Refuge

This one goes out to my brothas and sistas.

It’s possible, at times, to see and feel nothing but the cruelty of the world. It’s possible to feel alone and vulnerable. It’s possible to feel cornered. It’s possible to feel like there is no way out.

The worst one is feeling like there is no one to turn to, no one who will understand, and no one who can help.

The best solution to this sort of problem is friends you didn’t even know you had swooping in over stale coffee at 2 a.m. to say, “I’m here. Whatever you need, I’m down. Period.”

I know people who have gone through one, or a series, of bad experiences that would tend to bias a person against some category of people: women, men, some culture, etc. I suppose that it’s tempting to write off the category altogether. I hate men. I hate women. I will never have a _____ mother-in-law. All _____ people want is ______, so I won’t talk to them.

I’ve never fallen that far into my distrust. If anything, if I find that the experiences that cause me to feel vulnerable only endear good people to me more. What would it mean to have good people, if there weren’t any bad ones from whom we needed refuge? Sometimes the best thing a person can do is step up when they’re needed. And the need would never arise without an offending party.

Still, it’s horrific to say: I need you. We really like to feel independent. Perhaps it’s a post-feminism thing. Maybe it’s just my personality. I’ve never thought of myself as reserved, but I recently gave someone the impression that I was – and maybe this is where that comes from. I’m always willing to express a thought, but I’m far more reluctant to say something that might lead to my disappointment. And what could be more devastating than someone refusing to help when you really need it? We’re not sure who is trustworthy – but in a moment of crisis, the line is drawn between  friends and acquaintances. You’re hoping the person in front of you will say, “Yes, of course I’ll do thus-and-such.” But you’re fearing that you’ll hear, “Sorry, I’m just not sure I can help.” There are some people with whom these requests are not problematic: family, best friends. But if none of those people can help – if they want to, but are unable – if they can’t understand – it’s really harrowing to have to go to someone new and untried with a need that must be met. Some things can be weathered. Some things are tough. And some things need to be fixed, and they need to be fixed now.

And that’s where beauty and mercy come in. And how wonderful it is when they do.

It is amazing to me that we fashion these little interdependent communities with each other, and are able to be there for one another, in affection, in mercy, for the sake of God. Because so many of us live far away from our families. So many of us are new in town. So many of us have so many different wants and needs, and for so many of us, it comes down to trusting in God. Sometimes faith in humanity is not enough. Sometimes we lose that – but we are able to turn to God and beg for His mercy, even when we have nothing else, even when we see nothing on the horizon. And He sends these people to us, these brothers and sisters, who can fulfill our needs and fill us with boundless gratitude and wonder at the mercy of people, and their capacity to love and be just – when we were lately so despondent, so distrusting.

Muslims call each other brother and sister. It’s taken on new meaning to me now – and that’s not thanks enough – it never will be – but I hope that for tonight, it will suffice.

Pet self

Lemme tell you something about white people:

We have more spiritual impediments than everybody except politicians.

Now before I insult some really nice, pure-hearted white person, let me explain myself.

We’re not raised right. This is my thesis. We’re not raised right in this country (perhaps I should expand beyond the whites here; still, if Islam has taught me anything about culture, it’s that we white people have more of a cultural identity than I had previously thought, in my whitewashed existence. And God knows best).

We’re raised – and by we, I mean, of course, I – to believe primarily in the self. To begin with, we’re raised in small families. Mine is fairly giant by today’s standards, with a whopping six members in our nuclear unit alone! But even so, I grew up not sharing a bedroom, or a plate, or a doll, or much of anything besides the dog. And to think, I criticized only children for being naturally selfish. God forgive me. If only they could see me now, with more pet peeves than Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets.

The four kids in my family had wide-ranging interests that sent my mother into a carpooling frenzy for an untold number of her middle years. God bless her. My two older siblings went to boarding school while my brother and I (who are much closer in age) were still quite young. But we two kept our parents busy shuttling us from soccer to hockey to piano to ballet to gymnastics, and then, as a result, to the orthopedic surgeon for a number of dislocated years. And by we, I mean, of course, I.

In school, I was naturally competitive, and was further encouraged in the trait by my teachers. I spoke out in class, a surprisingly dedicated and feisty feminist of twelve. I aced math and science exams, and excelled in just about anything I could get my hands on, except – you guessed it – team sports. Dance was my thing. Very individual. Also very cooperative. It has that tasty balance of trust and love for your fellow dancers, and beauty-body-talent-skill-flexibility-grace feuding every night of the week. Delicious.

My parents, in loving support, told me, You can be anything. Anything, indeed? Yes, darling, anything. The world is your oyster.

Ah. There’s the rub.

