz to classes everyday. It simply just attracts unnecessary attention, isn't what I prefer to wear, and isn’t needed. And wearing traditionally “western” clothing doesn’t make me any less authentically Pakistani.

While randomly roaming around that day in Siem Reap, I was not surprised to see how the fancy Christmas decorations and smoothies stands converted to dirty and dusty unpaved roads with only locals, who were all basically staring at me because I’m sure tourists, particularly female brown-skinned tourists, don’t randomly walk into their spaces. I was, and often still am, very concerned about the language barrier because I have been in so many countries where I did not speak more than four words in the local language (you'd be surprised at how sufficient the words “hello,” “thank you,” “bye” and “sorry” are in terms of getting by) and simply expected the locals to cater to my English needs. I have never been so surprised by how powerful and widespread of a lingua franca that English has become. I feel so entirely privileged to be fluent in basically the most powerful language in contemporary society. Still, in more random areas, I don’t expect to be able to have any conversation with locals because access to English knowledge and skills is still restricted to the most privileged of populations.

A truism that I’ve learned is that in foreign environments, the language barrier becomes almost irrelevant when you start making funny faces at children. Seeing how children in a particular society respond to random strangers is definitely an indication of how restricted a culture is, as well as how significantly personalities vary in a society. However, I maintain that I look pretty funny, so I always find kids willing to play with me even when I can’t communicate with them. As humans, we underestimate the degree to which facial expressions and body language play an huge role in human connection. I almost guarantee that parents warm up to strangers, regardless of skin color or size or sex, if someone makes a funny face at their child. So that day, I ended up playing with a couple dozen local kids throughout the day and even got invited inside one home for food/drinks, even though I couldn't communicate with the people beyond basic words.


To believe that there are defined distinct categories of humans, based on differences in norms and beliefs, is again a strange manner of looking at the world. From my trips, I cannot make the claim that Cambodians are nicer than Malays who are nicer than Sinhalese people who are nicer than the Turkish. To create these divisions based on geography or religious affiliation or skin color or age, to me, seems too simplistic. Yes, norms are highly important and when important and sacred norms are broken by others, as people, we have strong reactions to the breaches. I remember the local people being very horrified when a fellow traveller walked inside a temple in Sri Lanka with his dirty running shoes. Temples are holy and no one is supposed to enter with shoes. But for the most part, norms and protocols are smoke and mirrors disguising our shared humanity. I have come to believe that there are certain shared traits in human nature that cut across all socially constructed boundaries and barriers. We, as humans, need to feel love and compassion for others and need to feel needed and loved in return. As humans, we like to laugh and smile and laughing at that which seems strange is highly normal (I can’t count how many times women and even monk children have looked at my hairy legs and actually laughed- it’s highly amusing). There is a strange level of desperation and perhaps self-centeredness and consequent trickery and violence and deception that arises when people are deprived of basic needs like shelter or food or security or sex or love or compassion. Morality is relative everywhere, and we all seek to be the best we can be or at least we learn to justify our actions as ethical so that we can sleep at night.

I did this shameful thing twice in Java in Indonesia where I yelled at two people on two different occasions because I got so frustrated by all the lies and deception. The first was a man on a bicycle tuk-tuk who agreed to take me around the town for the day for $5000 IDR (which is definitely horribly cheap but it's the first price he offered). He then did not take me to the restaurant I wanted to go to because he claimed it was closed, then took me to a very expensive restaurant I could not afford and then walked me to another place to get food where I knew he was getting commission because the woman kept trying to sell me expensive coffee for 40 minutes. Afterwards, he claimed he had to go to work and could not take me around town and asked me to pay. I was so fed up of all the trickery and lies to get commission and I could not believe that I did not even get to see any of the major sites I wanted to visit so I became overwhelmed and ended up semi yelling at him for cheating me. I did a similar thing in Cemoro Lewong in Java where a person pretended to be the official public bus driver and literally asked us to pay 10 times the actual cost of the public bus. We were stranded in the town for two hours because everyone gave us prices at least seven times as much as they should be. Even when the actual bus driver arrived, he charged us twice the official government price and then other officials also kept trying to trick us. Maybe I have been too spoiled in my life because I am not accustomed to people tricking me or being so unkind to me. I am not the type of person to yell at people and it is not a proud moment in my life. After the interactions, I recognized that desperation does indeed lead to actions which seem skewed towards greater deception. There was a strange comment I remember my uncle in Pakistan making about three years ago, where he said that lying is unethical, except when it comes to lying required for business. My uncle said that in response to not knowing whether the seller of towels at the beach in Karachi was telling the truth about his prices. I still don't know how I feel about that logic.

I don’t claim to know many truths about the world and most of the time, I almost constantly  feel utterly stupid on this trip for how shockingly little I know about anything. However, if there is one truth about the world that has become increasingly more evident to me on this trip is the idea of moral relativism. It is very common practice amongst backpackers to complain about other backpackers’ habits. And truly, I have seen an astonishing variety in how travelers interact in different global environments. There are some who are very hesitant about eating local foods and I find that they gravitate towards the ubiquitous Italian restaurants in every tourist location. Some of these tourists often depend on fast food establishments as a source of comfort in the knowledge that they will not get sick and will have a predictably standard recognizable meal. With such tourists, I’ve heard comments such as “finally, somewhere western and clean. How do people in such dirty and strange environments with such weird food?” You also see restaurants catering to such populations through subtle and sometime very blatant indications of a western and familiar look and hygiene. I don’t think I’ll ever forget walking down a street in Seminyak in the Island of Bali with a friend of mine when we passed a busy looking restaurant. As we discussed possibly eating there, we walked past and saw the sign with the words, “Aussie Origin, Aussie Hygiene.”It is very difficult for me to not be hurt by such blatantly racist comments, but truly, I have observed how difficult it is for people who have never travelled outside of perhaps Europe or Australia to find themselves in the midst of Asia with food and lifestyles that are worlds apart from anything ever experienced before. Another life truism: lack of exposure breeds fear, which often manifests itself through violence (examples include the recent new stories of  violence against refugees, Muslims and black peoples in the US) or disgust/aversion (this restaurant’s racist assumption about Balinese hygiene). I certainly understand the tendency of irrational fear simply based on being overwhelmed by the newness of everything. Even after months of traveling, when I first arrived  to Thailand, I was dropped off in the  Malaysia-Thai border down of Hat Yai. The bus driver simply walked me over to a random lady sitting outside what looked like a closed warehouse. Neither the bus driver, nor the woman spoke enough English for me to ask them any questions about why I was getting dropped off at a random place rather than an official bus station and the woman ended up taking my paper ticket which contained any proof that I had paid for a ticket to Bangkok. And I faced a huge culture shock simply going from Malaysia to Thailand because the script in Malaysia is latin so I could still read everything and use google translate to understand and look up areas and signs. In Hat Yai, no one seemed to speak English, all the signs were in Thai script, and my heart was irrationally beating. I was completely disoriented and didn’t even know how I would manage to order vegetarian food and walked around for maybe an hour trying to find any establishment that looked fancy so that I would not get sick. It was a strange fear that I’m not accustomed to but just the script changing had such a disorienting impact on my psyche so I can understand people becoming very paranoid and afraid but still wanting to travel.

