A letter to my future self.

Hello. 
Been a while since I posted something new.
So I signed up about a month ago to this online course lead by Tyler Knott (if you haven't heard of him, he's this lovely, authentic writer I know). It's name is Write Yourself Alive.
Basically, this course is about a challenge. He wants writers, whether amateurs or professionals, to set their writing as a priority, by completing a 30-day challenge of writing daily. 
So everyday, there's a different writing task, a different thing to write about. 
Each day they ask a question under the category "Dig Deeper", which are questions that aim to make you discover yourself more, and then they ask you to write about something related to that question. 
And I really am loving that I decided to join. Because not only do they know what questions to ask (they got me doing some deep digging, alright), they also have this way to show you what all the other members of the challenge wrote and answered to the same daily task. 
So it's pretty inspiring to see how everyone else sees the same thing so differently, or so similarly. 
And today, I decided to share with you some of the good things I got to write. 

Day 2: Write a letter to the person you think you should have been by now. Explain to them why you aren't them and offer them proof that who you are is better.

Dear future -God knows how long or short- Yasmine,
You might be fit, you might be more emotionally mature, you might know how to experience the world outside the scope of your emotions, you might be less caring, or not at all to what people have to say about the truth you find in you, and about how you see the world.
You might be more sharing of your writings, just putting yourself out there for the world to see, and knowing that what you write could change someone’s mind, somewhere, somehow.
You might be more accepting, of your own community and your country, and of your humanity and your weakness, and (most importantly) more accepting of the lack of acceptance of this world.
You might be more forgiving.
You might be more mind-speaking, more communicating, and confident while you do so, not fearing people’s disapproval.

And I can tell you that I wouldn’t love you more than I love myself right now.
Because I know that I’m trying my best now, just like I’ll be trying my best then.
I don’t envy you, or compare myself to you, and I’m not desperate to be you.
I know that being who I am now is how I could reach who you are then, and I’m grateful for every step on the way.
You see, being afraid to speak up lead me to learn the right reason for which one must speak up.
And being afraid to show myself up to the world might be the reason why I learned to love my OWN company first, before anyone else’s, and to validate the good in me to my own self, and to grow.
And experiencing the world through my emotions has helped me learn how to get to the origin the thoughts and perceptions of these emotions. And that has unveiled to me a dark, old, hiding place in my mind. A place heavy with loads of false and old perceptions about me. And that has set me free, and I was able to rise above that.
I learned how emotions are impatient, narcissistic, and love to be the center of attention, while thoughts are slow, patient and allow themselves to be doubted.
Being unloving to my body has taught me to appreciate health over shape, and mind over appearance.
Hating on my humanity has taught me to be humble, and it has brought me closer to God, because I learned that he’s the all-forgiving and merciful who does love us, humans, when we repent and seek his guidance, no matter how weak and sinful we can get.

So yes, who I am now is nothing less than you.
And each version of me is the best there is for the time and the situation she’s at.
Because I trust myself and love it enough to know she is doing her best.

رجلًا سلمًا لرجل.

•( ضَرَبَ اللَّهُ مَثَلا رَجُلا فِيهِ شُرَكَاءُ مُتَشَاكِسُونَ وَرَجُلا سَلَمًا لِرَجُلٍ 

هَلْ يَسْتَوِيَانِ مَثَلا 

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ ..)•

In Jannah, the high of the rare moments of peace..will last forever. That high never lasts long in Dunya, because we're souls trapped inside desireful bodies, trapped inside a corrupt world.

The truth that leads us to where we came from, is actually crystal clear. 

We feel it in our hearts, we see it. 

But the burden of being human heavies our hearts, weakens our will and shortens our vision.

و الله لطيف بعباده. 

I read once that if we all learned what we were supposed to learn from the first time, we wouldn't need love at all. 

فالحمدلله الرحيم اللطيف. 

رجلًا سلمًا لرجل.

The centrality, the oneness, the solidarity from the endless paths in this creation. 

The home in us. The One and Only. 

The strength, the center, the core.

The peace it brings, this oneness, of heart and of mind, and the freedom, of people, of the world with all its temptations and all that it has to offer, of our own selves with its endless desires. Freedom.