See, I’m a girl, and a member of one of the first generations raised in the aftermath of the feminist movement – equality is a female president, and women eating the corporate food chain like chocolate, baby! - so it’s understandable, it’s expected, and it was very kindly meant by everyone who said it, hinted at it, or spoonfed it to us in one way or another.

With such assurances, high school trained up my arrogance and selfishness very well, and I planned on going on to college and, after a brilliant thesis, changing the world. But it wasn’t all bad. My adolescent self was a tad self-serving, but not evil. I had a good heart in there somewhere, however fatally arrogant and self-centered I was. I cared about people, participated in causes, protested Bush’s first ascent to Washington like a good little liberal, and cooperated with my fellow theater enthusiasts in putting on shows.

But it was still my oyster, and I didn’t like sharing. I didn’t deal with disappointment well, and to a certain degree I still don’t. Under a kindly facade, I liked things just so. I might not say so, really – I was brought up too well for that – but I resented every imagined and real affront and nursed it in my heart like a baby seal or something. I’ve spent my twenties trying to train this out of myself, in fits of grumbling, self-censured bitterness.

The problem with ‘the world is your oyster,’ besides becoming a serious spiritual handicap after too many years, is roommates. Wait no, let’s revise that – any relationship at all. Teacher-student, friendship, sibling, cousins, uncles, you name it. According to the doctrine of ‘the world is your oyster,’ all these people are, in peeved moments, are obstacles lying in the way of us having everything the way we like it, the way we left it, or how it ought to be. And then we have to bite our tongues – perhaps, in the process, building mountains of barely-concealed ill will in our psyches, or risk seriously offending people we actually care about very much, under our festering resentment.

The problem with crowning individualism is that the people who live out solitary lives are actually devastatingly lonely. Sex in the City is painful to watch even if it doesn’t make your moral hairs stand on end. Because the oppressive, fashionably-clad loneliness is stifling. And it’s real. Those characters are fictional, but there are a lot of people close to forty, and forty, and beyond, out there who are still single – and I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the reasons is that we just can’t live together gracefully. We’ve got too many doggone ways.

Tricky. Very tricky.

I had a revelation the other day. It’s very obvious, and very sad that it took me this long to see it exactly in this way. (Someone like my lovely sister-in-law, God bless her, who was raised around numerous family members she was taught to serve selflessly out of love, no questions asked, would, I imagine, smack me playfully for my shameful white stupidity.) So here it is: all those people that bug me, in their very tiny and harmless ways – it’s not them that is bothering me. They’re not the problem, and whatever it is that they’re doing that is like nails on a chalkboard is not the problem either. My feelings of having been slighted, my taking it personally, and my annoyance – those are the problems. If someone else leaves a mess, say, I can clean it up – either doing it because it’s the nice thing to do, and I should place myself at the service of others whenever I can, because therein lies the spiritual path, or with a black and angry heart that only gets blacker and angrier with every wiped up crumb.

Now I’m wondering why I’ve consigned myself to such torture. For Pete’s sake, woman, clean up the freaking mess and be done with it!

…I just want to submit, briefly, that I’m not maligning the idea of equality between the sexes. I do think that the Western version of the idea is, frankly, bizarre – please see Martha Stewart and Britney Spears for further reference – but I’m not suggesting that men are better than women. What I mean to hint at here is that in the fifties, maybe American men were a little selfish and a little hard on their wives – prompting many “mysterious” depressions and The Feminine Mystique, among others. But the “feminist” solution was not to tell the men to be less selfish – it was to tell the women to be equally as selfish as the men. So instead of fighting over equal rights to education, we find ourselves bickering over whose night it is to cook or whose turn it is to take out the trash – and God forbid that either party would lovingly budge and actually try to do extra. Which leaves us in our current quandary of either being resentfully yet lovingly attached, or serenely yet lonesomely single. No dice, if you’re asking this white girl.

Between obscurity and notoriety

I once had a conversation with someone who didn’t write a book because he wasn’t sure that his intentions were pure.

Wow, I thought. Not me. Fear of renown has not scared me off anything – but perhaps it ought to.

Sincerity is something, perhaps oddly, perhaps normally, that I find elusive. I don’t know how to put my finger on it. And the lack of knowing plagues me. I’m trudging ahead, doing what I do, feeling as I feel, without much self-editing. I wonder if it’s time to take a step back and check myself.

Usually, when faced with the dilemma of my own sincerity, I simply pray for it. I’m not sure how much more I can manage. I even cringe away from uttering things like “Oh Lord, you know that I did such and such for Your sake alone” even when I am alone in prayer. I am afraid of myself, and afraid of the One Who created me and knows me better than I know myself. What if I have told myself a pretty and convenient lie? What if I told myself that, for instance, I started this blog for the sake of God alone, and what if, underlying that, even stronger than that, a love of praise and desire for recognition drove me to it? How would I know? Not knowing, I am inclined to think that baser things drive my actions – hoping, all the while, that I am wrong, and if not, that God will forgive me and improve me. And who am I to say what I meant by this or that? The more important something is to me, the more various my attractions to it. I feel that to to identify one driving force for something so important, so personal, and so inevitable as my writing would be to deny the complexity of my humanity. Right now, anyway. I am not so good, I am not so pure, and I am afraid of such self-assured declarations.