 But what I actually don’t really understand is the desire certain backpackers have to travel. I have found that some travelers are most interested in partaking in activities which are easily available in their home countries but are far cheaper abroad. Their traveling to me seems to serve the purpose of a vacation at home but much cheaper. The examples of this includes diving courses in the Thailand and Honduras, and surfing courses in Bali (Kuta particularly) and Costa Rica. In a different but similar way, there are many travelers who enjoy the cheap alcohol, cigarettes and weed/hashish/magic mushrooms costs and use their travels mostly to party. It is almost too easy to find clubs and bars with the latest English pop and hiphop music, in every touristy town. There are then those who island hop or hop across coastal towns to sunbathe and relax at beaches with fancy cheap cocktails, followed by massages at fancy but cheap spas. After some initial irritation with such type of traveling, what I’ve learned is that some people only get two or three weeks of vacation, and there is nothing inherently unethical about wanting to relax on the beach or to actually be able to party or even to learn a new skill set offered at an actually affordable price. The key thing I have learned is that, for me, there are certain behaviors that cross a personal boundary for me in terms of ethics and then there are habits which simply vary from how I choose to travel. I do not prefer to frequent beaches or get massages often or eat American/Italian/Aussie foods or get high or drunk. But I have made the decision to no longer look down upon travelers who choose to vacation in this manner because their actions lie in the realm of different but not exactly unethical for me.

What does however become hazy and uncomfortable for me are racist comments towards others  or somewhat violent actions (towards animals)  that arise from ignorance. Personally, these comments have come to lie under the category of actions that make me highly uncomfortable and hesitant to pursue greater friendship/connection, but don’t necessarily lead to immediate un-friending of the person (which may possibly arise from how non-confrontational I generally am with most people except close friends). The most hurtful comment I’ve heard on this trip was during my travels in Sri Lanka. The Argentinian Italian guy I was traveling with for some time was so horrified by the extreme poverty in the capital of Colombo (we had not made it to the very opulent parts of Colombo yet), that he said, “This place is so underdeveloped and uncivilized, that I can’t even imagine how horrible it would be if the British had not colonized Sri Lanka.” As humans, we navigate categories of “us” and “them” seamlessly depending on circumstance, and never before have I so immediately flipped the switch of “us” and “them” in my mind. In that instant, as soon as he made that comment, the “us” for me became Sri Lankan people and this guy, who a moment ago was a fun friend became the “them,” imperialist white supremacists who actually believe that colonialism was a good choice for people who were colonized. I come from a background of people who live in a post-colonial environment, and I grew up using “Fair and Lovely” creams and foundation at least 10 shades lighter than my skin color. I cannot help but be repulsed by a system where I was called more beautiful than my sister for much of my life simply because my skin tone is lighter than hers.

I had the most beautiful and horrifying experience in Sri Lanka, because of local internalized inferiority based on being brown or darker skinned. I was heading from Kandy to Nuwara Eliye on the 3rd class train where I ended up sitting next to the cutest little girl, Radika,and her younger brother. Radika was wearing a hot pink shalwar kamiz with red churiya (bangles), a pink hair tie, pink shoes and pink nail polish. She just absolutely looked adorable! And luckily, English was her favorite subject in school, so I could have some basic conversations with her. As soon as we started talking, she told me I was very beautiful. I think within the first ten minutes, she must have called me beautiful at least three times. Her compliments seemed so adorable and harmless until two white women walked past where we were sitting and she said they were very beautiful as well. Considering that we did not even see the faces of the women passing by, it immediately struck me that Radika was complimenting me because my skin tone was much lighter than hers. As the hours passed, she made comments saying that white was one of her favorite colors (along with pink, of course) and that she was not pretty because her skin was not white. She must have called me beautiful at least 30 times in the three hours we were on the train, and although I must have insisted that she was very very beautiful at least 50 times, because she really was, she simply refused to believe me. There was even a point when I asked her to repeat after me saying she was beautiful and I continued to emphasize that she had a beautiful smile and a beautiful heart and beautiful eyes, I could see in her eyes that she would simply never believe that she could be as beautiful as I was, simply because of how much stupid melanin I had in my skin.

How can I possibly fault her when I too have forever felt not beautiful enough for much of my life? The way I look completely deviates from socially determined American beauty standards, and as much as I am well versed in calling out the Eurocentric, fat shaming, racist, and poor shaming B.S of beauty standards, I too can’t help but some days want to see a different face in the mirror. I am human and so was she and I saw myself in her. She was so beautiful and I wish there was something I could actually do to help her see that.

On a different note: I cannot even begin to describe the horror of being in different closed off train compartments based on economics- there is just something about such an obvious division of people by socioeconomic class that the person on a 3rd class  train compartment either inevitably learns to resent themself or the 1st class person, or both. I recognize how I too strangely look down upon people in first class cabins on flights – and there is no rational reason because they are probably just very nice hard working people, and some must have saved up a lot to treat themselves to a first class seat. But there is something peculiarly misery-inducing about the juxtaposition of the very rich and the very poor. Further, I am still unsure about the ethics of foreign travelers getting 3rd class train tickets for a “real” experience, both glorifying poverty and taking up extra space in already packed compartments. At the same time, I personally felt uncomfortable as well just buying 1st class train tickets because if others have to sit in packed compartments or stand for hours, what makes me so special to deserve an AC compartment and a specified seat?