ظنّي بالأساس الذي تقوم عليه القوة الحقّة لبشرٍ خُلِقَ ضعيفًا، أنها هي العبودية الحقّة لله. 

The chaos of my mind when I struggle to remind myself that it's the right thing is shushed by the peace at heart. 

This is home. 

His pleasure is above it all.

رضا الله و كفى. 

رجلا سلما لرجل.

الحمدلله. 

الحمدلله.

لك الحمد، الحكيم العليم اللطيف. 

رضيت بالله ربا. رضيت. 

Never Land Exists (?)

On July 22nd, 2014, my mind, for the first time, acknowledged the fact that heaven actually, truly, technically,  legitimately exists.
I, for the first time, realized that all this time my mind never actually saw it as a reality.
I discovered something that shook my grounds, and changed how I view my life, forever.

I realized how we treat Jannah as sighed upon wish, a far away dream, not really as something that
we reach for.

Pursuing my own dreams throughout life has taught me that the mere change of thought from wish to goal can change everything.
And I wondered why do we treat Jannah the way we do.
Why isn't it a goal ?

An easy example here; when someone wants to lose weight, you can 90% guess if they'll be able to do it or not from the way they speak of it, and consequently view it in their minds, true?
If you noticed they were speaking of it as something in the far far future, or something that they still don't quite figure out how they'll reach it, you kinda get an idea about how serious they are about it (which isn't so serious).
But when someone else views it in a series of steps to be taken, hardships to be met, resources of perseverance and motivation that are needed to be found, you know then that it's on with that person.
Same concept.

That realization freaked me out a little.
I went through an existential crises for a couple of months or so.
Life seemed so different. And although everything was fine, nothing felt right.
I couldn't treat life the same anymore.
And nothing had a taste, and there was so much anxiety.
It was as if I knew I was in a transitional area, yet I was completely blind, not knowing where I was going.
I then realized I'd be needing to make my mind used to the fact that, just like with any other goal, there must be trust. Trusting the end result.
And there must be bravery. Any goal you stick to needs bravery.
To face yourself and others.
To say no when you need to. To explain why you said it, even though you'll be seen as a weirdo.
To be aware that you might be alone on the path you've chosen.
And finally acceptance.
That you'll chicken out sometimes.
That you'll get hurt.
And that it might never get easier.
And as they say, it never gets easier, you just get stronger.

Medicine: the horrible things in books are real

So 2 weeks ago I finished my internal medicine rotation, which is the time where I had to learn how to know what's wrong with someone by asking them the right questions and using my hands and cool doctor tools.
Everyone said it's the most important part of med school.

It was the first time where we actually saw everything we have been studying for two years.
First time where we dealt with souls.
I found it fascinating for some reason to actually see what I had studied in books, to see it real in front of me, to touch it and examine it, to discuss it with my friends and to tell everyone about how amazing it is.
I remember the first time I saw splenomegaly (a large spleen), I almost flew with excitement.

This act of finding out with your mind and your hands and cool tools (the cool tools are the best part) how to help someone go back to their normal life, it's beautiful.
Every day felt like an adventure. Everyday was new and exciting and full of amusement and wonder.
My days were made by signs I saw for the first time.
Hearing, seeing, or feeling abnormalities made me happy, which is twisted actually.
To be so thrilled when finding an abnormality in a person.. that's not very nice. But I just couldn't help it!
I found it hard at first to hide the thrill in me in front of the poor patient.

And I think it's either I got too thrilled or too stressed, or a mix of both, to a point where it overwhelmed me.
I wasn't aware of almost anything around me, my whole concentration being on what I had to do with patients and what I had study about what I saw in these patients.
Everything else was a haze.
No really. Looking back, everything seems hazy.
I was so unaware that I unintentionally allowed a gap to grow between me and a close friend.
And it still surprises me how I let that happen, how I was too busy to notice such a thing.
As exciting as it was, it was the most stressful and hectic time of my entire life.
So hectic that I basically turned myself into a machine without even knowing it.
I let the pressure of having to excel medicine push me beyond my limits.
I reached a point where I couldn't sleep. Never has that happened in my entire life.