Do we totally understand our own selves?

Something may remain painfully unclear to a person for months or years that is plain as day to his peers and family. Alcoholics deny their alcoholism. Cumpulsive gamblers tell themselves, “I can stop whenever I want.” Am I any different – are any of us any different? If I understood the most inner, deepest motivations I have for all of my actions, and could identify them immediately, wouldn’t it be easier to rid my heart of its imperfections? Isn’t part of the insidiousness of sin that we sometimes don’t know it’s there?

The Qur’an calls those who deny belief, even while they hold it somewhere deep in their beings, “blind”. With honesty, and admission of that belief, there comes sight. “The likeness of the two parties is as the blind and the deaf and the seeing and the hearing: are they equal in condition? Will you not then mind?” [11:24] But I am more inclined to think that this phenomenon happens in gradations. Among the believers, the seers and hearers, some are undeniably better people and more committed to their faith. So I shy away from stark dichotomies. Is it right to think that because I see with the eyes of a believer, my spiritual sight is 20/20? I feel as though I am still waking up to the world, and things are revealed to me slowly, as I grow. With time, I am learning to polish the glasses of belief, and things that were vague in the distance a year ago become clear, and yet more things remain farther, beyond my reach, but between me and the horizon. I see myself for what I am through experience as it unfolds; it was not all done with a thunderclap the moment I became honest with myself and sighed, Yes, I am a Muslim.

So am I sincere? Am I sincere in all the ways I should be, in writing, in waking up in the morning, in the friendly exchanges I have with my fellow Muslims and my fellow Americans? I don’t think so. But I’m not sure if that is reason enough to stop.

I was raised in the theater – as a dancer, then as a singer, then as an actor. Then as a writer and director. I haven’t been involved in theatrical projects per se since graduating, but I believe that it would be foolish – just plain stupid – for me to say that the exhibitionism that drove my involvement in those things from the age of three does not now play a part in what I do, or attempt to do, publicly. The sound of applause was familiar to me from an early age – the smiling faces, the admiration, the feeling that I am real because these people see me. Or: I have done something, because they have witnessed it. I did not imagine my life. Did those feelings of comfort die two and a half years ago, because I began along a spiritual path? No. Surely not. And this is not my theory; I know it. If I write something and receive a compliment, when I blush and smile at it, it is twofold: I’m enjoying the praise, and censuring myself for basking in it.

Part of the reason, I believe, that I became a Muslim, was a recognition that all of the applause was transitory, illusory, and ultimately meaningless. The older performers I knew behaved, with some very notable exceptions, like overgrown, grayed toddlers. Unable to stop themselves, they threw embarrassing, diva-esque tantrums, and then recovered themselves as if nothing had happened. The rest of us, who were younger, less acknowledged, and only partially infected by the same need for attention, were left to feel ashamed for them. I dreaded becoming that – so I sought a forum for my heart that was richer than the stage.

Still, fleeing from something does not equal being freed from it.

Jane Austen asserts something very simple and very remarkable that I believe we learned to ignore by the time I showed up in the 1980’s (and perhaps long before that, too). In Mansfield Park, when Henry Crawford proposes to Fanny, and she refuses him, she explains herself by saying, “I do not trust him. Like many charming people, his enjoyment lies chiefly in the admiration of others. His sole interest is in being loved; not in loving.”

The problem with rushing to praise is that she is a fickle lover. Sometimes the truth will gain you some of people’s love; sometimes it will gain you hatred, insult, and pain. Perhaps living in a democracy, we’ve been trained out of the idea that truth is not arrived at by consensus. Truth is sometimes unpopular. Lest we forget it, the struggles of our dear and beloved Prophet (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him) remind us – so too the persecution of Galileo – or more recently, those valiant champions of the Civil Rights movement: Martin Luther King, Jr. and our blessed brother Malcolm X, may God have mercy on him.

The danger of love of praise is that we will pander. That with time, and addiction to admiration, we will begin to edit out those things we may have been previously committed to, but may not be popular with the masses. We water down whatever it is we wanted to convey, and excuse the adulteration in the name of wider dissemination, or slow introduction, or any other number of things. It is a very dangerous temptation, it is a very slippery slope, and it faces everyone with something to say and some sort of public face. The tide of popularity carries our souls away with it – poor Britney is the saddest testament to this. What she began trying to do, and what she has actually done – it would take a true cynic, I believe, to deny that the aim and the reality have parted ways for that poor woman.