Going back to Radika and the Argentinian Italian friend’s comment in Sri Lanka, I realized that because of my interactions with Radika and because of my own sense of connection with Sri Lankan people because they do look very similar to me and we share similar foods and history and clothes and norms, I found my friend’s comment to be outside of my boundary of ethics. My only response to him was silence. Of course I know that being a bystander is almost (or equally) as bad as being a perpetrator, but there is something about pain and shock that can turn even the most vocal person entirely speechless. I was hurt, and my defense mechanism was to consider myself far more aware than this person and thus I considered him incapable of understanding the entirely horrifying nature of his comment, and I did not say anything to correct him.

I don’t know why, but I’m accustomed to some friends making hurtful comments where I am simply non-confrontational. I am silent when friends in the past and on this trip have said things  like “desi men are generally not very good looking,” or “desi men are aggressive and too clingy,” or “Chinese people are obsessed with excessive junk and trinkets,” or “I’m just not attracted to black guys” or “trans people are so funny looking,” or “queer people can have attractions but simply choose to have enough self control to do what’s right” or “muslim women are so oppressed everywhere, having to wear all those those coverings.”  It’s not that I’m always silent when friends make these comments, and I am cut throat with my replies when I’m talking to friends whom I really respect and expect better comments from, but I think I am mostly silent because I am so hurt by these comments and I don’t think that words are enough to change someone’s core feelings. I don’t know if racism or homophobia can be cured by words or logic. I think one has to feel like people are equal and deserve respect and that can mainly be taught through interactions and experiences with the people who are seen as less than. These comments take place on a much more frequent basis on this trip and other trips where I’ve traveled outside of the US, and it makes me grateful for how diverse and open-minded Americans are (at least to some degree, especially in the places I have lived).

I find that I am also silent when people make hurtful comments towards me. The most common one is when people outright say that I am “not American,” simply because I have brown skin. I cannot count how many times people have asked me what my “background” or “heritage” is, even after I’ve said I’m from the US. I find that travelers sometimes find me too exotic if I say I’m from Pakistan or was born in Pakistan. I don’t wish to be considered this inspiring person just because I’m a Pakistani Muslim woman traveling alone. I want people to like my personality or my habits or tendencies, and not just be enchanted by my socially constructed boxes. Additionally, I no longer wish to be an encyclopedia on Pakistani and Muslim culture and I am exhausted from ignorant comments about Islam. So I just stick to mostly telling other travelers that I’m from the US and hoping that they won’t continue prying further. Strangely however, I tell locals that I’m from Pakistan because somehow, I feel comfortable telling locals I’m from Pakistan, and it also saves me both the stigma/resentment as well as the added respect that Americans get everywhere. Plus, I find that somehow, telling someone I’m from the US makes them see me very highly, and thereby increases the gap between “me” and “them.” I guess I try to navigate my multiple identities in ways to camouflage differences and highlight the shared humanity.

I’ve also gotten some strange comments and looks about my hairy legs (which mostly amuse me because it shows how internalized sexism and gender roles are globally). A group of women at Angkor Wat temple basically pointed to me and all burst out laughing and I think it was because of my legs but could be because of my hair or glasses or skin color. I even had kid monks laugh at me, which was certainly strange.

Shockingly, I have not gotten many fat shaming comments on this particular trip. I got a lifetime’s worth in Guatemala, especially from friends and coworkers (disguised as friendly advice and concern), and far more over the years in the US, so I’m actually surprised. I did get a very nice receptionist at my hostel in Siem Reap to comment on how I had a beautiful voice, which she said made sense because larger people have better voices. Then she proceeded to tell me a story about a guy who fell in love with a woman over the phone because her voice was so beautiful only to be horrified when they finally met in person because she was large. After sharing her story, as if the implications suddenly dawned on her, the woman just smiled and said, “just kidding” and continued with writing out my bus ticket silently.

Let's talk about rigid global beauty standards some more. I made a beautiful Thai friend at the Golden Mountain Temple in Bangkok. She was so kind and joyful and I actually remember thinking that she was beautiful. Then, after visiting the temple, she took me to enjoy some juice at Victory Monument. There, she started complimenting my eyes for how large they were, my eyebrows for how full they were and my skin for how clear it was. It was such an uncomfortable moment because I see my face as a whole and not really as a compilation of different parts which could be labeled as good or beautiful based on some random ranking. She mentioned how she has only gotten eyelid wrinkle correction surgery and gotten her eyebrow shape tattooed to make her eyebrows seem fuller and nicely shaped forever. She said she didn't like needles and so she didn't continue with more surgeries but mentioned how Thai women are very addicted to plastic surgery, especially eyelid wrinkle surgery and breast (augmentation? reduction? I forgot to ask) surgery. She saw so much beauty in me while I kept thinking about how in the US, she would be considered far more beautiful than me. On another instance, I complimented the smile of the woman booking my bus tickets in Vietnam, with the woman shyly looking down in surprise and commenting that she thinks she is “ugly.”I don't make it a habit of ever handing out fake compliments. How did such a beautiful woman internalize that she was ugly? How are we doing this to women everywhere around the world?

I don't want to play this beauty game anymore. It distracts me from spending time on more important concerns like my education, or my value as a human and my impact on the world. I refuse to allow society to feed me BS about my beauty. I am absolutely stunning and I am going to proclaim it loudly and often. Fuck being humble. I’ve had far too many friends shame me for my arrogance. I will never claim that I am more beautiful than any other person, but I am definitely going to admire my face and natural body in the mirror and I wish all people would finally give themselves the permission to move beyond artificial guidelines of beauty  and just own their absolutely stunning selves. It's not arrogance, it’s truth.