I remember in the nights when I couldn't sleep, the only thing that kept me sane was the acceptance.
The acceptance that I was human, that I was weaker than I imagine, and that it's okay for things to go out of control.
Whenever my mind would start to panic about how screwed my situation was, I would remind myself of that, and that's how I managed not to lose my mind.
I noticed the hours before fajr pass quickly.
And I noticed how easy it is to forget how helpless we really are.

So this was about my first step into the clinical life.
Do I regret it ?
Not really.
Mistakes are important to teach us things that we would never forget.
And plus, maybe this insane stress was what I needed to fuel my way through.






 

 

Shantaram

Shantaram, the name of the book I'm reading and falling in love with.
I decided to write about a part of it that had touched my heart, brought me goose bumps and made me tear up.
The author of Shantaram tells his own story in the book. He's a robber and a heroin addict who escaped from an Australian prison to India, where he lived in a Bombay slum.
Sounds crazy right ?

Gregory (the author) had written the book three times before he was able to publish it. Every time he wrote it, in prison, the guards would throw it away. But he would rewrite it, nevertheless. Now doesn't that make you feel how much it's worth the read.
It's really touching.

Gregory, being a man who lived his entire life on the run, drenched in fear, hostility, and menace, tells his story of transformation, when he is touched by the gentleness and kindness of the Indian people.
During his stay in India, he had spent a few months in a village. There, the simple villagers know nothing of criminals and fugitives, and so they treated him as a peaceful man.
And that, he says, had given him the chance to reinvent himself, to become the man he's always wanted to become.

The part of the story I'm telling you about is when the monsoon season comes on the village, and the rain is very heavy. Lin (Gregory's name that is given to him by the Indians), who is washing his clothes at the river while it rained, notices the river is overflowing and fears it will flood the whole village.
Distressed, he runs to the villagers trying to warn them. But to his surprise, the villagers just laugh at him and try to soothe him. Prabaker (Gregory's guide in India, who becomes his close friend) takes him back to the river, and explains to him how they know that the river will not flood.

Prabaker point to a few wooden sticks hammered to the ground at different places.
“You see those sticks, Lin. Those sticks are the flood-game sticks." said Prabaker.
He explaines that the wooden stakes are part of a flood-game that is played every year. The oldest (wisest) men in the village, and six lottery winners, are given the chance to predict the point to which the river would rise. Each wooden stick, with its flag of yellow silk, represents a best guess.
”But ... how do you know that the river won't rise past this point?” asks Lin.
”We are here a long time, Lin. Sunder village has been in this place for two thousands of years. Everybody knows where the river will stop, Lin.” Explains Prabaker.
Gregory writes of how back then, at that moment he was thinking of another kind of river:
"..one that runs through every one of us, no matter where we come from, all over the world. It's the river of the heart, and the heart's desire. It's the pure, essential truth of what each one of us is, and can
achieve."
On the very day that Lin learned about the wooden stakes of the flood-game, Prabaker's mother (whom Lin had befriended) had told him that she'd decided to give him a new name. She, and the village's people, had judged his nature to be blessed with peaceful happiness. They had agreed with her choice for his first name. It was Shantaram, which means man of peace, or man of God's peace.

HERE COMES THE BEST PART *sobs*

Gregory writes:
"They nailed their stakes into the earth of my life, those farmers. They knew the place in me where the river stopped, and they marked it with a new name. Shantaram. 
I don't know if they found that name in the heart of the man they believed me to be, or if they planted it there, like a wishing tree, to bloom and grow. (*beat beat*)
Whatever the case, whether they discovered that peace or created it, the truth is that the man I am was born in those moments, as I stood near the flood sticks with my face lifted to the chrismal rain."

*cries*
It's too beautiful, I actually got real tears when I read this part.
I really loved how the author came up with this amazing metaphor from the real events at the village. And how it applies to all of us.
Everyone of us has this one person(s) who knows where the river in us stops, and they love us regardless of how far it can go.
When the river rises, they don't panic, they don't fear its flood. They know too well where it can reach.
They accept us as we are.