And yet, despite all the danger that lies in making any part of one’s self public, we seemed to be called to act. It does not take a rocket scientist to look at the world and see that the forces of good, righteousness and truth aren’t exactly running the show. And who will speak out for justice? Who will stand for something other than profit, or sex, or the profit of sex?

As afraid as I am of myself, I get lost in feeling a crushing love for all the world, and a responsibility…to try…to do something. Something. Something not toting the line of meaninglessness, of greed, of celebrity-obsessed ingratiation. Something that supports the idea that there is more to the world than accumulating as much of it as possible, more even than doing no harm, more even than helping one’s fellow.

Someone asked me recently why I write. Glory be to God, I thought, why do I write, indeed? I was overwhelmed with my own self-ignorance, my lack of certainty in my intentions, and also with my love of my family and friends, my feeling for their hearts, and my desire to bestow upon them whatever I may have that is good. I write because I must. I write because I am obsessed with the memory of myself three years ago, and what scared me, and what inspired me, and I write to that girl: I write to console her. I write because

‘This is my letter to the World/That never wrote to Me –’

Because I need something, because I myself, feeling misunderstood, want to at least be able to say that I made an effort to be understood – whether or not it works is up to God. I write because I did not understand Muslims, and now I do. I write in the belief that I’m part of a group of people at least attempting to bridge the gap between Muslims and Americans – or attempting to expose the assumption that there is some contradiction between those identities is false. Because when I’m talking to someone, trying to say, “I’m American, I’m a patriot,” and they’re very busy telling me, “You’re Muslim, you’re different, you’re making life difficult for yourself, you crazy! You gave up your White Card,” I drive home feeling despondent, and only working against that tide will soothe me.

I write because I love reading, and want to read something I can relate to. I write because I meet wonderful people, and love them, and feel I’ve been blessed with this most beautiful faith, and on the off chance that it is something that will touch someone else’s heart in the way it has touched mine, I want to say to those people: It’s scary as all hell, but it does turn out okay. I write to remind myself of things I’ve forgotten. I write for the friends who encourage me. I write because my heart is bursting with love for God, and I can’t keep it in anymore.

I don’t know if I would be better off if I was more guarded, or more private. But I’ve never been secretive about much – either before or after becoming Muslim. I suppose it’s my personality – which doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing – so I can’t, won’t, and don’t defend my own sincerity. That’s not what this is about. I pray for it – I ask you to pray for it, especially if you’ve found something here that you feel has benefited you. God alone knows my heart, and putting it – and this, and all I do – in His hands is the most I can manage right now. It may be that I change my mind later, and that would be alright.

In the end, I’m hoping that there is something in here worth saying. I’m hoping there’s a point. I’m hoping that the best of what I have to offer comes out, and that this isn’t, deep down in the cockles of my heart, an attempt for popularity. How sad I would be, if that were the case. How disappointed I would be in myself.

We take refuge in God from sharing with Him anything in our worship knowing of it, and we ask His forgiveness for what we share with Him without being aware of it.

May God protect my heart, and yours, and grant us freedom from wanting that which can bring no gain. May we all have the best of intentions in all of our actions, and may He reward us according to that which is most noble in our hearts. May He correct, in His mercy, what is wrong with us, and help us to guide each other in love. Amen.

Pinch

I dreamt that I went to Easter at Grandma’s, and didn’t poke anyone with the pins on my hijab as I hugged them. Nobody said “Oops, you got me right in the eye,” and nobody cackled too loud in response. I didn’t blush.

I went to Easter, and my grandfather said he would go see the doctor, and didn’t smoke any cigarettes, and wasn’t out of breath.

Nobody told me she had a dream that I wasn’t wearing my scarf, and how wonderful it was to see my hair. Nobody told me that wearing the hijab is like going to a Muslim country wearing a giant gold cross. Nobody said that it is cultural and not religious, and nobody said it didn’t matter. Nobody told me that I’d never get hired again if I didn’t take it off. Nobody told me nicely, in so many words, that I make everyone uncomfortable. Nobody said it was “food for thought”.

Nobody told me I think too hard about prejudice.

Nobody sold guns for a living. Nobody said they don’t believe in global warming.

Nobody told me what a shame it was that I didn’t go to medical school. They didn’t ask me why I had switched fields. They thought it made sense that I want to be a writer, and encouraged me.

When I gave someone a page from my novel, he said he liked it, and wanted to read more.

When I said that I had been hired to write for a magazine, they asked, “which one?” and asked for a reminder email. When I told them I had a blog, they asked for the address.

My fifteen-year-old cousin didn’t say that she never wants to get married. In response, I didn’t think: You haven’t lived alone in the world.