Another type of comment about my body,  which was more discouraging, was when I was observing people play “foot badminton” (literally the birdie is hit with feet, kind of like a mix of football/soccer and badminton) in Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam, and the coach came to talk to me about the game. He tried explaining that the game can easily be learned in a couple of weeks with practice. Then, he looked at me from head to toe and laughed and said, “but you cannot play. You are fat.” Of course, he then continued to try to sell me the birdie as a souvenir. This interaction for me is connected to the issues I generally have with the phrasing of obesity as an “epidemic.” I can't do multi-day mountain climbs and can't run a marathon and some days, I’m a couch potato and eat too many Cheetos. But I can also easily hike for 10 hours, climb for about five hours, do several sets of leg presses with 200 lbs, lift around 100 lbs, and I mostly eat very balanced vegetarian foods. For someone to look at my size and make an assumption about my capabilities or my life expectancy is simply ignorant and incorrect. It’s committing basic atomistic fallacy- (I think that's the term?)- looking at an overall stereotype and making individual level conclusions about a specific person without sufficient evidence. I actually play badminton relatively well…

It’s not so much verbal comments from travelers that has affected my psyche as much as the unsaid differential behavior I’ve received from locals any time I have travelled with a white person, and the strange ways in which travelers never recognize that I’m actually a traveler and not a local.

The fact that I was able to enter into restricted areas of a temple in Bangkok because the staff of at least ten people was too busy taking pictures and interviewing the two white women I was hanging out with that day is clearest proof of the differential treatment I get compared to other white travelers. I have experienced countless examples of this. The time in Jakarta when my Dutch friend from Holland was basically interviewed and asked about where she was from seven times during one day (I counted), while I, who was standing right next to her the entire day, was talked to zero times. The time when my Japanese friend took pictures with at least 40 teens in Ulu Camii in Bursa in Turkey (I'm actually not exaggerating the number- it's the strangest thing I have ever witnessed), while I watched from the side and was asked to take many of the pictures. Each of the times when street vendors entered restaurants and asked every white person to buy their items before asking me (three times in two days in Ho Chi Minh- I counted again). The six times (I counted) I asked questions to the locals in Colombo (Sri Lanka), and the people I asked looked at my white guy friend to answer and ignored my presence. The countless times I've spent days in markets without being harassed to buy things while my white friends have complained about being so annoyed by all the haggling. The countless times when I was with another white traveller and someone asked us where we were from but didn't bother to wait for my reply. Sure I'm from Germany, UK, Australia, Russia, Canada, Netherlands, wherever my white friend is from. The time when my German friend was asked to be in pictures four times during one day in Pangkor Island  and I was just there. The time when the two girls from Czech Republic, the one woman from New Zealand, the one woman from Sydney, and the one woman from Germany (all with minimal melanin) were each asked to dance by the local men at a Karaoke bar in Malacca (Malaysia) at least four times each over the course of four hours, while I was not asked even once. We were all sitting together by the end of the night, all friends. But I was brown, and the locals in Malacca treated me differently and I noticed. I have zero issues with dancing with other friends or by myself, and I guess I should be used to this treatment because it's similar in the US (and it makes my close friends highly uncomfortable because they've noticed over the years) but I can't help but be reminded of how “other” and thus, “less than,” I am to others. I have sufficient self confidence to not care enough or let these things get me down for too long, but it doesn't allow me the freedom to forgot how different/strange I look to people and I just want to be allowed the freedom to look beyond these silly boxes for a while so I can focus on more important things. I think this is part of why I do like NYC so much. More than in other places, people there don't necessarily ignore my boxes, they just look at me as more than the boxes and it helps me recognize that I am a person beyond the boxes and stereotypes. I love laughing and kids and food. I also love walking and reading and talking about boring academic things all the time. I am loud and crazy and sing horribly all the time and dance everywhere and am also strangely introverted and serious and sometimes shy. I want people to recognize these qualities.

I don't mean to imply that I don't have wonderful interactions with amazing people everywhere. I really truly do and I've forever changed because of these interactions, but the sad fact is that most of these interactions have only taken place when I've spent the day without white travelers and instances where I've gone out of my way to communicate with locals everywhere. It's disappointing because I worry about taking future trips with white friends or a white partner. I'm not used to being silent and observing from the sidelines but I find that I don't even make an effort to talk to locals anymore when I happen to travel with white friends I meet on the road, because it seems like wasted effort. I am convinced the locals are probably more interested in the white exotic beautiful creature next to me.

I know that I would feel highly uncomfortable being objectified and given special preference based on my skin color. I got that quite frequently in Sri Lanka and I absolutely hated it. I don't want to switch shoes and “walk a mile” as a white traveller. I actually love being brown in many many ways because I know that when people take an interest in talking to me, it's because they see me. I get complimented by people in the best ways, for my “beautiful smile,” my “beautiful heart,” my “crazy laugh,” my joy, my dancing, my happiness, my kindness, my love, my open-mindedness, my intelligence, etc. These compliments will always mean more to me than a compliment pertaining to the lightness of my skin or the shape of my body or my national origin. I guess I just want to live in a world where artificial boxes don't create divides or hierarchies.

On the topic of being treated differently by fellow travelers- it's strange to me that when I see western travelers, I feel an immediate sense of connection because I too am traveling from the west and live in a western country that I consider one of my homes. In terms of language and foods consumed and basic perspectives and lifestyle, I have more in common with white travelers than with locals. But these travelers often don't expect me to speak English and don't see me as “one of them,” until I initiate conversation. Sometimes the treatment is a bit obnoxious. One night in Malacca, when I was hanging out with two people from Sydney, we stopped by at a reggae bar along the river walk and for at least 40 minutes before I decided to leave, both of my friends were occupied talking to locals and other travelers about where they were from and where they were going and how much they liked Malaysia (basically the same scripted traveller small talk), while I was standing there just observing the conversations. What's with the white people solidarity? It's strange. But I guess it makes sense that there would be an immediate sense of connection anytime someone goes from being a majority somewhere to becoming a minority.

I too am perhaps prone to talking to white people more without realizing it. I was horrified at myself when I woke up to a Korean (she looked Thai to me…ugh) woman walking in the dorm room I was staying at in Bangkok and initially thought she might be one of the staff. Of course, I immediately caught myself and talked to her and we ended up hanging out the entire day and having a great time – as two foreign tourists visiting Thailand for the first time!