I hope this fills your heart with joy juice as much as it did mine.
Have a good week, readers.

Good Stories Change Lives

Ridiculous title, no ?
I used to think so, too.
It is only recently that I have been convinced otherwise.

If you do what I do, and you like to take your time reading your books, to really delve into them, live with them a good three weeks or a month, or even more, you will understand. And even if you were a fast reader, you'll still get what I'm trying to say.
Once you start bonding with a book, and your life and its story start to intertwine, something, a very small thing, changes.
The way you see your life starts to get affected, even if in a very slight way.
The book's reflections, ups and downs, characters, twists, and morals all start to do stuff in the back of your head, and that, whether you like it or not, does affect you.
I've read a psychology book once, and it was talking about studies that have been made that prove that what people read can affect how they think or how they perform on a specific test (short term effect).
But I think that even on the long term, when you have lived in the sphere of your book for some time,  when you change the way you think, take on a new perspective, you're bound to be left with something, even if little traces that might seem like nothing to you. Over time you get to gather traces that can pile up and build a beautiful thing inside.
Or an ugly thing.

So yes, I believe that good stories can change lives, by slightly and slowly changing minds. Not drastic change, yes, but still. Changing the ideas of those around you is a powerful thing to do.
"Ideas are bullet proof.", right ?
I dream to write a mind-changing book one day, inshaAlla. 

My First Epiphany

So I had an epiphany (n,: a manifestation of a devine or supernatural thing.)
(I only learned its meaning soon)
I think people misuse the term, but hey it sounds cool, so I'm using it.

It was a vision. It was so clear, seconds of clear futuristic scenes.
I saw myself, later on; people talking about my "book", and how it was about the gores and hidden stories and the hardships of being a doctor.
And you might think it's a normal thing to have such a vision, but let me tell you why it's NOT. Living in a Saudi society is crippling. Yep. News flash? Not really.
Before entering med school, I've been warned many times about how i'd lose my life, my entity, my love for everything there is, my femininity, how I wont get to live a normal life, I won't get a man to marry me, I'll lose my hair color, wrinkle up, and I would want to crawl into a hole and die. Yeah. It was that bad of an effect.
I won't deny the fact that I was affected by all that shit. Not actually believed it right away, but it had seeped into my unconsciousness and stayed there, surrounding me with fear without me realizing it.
But as I passed my two first years in med school, I realized (and I hope it would be the last time that I would ever need to be reminded by this obvious damn realiztion):
DONT LISTEN TO WHAT PEOPLE TELL YOU.
You are you and they are they.
Wish I could thoroughly explain to you in a blog post how many times I've realized how stupid I was for believing what people told me, but there is definitely not enough space for that., and it's not something you would grasp by people telling you about it, but rather by you living it fully.
SO. the point is, the vision was not ordinary.
The vision was so clear, close, realisitic and possible!
If I have had it months ago, I would have been kept back from lingering on it by the unconscious feedings of the unconscious fear.
I have a talent (yes, I do) that probably most medical students would have dumped pursuing (judging from what I've seen around me). Going after the passionate speakings of one's mind and writing them beautifully.
It's especially hard when your mind decides to go all poetic on you while you are studying neurology for example, and you have to just stop, grab a paper, and let the words flow. Otherwise, you could miss a beautifully written piece, if you decide to postpone it or ignore it.
Fresh words, and fresh words only.
 If my colleagues knew what I did, they would probably call me crazy.
"Aint no body got time for dat."- the typical med student's response to almost anything IN LIFE.

Entering med school has helped me find my courage to nurture aspects in me, because I had been "taught" that I was bound to lose them. And I decided that I would not allow that to happen.
So I held on to myself. I wouldn't allow anything to take me from me, not even medical school.

So I saw myself; a doctor who decides to get her voice out and heard. With beautiful words that touch hearts and change the minds.
Yes, I saw that and I saw it coming close.
And that epiphany probably wouldn't have come if it weren't for my amazing friends and family, with their feedback on my writings. They really lift me up and get me flying up in the air.
Truly blessed.