I didn’t serve pork.

I enjoyed playing dice games as much as everyone else, and didn’t wonder if it constituted gambling. I wanted to win and felt bonded by mutual enjoyment to the family members sitting around the table. When I looked around, I felt we shared more than a certain similarity about the forehead, eyebrows and lips. I looked down at the penny with which I played our game and thought we were a true manifestation of the hope stamped there: E pluribus unum.

When we left, no one avoided my head so that I wouldn’t stab her with my pins, and I hadn’t checked to make sure the ends were tucked on the inside five times. I wasn’t obsessed by the idea that I had upset my only aunt who never gets upset by hopefully insisting that some Americans wouldn’t mind my working for them, and that I don’t necessarily alienate everyone. When I told her I came from two communities: WASP and Muslim, I felt at home in both. I was sorry to go. I felt connected.

I didn’t fear that I had offended anyone by trying to worship God. And the way I try didn’t scare anyone at all.

One thousand words

All students attending Harvard College between the years of 1941 and 1945 were given a very special assignment that, as far as I know, no other college has ever required of any other student at any other time.

One thousand words a day, on anything, to be turned into a box in the President’s office.

The box was dumped into an incinerator every day. The students doing the writing did not know this; in fact, no one even knew the purpose of the assignment until much later, when an alumnus asked.

The theory behind the assignment was that writing is not a gift, but a skill. And like so many other things, it must be honed, and improves with practice. The mind, with use, becomes supple, like a muscle that is stretched every day.

Turns out that these students contributed more to American literature than any other group in history. Bamn. How’s that for practice making perfect?

It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that we can’t excel in things that we do not do. And also that improvement comes with practice. And yet this is the only experiment of this kind that there is. I wonder why. Why don’t all colleges take up this practice, knowing what it can do? It’s amazing to me. No one read those pages. They were a secret. They didn’t get graded, commented on, and handed back. There was no critical element. And yet those pages, lost to us forever, of which there remains no evidence today, appear to have made all the difference.

It is not unlike prayer.

I’ve often been disheartened because I don’t always feel what I believe I’m supposed to during my prayers. I don’t concentrate as well as I feel I should. I don’t feel deeply the significance of every bow and prostration, despite the fact that I spend a lot of time outside of my prayer thinking about what makes these things profound. But maybe that’s not entirely the point. Maybe I’m not supposed to have arrived yet. Maybe I’m being prepared by practice – by a practice that, often, no one sees and there is no evidence of. When I pray the afternoon prayer by myself, I can hold up no proof later. It’s a secret between myself and God. But it is wrong to assume that there are no repercussions to a habit that, however imperfect, is consistent.

Non-Muslims are sometimes critical of the literalness of the prayer. Five times a day, at particular times, in a formulaic way. Seems as though it might go without being heartfelt. And what is a connection to God if not heartfelt? What is the point of a prayer that issues from adherence to a timetable, not from your toes?

Valid questions – but I believe there is significance to the fact that Islam asks of us this simple, regular routine. Anyone can perform the prayer; the movements can be altered for the sick, handicapped or injured. It is ground zero, step one. Islam would not have succeeded as such a widespread religion if it asked something extraordinary from the get-go. It doesn’t. It does not ask major contributions to the field of American literature. It asks for one thousand words a day, on anything, that will be thrown into the incinerator.

I derive great hope from the idea that prayer, like writing, is a skill that improves with practice, because I do feel dissatisfied with my prayer, my character, and my heart. I wish for these things to improve, but so often get lost in the how. Maybe the answer was right in front of me the whole time. God tells us: pray, and your prayer will improve. Call on Me, and your call will improve. Bow to Me, and your bow will improve. Until finally, we feel these things as we ought. When we say, Allahu Akbar, God is Greatest, eventually, we will feel in our hearts that He is Greatest. The tremor of this truth will ping along every cell in our bodies, because we have told it to ourselves so many times. It is like language immersion. You go around thinking everything is meaningless until one day you recognize one word. One meaning. And then another word. And eventually everything takes on meaning. God is organizing our lives for us so that our religion will take on real meaning; it is not something we declare, and then leave to atrophy. It is something we stretch, and polish, and build on. We’re not graded on day one. It doesn’t matter where we start; it matters where we end up. Here is the way to get where you want to go: prostration, five times a day.