Going back to the idea of moral relativism, I have also come to the conclusion that we must not justify away all unethical actions. Just because there are core reasonings behind unethical actions doesn’t mean there is no actual true morality.People are not inherently good or bad, we all have the capacity to commit good or evil actions, depending on a multitude of external and mental circumstances. So we have to expect good things from each other, regardless of class or creed or color. This is where John Stuart Mill’s harm principle and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights become important to consider.

I've had too many discussions with people unwilling to challenge cultural practices because they didn't want to seem culturally insensitive. But some actions violate human rights and we need to stop thinking that humans from different cultures are so different that what we consider human rights violations become justifiable in some circumstances. To me, the following are inexcusable violations of human rights and we should all speak against these actions regardless of what boxes we belong in: Forced marriage, underage marriage, female and male genital mutilation, forced modesty/headscarf requirement by law, marital rape, any other form of sex without consent, murder and cruelty without cause, any form of slavery, any mistreatment/unequal treatment/discrimination based on unavoidable social labels of race or gender or sexual orientation or national origin or religion or disability. I think these actions violate human rights and the harm principle and as fellow humans, we ought to be activists for these causes.

I have been most horrified on this trip on exactly three days: the day I visited an elephant orphanage in Pinnewalla (Sri Lanka) where the elephants actually seemed to be mostly chained up and treated cruelly as if they were part of a circus; the day I learned about the cruel ways in which millions of Cambodians died under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia; and the day I visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City and learned about the atrocities committed by the American Government through the use of Agent Orange and other experimental chemicals during the Vietnam War. These were unacceptable crimes to me and I will always speak against these and try my hardest to never allow humanity to perpetuate these crimes. These cross the human and animal rights ethics boundaries and clearly violate the harm principle. This also explains my silence in certain circumstances but not in other circumstances. My friends are free to make ignorant comments. I have made ignorant comments my entire life and over time, I’ve improved and changed my perceptions. But their freedom and my freedom to say and do what we want ends the moment our actions are causing definite objective harm to someone outside ourselves.

I definitely sharply argued with a Lithuanian traveller when she threw a large stone at a resting reptile in Kandy (Sri Lanka); tried to argue with one of the elephant orphanage workers when he was using the metal pointed weapon thing to pull an elephant closer to take a picture with one of the travelers; and tried to dissuade two friends from paying/purchasing items from children (because it can encourage parents to continue taking their children out of schools for profits). It is part of my duty as a human to speak up, and I don't care that my culture or age or skin color varies from other humans.

 If I've learned anything from histories of war crimes and genocides is that we’re all part of this shared humanity and similar atrocities have been committed towards and by almost every group in history, based on illogical divisions, rooted in ignorance, and solely in the name of power. We’re all capable of atrocities and we all have a responsibility make this world better.

Current Collection of Quotes

I've been collecting quotes for quite a while now and I've decided to finally share them.
I forgot to note the speaker or writer for some- but that's what google is for.

For me, the meaning is often more important than who said the quote, especially because we often give so much special credit to quotes by famous people even if they haven't said anything truly inspired. For me, quotes, similar to artwork, are relationships with the reader. And although they do get stripped from the entire context, sometimes we just need to read a couple of sentences for us to feel a connection with another's soul.

Quotes:
"Claim your experience. Don't let it claim you. What if there were no survivors, meaning, what if people decided to just claim their trauma as an experience instead of taking it on as an identity? Maybe it would be the end of being trapped in our wounds and the beginning of amazing self-exploration and discovery and growth. Maybe it would be the start of defining ourselves by who we have become and who we are becoming."- Debra Jarvis

“When my sister’s having a manic episode, she thinks she has superpowers. She’ll go outside and strip off her clothes. She’ll develop all these conspiracies about the government being out to get her, and she’ll think that something she’s done has made our whole family unsafe... It’s hard to see her like that, and it’s hard to say that there’s anything nice about it, but then again, I can’t help but feel that she has a certain freedom that I envy when she’s having an episode. I feel like everyone’s a little crazy and we all walk around with this armor of sanity, and she’s just able to cast it off completely. I’d almost like to join her and run around the city if only she could keep it from spinning out of control.”- HONY page

“To know all is to forgive all.”


"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
— Steve Jobs

"As children we owned all of ourselves. As adults, in response to the expectations of others, we have had to hide much of ourselves away, out of sight even from our own eyes. The cost of such voluntary losses is great. No one can afford to give up any part of himself. All of you is worth something. Even the evil can be a source of vitality if only you can face it and transform it. Our love of pure goodness, our insistence on innocence, is a hazard. For the sake of appearing to be what others require us to be, to be more moral than any man can be, we sacrifice our strength."

"Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can’t—and, in fact, you’re not supposed to—know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing."
— Anne Lamott

"Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “it’s not a priority,” and see how that feels. Often, that’s a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don’t want to."
— Laura Vanderkam

As we cannot be universal by knowing everything there is to know about everything, we must know a little about everything, because it is much better to know something about everything than everything about something. Such universality is the finest.
— Blaise Pascal

 It is most important to run out of scapegoats.

Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again.

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
— Dale Carnegie

"If you can… fall in love, with the work, with people you work with, with your dreams and their dreams. Whatever it was that got you to this school, don’t let it go. Whatever kept you here, don’t let that go. Believe in your friends. Believe that what you and your friends have to say… that the way you’re saying it — is something new in the world."

"the next time you have a conflict with a friend, find the courage to speak openly about how you feel. Each time you listen to your inner voice and act on it, you build a skill that will help you get closer to leading the life you truly want."

"it’s just that many of us don’t belong to where we come from" SeouJae

"Knowledge should mean a full grasp of knowledge:
Knowledge means to know yourself, heart and soul.
If you have failed to understand yourself,
Then all of your reading has missed its call."
-Sufi`s saying

"If you can dream it you can achieve it" - Always dare to dream, because even though it's hard for you to believe it right now, your craziest, most wonderful dreams might actually come true

“I don’t come to bow. I come to conquer.” #‎bobmarleyquotes

"Change, when it comes, cracks everything open." -Dorothy Allison

"Wishing for us all in this 5775 the wisdom, courage, and flexibility to better understand what is asked of us as individual souls and as members of larger communities -- to deepen our awareness of our place in history, and yet be filled with a compelling urge to transcend it." L'shana tova tikatevu.

