Today my thoughts wander around the subject of intactness. What does it mean to be intact? How vulnerable do we allow ourselves to be with the onset of change? How does one become intact? Is it a permanent state or something we need to keep working towards in our personal development?
All these ponders take be back to the importance of reconnecting to the very basics, like the truth and meaning of life. Why are we here? What are we meant to be doing? What are we supposed to be collecting in our lives? And what do we leave behind as a legacy?
One thing is for sure: we are born alone and we die alone, so relationships matter and clean human interaction is vital during our short lives here on this unbelievably unbalanced planet.
Lea and time.the tunnel of timetime passing in Yangon
Good Morning,
Time and time again, I dwell on the concept of ‘time’. It’s time for ‘time’ one more time, and how many times are enough times.Well just maybe one more time.
Time passes slow when things are difficult, fast when they are joyful, time heals our wounds and time can be endless when we are waiting. The truth of time is illusive, almost incomprehensible. Why do we perceive time? Is time the same here as it is at the edge of the universe? We measure time by the rotations of our planet around the sun and that makes our time unique to us here on earth.
Why do we need time? Is it to perceive and to measure change? Is it to urge us on to develop and discover why we are here in the first place? What is it like to live on on the top or bottom of the planet where it’s endlessly day or endlessly night?
I can go on like this for hours and yes, that’s part of the reason why I find myself awake at 4 am.
It’s time to stop writing and have that second cup of coffee… Wishing you a peaceful ‘time’ during the remainder of this week that seems to zip by at an unusual speed.
This post today is about a life changing moment, one of those that we have at a certain stage of our lives and they end up lodging themselves in our personal history, refusing to fade into the dusty halls of our memories, and maybe just maybe they were more significant than we can imagine and they were meant to be with us forever.
One such moment was for me back in Lebanon at a very young age, maybe 8 or 9 years old. I found myself spiralling into a tunnel of thought about space. I was sleeping on our rooftop under a thin canopy of grapes on a warm summer night with my family; a huge treat and a special event whenever we were allowed to do that. I remember watching the stars glimmering in total darkness and wondering what was beyond them? Were we contained in a bubble of some sort? And how can I ever comprehend the possibility of nothingness if there is one? Everything is existing in something, isn’t it? What’s at the end of that?
These questions have taken me on a life quest of search, research, questioning and wonder. From religion, to quantum physics, to wise people’s writings and mostly my own search during those moments of quiet when the mind can travel towards space, inside of space and beyond space towards the unknown.
When you are like me and you love exploring this planet and learning about its inhabitants, then some places haunt you for years after you visit them. One of these places is Varanasi in India. You probably have heard of Varanasi, its floods of pilgrims, swamis, holy men and women, the river Ganga and its famous healing powers, great promise of immortality for those lucky ones who are cremated and released into its waters, or the miraculous healing to those who bathe in its folds.
I arrived there with an open mind, camera and great eagerness to document what I see. I saw and felt so much more than I could possibly hold on to, but to single out one topic from that journey for the sake of economy, it would be ‘faith’.
If you want to study faith, how people adopt it, how it leads their lives and actions, how it fortifies them against all challenges, then Varanasi is the place.
There is so much more to say about it, but I leave you with these 4 images for now until I dive into that world again.
The next step we take, the next word we say, the next thought we harbor, the next bite we eat, these are the small choices we make but how small are they really? It is all connected, every road we take leads to the highway of our destiny, or not. In this maze we call life, what is it that guides our choices? That should be what concerns us not the choice itself, because in the end, what is our main motivator?
When you have your first child you become privy to the most well guarded secret: you have just signed on for the most important and permanent job of your life. It looks so easy. Everyone does it. Our parents did it. Our friends and neighbors seem to do it. And then your child arrives! I used to hold important job after job before having my child, each with a heavy series of responsibilities, but I dove into them armed with the knowing in the back of my mind that I can just quit when I choose to. Then came the parenting job, and I realized that this is one job I can never quit!
I would not exchange this job for any other in the world because it is the gift that keeps on giving.
Day 58 of 365~
Image taken of my 8 year old daughter overlooking the valley of the saints in Lebanon, 2012
I was going through my archives of hundreds of thousands of photographs as one often does, when I came across this image of my daughter when she was 4 years old running through the cedars of Lebanon and it made me catch my breath. She is now 13, and time has tricked us all again. How relentless it is, never pausing, never letting us catch our breath. It is always later than we think, isn’t it? So many unrealized intentions, how does one keep up with life, or should we at all?
Pausing and dreaming today in the moment of what was, what is and what will be…
Day 57 of 365~
Image taken in the cedars of God forest in Lebanon in 2008
From the mega metropolis of 30 million to a quiet German neighborhood, from the 16th floor of a high-rise building to the lone house and garden, from the green polluted sky of shanghai to the intoxicatingly fresh air of the countryside… we find ourselves in a whole new ecosystem.
We took in a few fish to live in our small pond last week and since then they have been hiding as they get used to the new environment. We are not so different. I feel the urge to settle in and find my way in my new ecosystem.
Despite of all the change, something inside me is dancing in joy and wellbeing. Thank you Germany for the chance to be well and happy as we get ready to call you home.
Sometimes life invites us into a brief interlude between the folds of time. There we see beyond the obvious, we feel more deeply and we re-evaluate our lives and where our importances lie. The past month has been just such a life changing happening and as I emerge trying to find the end of a thread I let go of, I find that a whole new selection of threads present themselves to me. I pray that I may choose wisely where to get back on the train we call destiny.
Photographs taken during the past month in Germany, Lebanon and China
We find ourselves on a planet of duality; where there is day, there is also night; we wake up only to then sleep; we feel happiness only to be followed by sadness; and where there is life, there most certainly will be death.
And we feel that life is sometimes unfair, unjust and we wonder why the timings are all wrong and the big question rises in us: “what if?”. We desperately try to reverse time, to wish we had taken one step differently, that we had made a different decision, and it leaves us wondering if destiny is pre-written. We turn to religion for answers, we question our creator, we get desperately angry, then we sink into a bottomless pit of sadness, only to surrender and then move on trying to lift our head high and catch the thread of life we tossed to the side when tragedy met us.
And looking back at my posts from the week before my beautiful young brother died in his tragic accident, there were most definitely subtle signs to prepare me for this. The titles and natures of my images spoke volumes to me before the event.
“It’s later than you think” whispered the ghost of tomorrows lost~
This post is in honor of George Kheir, my departed young brother, a wonderfully warm, humorous, bursting with life and generous man who left a kind and beautiful family behind. May his soul rest in peace and go to where it was destined to be.