I don’t mean to say that these rewards will come with only adherence to the letter on our part. If we pray our prayers, but regard the practice as meaningless and routine, without end and without purpose, we can’t hope to reap the same rewards of a person praying with the intention to improve. I can write “the” one thousand times on a sheet of paper every day, but if at the end of four years I am not a better writer, well, what did I think would happen? Spiritless participation will never be the same as sincere striving. But even so, even so. When we are working on sincerity itself – there is hope, there is a system, and there is wisdom at work behind it that we cannot hope to grasp. Perhaps it is enough to have faith that God’s wisdom is in every prayer, even when we feel ourselves lacking. That there is meaningful experience accumulating, even if we lose track of our own progress. The blessings we accumulate may visit us much later in life, or even after death – just because we don’t see immediate benefits to something small does not mean that there is not something magnificent at work.

Glory be to God, Who made it mandatory! May we improve by the system He has so wisely laid out, and become a generation of great contributors to faith and life.

I stand corrected.

The only thing I could think of, as is often the case with me, was a line from one of my favorite movies:

“Your words shamed me.”

[note: I admit additional shame for another reason entirely. Brazen Jane Austen fan that I am, I do not know, off the top of my head, if the line is taken unadulterated from her prose, or if it was reworded for the script. For shame, you say. I know.]

Someone has corrected me, and I believe it is of some note. A few posts ago, I was talking about fantasy, and the remarkable ability to see through a religious fantasy as it is envisioned. The remarkable part being that it requires no one else’s permission. That once a heart desires the spiritual life, it is, in many ways, already living it. No bars stand between the sincere heart and God.

This person was very right in pointing out that a relationship with the Divine requires the permission of the Divine.

As I understand it, there is some debate in Christian theology on free will. It is a problem. In other words, God gave humans free will – but knows what we will choose. So….isn’t that, like, not free will? Isn’t that predestination?

I am very fond of the Islamic approach to this problem, which I find very straightforward and not at all logically problematic. Basically, we are taught that God made us, and knows what we will choose, but that our choices are very real to us in the time that we make them. Parents often know their children well enough to predict their choices; a Creator’s knowledge of His creation is infinitely greater. It gives me a sense of comfort, actually – that God is, in a sense with me in my choices, in that He knows what I am faced with, knows my heart, knows what is hard for me, and, ultimately, knows what I will choose. It also gives me a source of help in difficulty. I pray: Oh God, You made me, and You know this is hard for me, and You know best why it it hard for me. Grant me success in this, and give me the wisdom and steadfastness to choose, and stick by, the right thing.

When I chose Islam, nothing stood between me and that choice. It’s not like being admitted into your dream graduate program, in that you can try and fail. Of course, in extreme cases, there may be practical bars to declaring faith. One may feel afraid; one’s family may forbid one, in all the ways it is able, to change faiths. But Allah knows what is in the breasts. [3:154] Whatever your state is with God, it is between you and Him, and that is all. No one can take it from you. Faith, like love, is really one of the great secrets of the heart. We can look for its outward manifestations, but as to its strength and sincerity, we can never know what truly lies in the breast of another. God knows best.

So when I say that we have complete autonomy in faith, this isn’t exactly what I mean. I mean that our hearts, created with love, compassion, and infinite wisdom, belong also to their Creator, and that it must be so, and that He guides us according to that wisdom. That it is always there. The hint is ever-present, that there is more to all this, that we might feel more satisfaction in beholding a cloud, or the full moon in a clear sky. That we might say, Subhan’Allah, Glory be to God, instead of, Wow, pretty moon. And that saying it will make a difference to our hearts. That we will be free, that the ability to say that, and the knowledge to say it, will be the dearest thing in all the world, and the things that harm us thereafter will be mere pinpricks in comparison to the pain of separation from The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful. I believe that nudge is there. It is all the other noise that gets in the way, convincing us that we are dreaming, or that our own importance is all that matters in a void of meaning. That what we can see and point to is all that is there. Pretty moon.

One of my favorite prayers begins, “Oh God, Oh Changer of the hearts…” When my heart began to desire God, and began, as a consequence, to desire Islam…I was making the choice: am I really going to do this? But even that was gently guided by The Compeller, unbeknownst to me. Even the longing was put there in mercy. How could I claim that my heart is independent? It is like that pot of tea over there insisting it is the master of its own fate.

I like to think that I don’t belong completely to myself. I feel safe, cared for, less lonely. I love thinking that God made me for a purpose, and that it is to worship Him, and that my sincerest, dearest desire is perfectly in line with what I was intended for. Of course I bungle it all the time. I feel this way when I sit and reflect, or when I pray. But in my day-to-day life, my mistakes are much the same as they ever were, and I make and remake the intention to improve myself, even as I make excuses for my sins and tell myself, This is the last time. May God forgive and guide me!

The thing about turning to God, I think, is that it can be done by the hardest heart, by the darkest sinner, at any time. He always hears that call. As long as we are breathing, the chance to begin completely anew is there. It is unlike any other relationship, because there is no limit to God’s forgiveness. And this is also what I mean. Going to your lover requires his welcome, his trust, his open arms; misuse these, and you may find yourself alone. Lovers hold each other accountable. Even a kind person, abused enough, will eventually respond to overtures of sincerity with: I can’t. But not if God is The Beloved. He is independent of need, unlike any other kind of love object, so He is limitless in His ability to hear us say: I’m sorry. Take me back.