"The most successful people are those with a thirst for knowledge and the willingness to keep learning" -Edward Gallante, former Senior VP of Exxon Mobile

"If you're feeling stuck tonight, remember that people are always transforming. You can be whomever you want today, no matter who you were before."

“If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose”
― Charles Bukowski

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Find what you love and let it kill you.”
― Charles Bukowski

“My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
~ Falsely yours”
― Charles Bukowski

 “I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can't feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness
“I wanted the whole world or nothing.”

― Charles Bukowski, Post Office
“We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes”
― Charles Bukowski
“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
a space
and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest times
times
we will know it
we will know it
more than
ever
there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and
we will wait
and
wait
in that space.”
― Charles Bukowski

“There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.”
― Charles Bukowski

“This is very important -- to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything...just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That's why they're all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings -- that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.
Buddha (500BC)”

Right from the moment of our birth, we are under the care and kindness of our parents. Later, when we are sick and old, we are again dependent on the kindness of others. Since we are so dependent on others at the beginning and end of our lives, how could it be that we would neglect kindness towards others in the middle?
-Dalai Lama

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)”

“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgements requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.
John Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)”

“Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.
Heraclitus (535BC-475BC)”

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because some day in life you will have been all these.
George Washington (1732-1799)”

“Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)”

“True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)”

"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance"
Don't just write in an active voice, live your life that way."

Fundamentalism makes life better in so many practical ways.


“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”
― John Lennon

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Fear doesn't shut you down; it wakes you up”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”
― Paulo Coelho, Alchemist

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
― Plato

“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.”
― Taylor Swift

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“She had blue skin,
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through,
Then passed right by-
And never knew.”
shel silvestein

“Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and to fuck is infinite; it surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace.”
― Roberto Bolaño

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened  of responsibility.”
― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents


“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do.” - Hermann Hesse

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” - Franz Kafka

"Love is the recognition of beauty
A flower doesn't stop being beautiful just because somebody walks by without noticing it, nor does it cease to be fragrant if its scent is taken for granted. The flower just continues to be its glorious self: elegant, graceful, and magnificent.

Our Mother Nature has provided us with these immeasurably valuable teachers that blossom despite their short lifespan, stars that continue to shine even if we fail to stare at them, and trees that don't take it personally if we never bow down in gratitude for the oxygen they provide.

We also have an incredible and unlimited capacity to love, but the question is: can we do it like a flower? Without needing to be admired, adored, or even noticed? Can we open our hearts completely to give, forgive, celebrate, and joyfully live our lives without hesitation or need for reciprocity?

It seems like sometimes we go beyond taking things personally and are noticeably deflated when unappreciated. In-fact, devastated, we wilt in sorrow and then attempt to guard ourselves by withholding, using all sorts of protections and defenses. We get hurt (even angry), if our boss fails to recognize an astonishing feat, if a lover pulls their hand away, or when a friend forgets our birthday. Can you imagine a flower copping an attitude for not being praised, or the moon dimming its glow because we're too self-absorbed to notice it more often?

Make an effort to shine no matter what, to love unconditionally, and to be a kind and gentle soul (even when nobody is watching). And, if you're so inclined, hug the next tree you see and say, "Thank you!"

"But what if we viewed leisure time not as goofing off, but as necessary time for reflecting, for inspiring creativity, and for saving up brainpower and energy for future work?"

“You're only given one little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.”
- Robin Williams

"We all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own" - DPS

"No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world" - DPS

" We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human is filled with passion and medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

"Do you have a soulmate?/Define that./ Somebody who challenges you. Someone who touches your soul."

"Seize every day. Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold and die."

"I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we  must constantly look at things in a different way"

"You'll have bad times, but it'll always wake up up to the good stuff you weren't paying attention to."

"You must strive to find your own voice. Because the long you wait to begin, the less likely you are to fine it at all."

"The things we fear the most have already happened to us."

"Why can't we treat death with a certain amount of humanity and dignity and decency, and God forbid- maybe even humor."

“Carpe. Hear it? Carpe. Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.” – John Keating, Dead Poets Society

“I always thought the idea of education was to learn to think for yourself.” – John Keating, Dead Poets Society

“Our job is improving the quality of life, not just delaying death.” – Patch Adams, Patch Adams

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?"

Neil: [quoting Henry David Thoreau] "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."
Dalton: I'll second that.
Neil: "To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived."

Have you ever told your father what you just told me? About your passion for acting? You ever showed him that?
Neil Perry: I can't.
John Keating: Why not?
Neil Perry: I can't talk to him this way.
John Keating: Then you're acting for him, too. You're playing the part of the dutiful son. Now, I know this sounds impossible, but you have to talk to him. You have to show him who you are, what your heart is!
Neil Perry: I know what he'll say! He'll tell me that acting's a whim and I should forget it. They're counting on me; he'll just tell me to put it out of my mind for my own good.
John Keating: You are not an indentured servant! It's not a whim for you, you prove it to him by your conviction and your passion! You show that to him, and if he still doesn't believe you - well, by then, you'll be out of school and can do anything you want."

"The loneliest people are the kindest, The saddest people smile the brightest. The most damaged people are the wisest. All because they do not wish to see anyone else suffer the way they do."



"By day I praised you
and never knew it.
By night I stayed with you
and never knew it.
I always thought that
I was me--but no,
I was you
and never knew it."

"The Lovers
will drink wine night and day.
They will drink until they can
tear away the veils of intellect and
melt away the layers of shame and modesty.
When in Love,
body, mind, heart and soul don't even exist.
Become this,
fall in Love,
and you will not be separated again."
"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do."
"Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real sufis just laugh: nothing tyrannizes their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl."

"Close the door of words that the window of the heart may open."

"Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls."

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”

“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” - Maya Angelou

"I completely understand. I'm like this too (but thankfully a lot less so recently). Sometimes you just have to accept that you have a melancholic temperament. It's not something to be pathologized, just something to be integrated into your whole being. I bet this person also has high empathy for others. There are a lot of gifts that come with the pervasive underlay of sadness. Some people may call this "depression," and they may in fact be right, and probably are. But on the other hand, life is sad. Even happiness is rooted in sadness. “The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”

"If you are like me...you are not depressed. Most of the people that know me would not think that. I am sensitive. I am empathetic. I am a deep thinker. I am a people pleaser, it brings me joy. I am "affected" by people and the energy around me. I can be very fun, I love life, I love so many things. I do a lot of fun things. But...I feel things to my core. Allow yourself to be who you are and don't allow anyone to label you."
 "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know" -Hemingway

Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.” ― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

"At this point in my life, I'm trying to figure out the things I truly care about."
"What's something you care about less than you did ten years ago?"
"Being extraordinary."

 “At crucial junctures, every individual makes decisions and … every decision is individual,” by Raul Hilberg, a refugee from Nazism and a leading Holocaust scholar

“My parents were always fighting. They weren’t very supportive. I used to be bitter about it. I was caught up on how my life could have been different if I had better parents. How things would have been different if x, y, and z had happened. But then you get older and you realize maybe they didn’t have the capacity to give you what you needed. They couldn’t understand you, just like you couldn’t understand them. You realize they were dealing with their own disappointments. And you even start to think, ‘Maybe I could have been a better son.’”


Everyone who works with love and with intelligence finds in the very sincerity of his love for nature and art a kind of armor against the opinions of other people.

“People often say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder.” —Salma Hayek

Do you know what frees one from this captivity? It is every deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, these open the prison by supreme power, by some magic force. Where sympathy is renewed, life is restored.

It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done!

In order to work and to become an artist one needs love. At least, one who wants sentiment in his work must in the first place feel it himself, and live with his heart.

the silver lining given difficult experiences in life:

Analysis and academic abilities can be learned (albeit with lots of effort), but perspective that's formed and is unique, is much harder to learn/shift and change. Oddly, this reality is inherently dependent on humankind's inability to fully empathize with all experiences.


If frodo can get the ring to Mordor, you can get out of bed!

"Seek to disrupt the structures that taught those of us who gained more access that we are worth more than where we left, and less than what we found ourselves among."

“You are terrifying and strange and beautiful, someone not everyone knows how to love.”
― Warsan Shire
“give your daughters difficult names. give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. my name makes you want to tell me the truth. my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.”
― Warsan Shire
“two people who were once very close can
without blame
or grand betrayal
become strangers.
perhaps this is the saddest thing in the world.”
― Warsan Shire

“It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me.”
― Warsan Shire

“make love
like you have no
secrets
like you’ve
never been
left
never been
hurt
like the world
don’t owe you a
single
wretched
thing.”
― Warsan Shire

“you can't make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that”
― Warsan Shire

“Don't assume, ask. Be kind. Tell the truth. Don't say anything you can't stand behind fully. Have integrity. Tell people how you feel.”
― Warsan Shire

“You tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.”
― Warsan Shire

"You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day.

This is a power you can cultivate.

If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind.

That's the only thing you should be trying to control." - Elizabeth Gilbert

You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame.

How could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced
life.”

“Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing...”

“There’s a crack (or cracks) in everyone…that’s how the light of God gets in.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
tags: crying, sorrow

You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert

“If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will protect upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert

“Look for God. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert

“My alone feels so good, I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude.”
― Warsan Shire
"Find something that makes you feel like the world makes sense, even if you can’t justify it intellectually to yourself or anyone else."

"Knowledge is learning something every day. Wisdom is letting go of something every day." Zen Proverb.

"When life give your something that makes you feel afraid, that's when life gives you a chance to be brave." -Lupytha Hermin

'"You don't believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they're true," she points out.
"But"—I speak slowly as I mull that over—"isn't looking at the result of a belief a good way of evaluating if it's true?"'- Veronica Roth

"A few of them are split from punching Caleb, and dotted with faint bruises. It seems fitting that the blow would leave a mark on both of us. That's how the world works." -Veronica Roth- Allegiant.

"This power of good must prove its truth and strength by its fearlessness, by its refusal to accept any imposition which depends for its success upon its power to produce frightfulness and is not ashamed to use its machines of destruction to terrorize a population completely disarmed. We must know that moral conquest does not consist in success, that failure does not deprive it of its dignity and worth. Those who believe in spiritual life know that to stand against wrong which has overwhelming material power behind it is victory itself, it is the victory of the active faith in the ideal in the teeth of evident defeat."

—Rabindranath Tagore, in a letter (April 19, 1919) to Mahatma Gandhi
To be so far from want that we wish others to be partakers of our plenty — that is something for which to give thanks.

"Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
-L.Cohen
"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."
- Hub

"To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life."
- Walter Pater

“Within tears, find hidden laughter
Seek treasures amid ruins, sincere one. ”
― Rumi

It is precisely the role of human rights to identify the workings of power that keep unac- ceptable things as they are, and to challenge that power with a different vision of human well-being. The challenge does not have to be confrontatio- nal or angry; it can proceed softly, through dia- logue and consensus. But it will always be daring because it requires us to dare to imagine a dif- ferent reality, and to have the courage to call, each in his or her own voice and with his or her own means, for the re-arrangements of power necessary to change the unacceptable.

if you make enough effort with huge passion there is no impossible.
Maybe everyone is a little mad, and how much depends on how lucky you are?
Maybe if you are diagnosed with a mental illness, maybe you see things differently than most people.

Rule 35
In this world, it is not similarities or regularities that take us a step forward, but blunt opposites. And all the opposites in the universe are present within each and every one of us. Therefore the believer needs to meet the unbeliever residing within. And the nonbeliever should get to know the silent faithful in him. Until the day one reaches the stage of Insane-I Kamil, the perfect human being, faith is a gradual process and one that necessitates its seeming opposite: disbelief.