The wisdom of fools.

I’ve been neglecting my writing. Last week, I had the excuse of a midterm. This week, I am ashamed to say that my only reason for staying away was an inability to think about anything other than Jane Austen.

You see, I am jealous of Fanny Price.

Fanny has the good sense that no one around her seems to. At eighteen, she has the forbearance to consistently refuse the man pushed on her from all sides: her rich, benefactor uncle, the cousin she is in love with, her friends, her parents, and all her acquaintance together. He has been a libertine in the past; he tells her he has changed. She is the only one to not believe him, is cast out and called a fool. In the end, he runs away with her married cousin and vindicates her refusal.

It’s possible that I am Fanny’s opposite. I believe the things that people tell me, have faith in everyone’s ability to change (hey, I’m a convert – if not me, who?), and let optimism conquer reason without putting up much of a fight.

These would be admirable qualities indeed – in a world of people who spoke only the truth, changed all the things they intended to, and lived up to expectations. Sadly, this is not the case; disappointment abounds, and it is often mine.

I know many people who are not like this. My brother, for example. He is good and wise, and it seems that he was always so. He is purposeful and deliberate. People more than twice his age seek his advice. Whenever anyone meets the two of us, or hears me talk about him, that person always assumes he is the elder sibling. Always. The reverse is true. It is also true that I am often a fool – so the mistake is understandable.

I once found myself in a situation that was truly pitiful. I fell for a man who (surprise!) said he had changed, and talked about his ability to refine and improve himself a great deal. I was impressed by the commitment to improvement he was always chattering on about. What undaunted struggle! What courage!

What blindness.

My family dutifully raised their objections, as did my friends. All and every one. And I, the loyal lover, defended my man to the last. I defended my own flawed reasoning with logical dances I can’t hope to reinvent. My elaborate maneuverings of love were so impressive and impromptu that when family recounts them for me now, I’m aghast. Really? I said that? Idiot.

A funny thing happened amidst these objections. I noticed that I was unhappy in love.

It would be so great if this didn’t feel so mournful…

Unhappy in love is an unfortunate combination, and is fraught with danger. The danger is that one will say to oneself, I don’t care. I’d rather be with him than without, no matter how miserable I am. Perhaps even more perilous is the suggestion, It will get better. He’ll change. We’ll learn to get along.

I’m not sure why, or how, but remarkably and miraculously, neither of these tempting thoughts won out. I got out. I got out fast, and reflected later on all of the building evidence of my own unhappiness that I did not see at the time. The mounting pile in the corner that suggested, oh so massively, that the man I loved was not actually the one I was involved with, but an elaborate invention we had both spun out of hope and breath and forgiveness. It was so clear in retrospect.

Foresight? We’re fresh out. Try the hindsight store next door; bitterness is on sale, and self-loathing is half off.

I’m seven years older and a good deal more experienced in relationships than Fanny, so what gives? Why does her presence of mind elude me in all the most important ways, in all the most important moments?

This is what I was thinking as I was walking to the post office today. Why wasn’t I just born wise? What is the purpose of all this fumbling towards sense? Couldn’t I have been more like Abdullah? I would have been spared a good deal of false starts and heartaches.

Then I thought: Because I’m a writer. Because I’m a writer, I was born a well-meaning, good-hearted, foolish girl. Because I’m a writer, I have some comic foibles that entertain more than myself. Because I’m a writer, there is a path to wisdom. If it had been easy, there would have been no story to tell. There would have been no point in speaking. If I were all alone, the Buddha on the mountaintop (to steal from Reality Bites), there would be no one up there to relate to me, and no benefit to all my wisdom. Because I’m down here mucking it out, I get to tell stories that are also, on occasion, lessons. It is a peerless joy, purpose. I can say, Here is point A: silliness. If you want to get to point B, which is marginally less foolish, I have recently discovered the secret to doing so, and it is X.

Actually, it is Islam, but that’s a little tangential.

My current suggestion is to read Mansfield Park. It is an incomparable study on patience, modesty, and the will of God making things turn out all right in the end. It still shocks me. Every time! It all turns out all right. Sometimes we just have to ride out the rough wave of sticktoitidness. Definitely holding to your principles is key. Holding to your romanticism, or your faith in the fancy promises of others…not always a great idea.

I know. I read it in a novel once.

 

The meantime

The other night, a friend asked me if I thought it was possible to be happy while waiting for Prince Charming to show up, bang down the door, and whisk me up in his arms:

Gee, he looks about fifteen…that might be a problem.