The past is an interpretation. The future is on illusion. The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves through and within us, in endless spirals. Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness. If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the PRESENT MOMENT.

“The Koran doesn’t specifically state that you must be covered,” said Professor Asma Afsaruddin, an expert on Islamic law at Indiana University. “It talks about modesty. And modesty is a cultural concept. What is considered modest in some Muslim societies is not necessarily what is considered modest in the United States.”

“You can't make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.”
― Michelle Obama

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.

“We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.”
― Amy Tan

there is no security on this earth- only opportunity

"No eminence is greater than to adopt humbleness; no exaltation is superior to knowledge; nothing is more respectable than forgiveness and forbearance; no support and defense are stronger than consultation" -Hazart Ali

"It captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations, that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others and that well into our third century as a nation, it remains the task of us all as citizens of these United States to be the authors of the next great chapter of our American story."
-My President, Barack Hussein Obama, The President of The United States of America

Where there is love of human kind, there is love of healing. -Hippocrates
we should be morally committed to being the healer of the world.

It’s a common belief that positive thinking leads to a happier, healthier life. As children we’re told to smile and be cheerful and put on a happy face. As adults we’re told to look on the brightside, to make lemonade and see glasses as half full. Sometimes, reality can get in the way of our ability to act the happy part, though. Your health can fail, boyfriends can cheat, friends can disappoint. It’s in these moments when you just want to get real, to drop the act, and be your true, scared, unhappy self. (Greys Anatomy)

It is a gift to be interested in something!

two things inspire me to awe- the starry heavens above and the moral universe within- Einstein

I try to think about life positively
why worry about stuff? there's always a solution lurking by...

Almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. -Steve Jobs

You transform all those who are touched by you.~ Rumi

“You can be the most beautiful person in the world and everybody sees light and rainbows when they look at you, but if you yourself don't know it, all of that doesn't even matter. Every second that you spend on doubting your worth, every moment that you use to criticize yourself; is a second of your life wasted, is a moment of your life thrown away. It's not like you have forever, so don't waste any of your seconds, don't throw even one of your moments away.”
― C. JoyBell C.

Everything in life is connected somehow. You may have to dig deep to find it but its there. Everything is the same even though its different. Somehow everything connects back with your life. The faces in certain places may be different, but the situation is the same. Irony is a hidden factor that creeps around us in life, letting its presence felt only after it has left. Picture back to a year ago and the situation you were in. Look at how things are different yet somehow everything it still in some way cognate. Everything connects together to form the balance of life, to maintain structure. Change is and always will be inevitable, but everything is relative, and all the moments and times in your life will come back around again, you just might find yourself on the other side of the coin.

"The cosmos is also within us, We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." -Carl Sagan

"We are star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth, and perhaps throughout the cosmos."

Maneuvering through trying times is a lot like driving through dense fog. You can’t see where you’re going, you feel closed in, you want to turn back, and every mile feels like forever. Yet, scared or fatigued as you might be, there’s nothing you can do but breathe, stay observant, keep moving forward, and trust that someone with keener vision than yours is functioning as your guide.

We’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and “success”, defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death. -Chris Hedges

Don't let anyone ever make you feel like you don't deserve what you want.

"Make a wish and place it in your heart. Anything you want. Everything you want. Do you have it? Good. Now believe it can come true. You never know where the next miracle is going to come from, the next smile…the next wish come true. But if you believe that it is right around the corner, and you open your heart and mind to the possibility of it, to the certainty of it…you just might get the thing you're wishing for. The world is full of magic. You just have to believe in it. So make your wish. Do you have it? Good. Now believe in it…with all your heart."

The future is scary, but you can't keep running back to the past just because it's familiar.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'
Eleanor Roosevelt

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.
Norman Vincent Peale

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Mark Twain

If you want to conquer fear, don't sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Dale Carnegie

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
Marianne Williamson

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.
George S. Patton

If there is a situation that has potential for both awkward and good moments, I give it a try anyway. You never know what might come from the experience- Alina

Not everything is going to be picture perfect…
things sometimes take time, and have many rough things to go through before you can get there, but if you give up on the things you want…everything you’ve gone through ends up being worthless....Love the Life you Live ♥
love, charity, duty and patriotism- that's what makes america great! -Obama

we're all freaks one way or another so get over yourself- Drop dead diva

“You can even say that I hated myself at certain periods. I was too fat, or maybe too tall, or maybe just plain too ugly ... you can say my definiteness stems from underlying feelings of insecurity and inferiority. I couldn't conquer these feelings by acting indecisive. I found the only way to get the better of them was by adopting a forceful, concentrated drive.”
― Audrey Hepburn

humble assault on the common place

“Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality . Wake Up and Live!” ~ Bob Marley ♥

"It is hard to fail, but it is worse to never have tried to succeed." -Theodore Roosevelt.

“I'm tired of being sad. I'm tired of crying. I'm tired of feeling empty inside. I'm tired of feeling worthless. I'm tired of feeling stuck. I'm tired of feeling crazy. I'm tired of being alone. I'm tired of yelling. I'm tired of pretending. I'm tired of dreaming of a life I will never have. I'm tired of missing things. I'm tired of missing people. I'm tired of remembering. I'm tired of wishing I could start all over. I'm tired of not being able to just let go. I'm tired of faking it. I'm tired of being different. I'm tired of being angry. I'm tired of needing help. I'm tired of always wondering when God is finally going to let me be happy. Most of all, I'm just I'm tired of being tired.”

that's the thing: the day before your life changes forever, it feels like a normal day.

"When we follow our hearts
when we choose not to settle
it's funny isn't it-a weight lifts
the sun shines a little brighter
and for a brief moment at least
we find peace." -Meredith Grey

"To be nobody-but-yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” -E.E. Cummings

The next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not think about something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot for the next 30 days?” (Matt Cutts)

tiny tweaks can lead to big changes

Real faith cannot transcend real knowledge, it has to adapt to it and embrace it- Numb3rs
rahmanu

Change is inevitable and those who adapt quickly are more likely to survive- Flinehart

How we see ourselves changes how we see the world- flinehart

The human spirit is immeasurable- flinehart

"In no way do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men!"-