This certain friend of mine, who is absolutely lovely, is, a little lovelorn at the moment. We’ve all been there. When the last person to walk out the proverbial door seemed like he (or she, as the case may be) was (okay, almost) everything you’ve ever wanted, the temptation is to brood a bit. To dwell on it. If only…

If only I had a nickel for every time I’ve sighed and thought if only, I would be able to afford a much nicer apartment.

My if onlys started right around the time I turned eighteen. That was the first time I got my heart properly broken into a billion tiny glittering pieces. I was a traditional if onlyer back then, and it took me about a year and a half and the most awful trip to Italy in the history of tourism (that story I’ll save for another time) to realize that I was better off as I was: single.

Alone, alive, alert, AMAZING!

Now, if you’ve been reading these posts, you probably realize by now that I’m not the world’s least romantic person. So it’s not as though I’m completely unenthusiastic about sonnets, or Italy. Or princes [note: princes must be much older than fifteen to inspire enthusiasm]. What I mean to say is that the time I spend sighing and piddling around my apartment waiting for my life to start is significantly diminished. Okay, maybe I have a few weak Sunday mornings, when I’m alone in the apartment and there’s no one to go to brunch with. Maybe those days I have a few pigeon-toed, wistful moments while I’m waiting for my tea to brew.

I know he’ll show up someday…but if it were today, that would be awesome.

But these moments have not commandeered my whole life, thank God for that.

Things are hard to appreciate when they’re right in front of your face. There’s a reason that Joni Mitchell is popular. This poor lovelorn friend of mine is getting over her first…serious involvement with a guy. I won’t call it love. But anyway, poor thing, there’s no end in sight. Maybe the first time is always like that.

I recently reread some of the journal I kept during my first epic heartbreak. I was the lovesickest puppy in town. Man oh man did I have it bad. I recorded dozens of bright, hopeful moments between us, things that haunted me, things that I couldn’t get over. And I relived them. And obsessed about them. For like, ever. Mind you, most of these delightful things happened during the first two weeks of the relationship. Those were the happy times. First date and all that jazz. Throw in some angsty folk music, a few springtime hikes and a sunset dinner in a tiny French restaurant, and almost any girl will fall for the nearest reasonably attractive single male. Alas, I was not the exception. These loverly things were followed by an awkward summer, an insecure fall, and a miserable, miserably long winter. And still it didn’t occur to me that maybe this guy wasn’t Prince Charming disguised in a pair of stripey overalls.

What. An. Idiot.

I pity my eighteen-year-old self. Wretched girl! I wasted all that time pining for some narcissistic fool who couldn’t go a whole hour without insulting me. But that was the best I’d had it, so I thought it was the best there was. I’m convinced that this is the misfortune of first love. It’s all fun and games until someone can’t let go. And someone always can’t let go.

This friend of mine is having some trouble letting go. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t work out and we can tick off several reasons for that on our reasonable fingers. The vacuum of flattery is consuming her attention. Meanwhile, she and I drive around belting out happy love songs in my car, make each other very tasty tea every morning, and carefully dissect our days together before retiring. We model our best dresses for each other, share perfumes, read each other favorite pieces of literature, pray together, eat together, study together, dream together. Last night, we sang along to a Disney ballad (and no I will NOT give you the satisfaction of knowing which one) and spun giggling circles in my living room. And yes, I was wearing a smashing cocktail dress and stiletto heels at the time. The point is this: while she’s yearning for her lost admirer, life is happening. And life is good.

Beautiful friendships are under-appreciated. I wish I had paid more attention to mine, when I was eighteen and stupidly, stupidly in love. My friends had a lot more to offer me, and I brazenly ignored the fact that I was much, much happier with them than I was with my overall-clad chap. I had a friend whose entire room was plastered in Absolut ads (each one different, mind you). She called me “Mang” for a forgotten reason and had a penchant for burritos and Simon & Garfunkel. She wore all black the day the last episode of Seinfeld aired. I can’t remember a single afternoon we spent together that I didn’t laugh so hard that I couldn’t stand up. Another friend of mine used to run through giant leaf piles with me in the fall, would dance to any Shania Twain with me, and never made me feel anything less than a fascinating person. We used to go for long drives. I could spend any amount of time with her and never get sick of her. We never, ever fought. I had the kind of mythical good friends that exist in movies, or Nickelodeon sitcoms. And yet I managed to let a bad relationship get me down – and keep me down. Why didn’t I ask the same of him that I enjoyed with them? I don’t know why I didn’t hold the happiness bar higher. I would have been better off if I had.

Friends take us as we are. It’s not complicated. I love my friends, and it’s not hard to love them. They seem to love me back, and they don’t act like it’s a chore. But finding a romantic attachment of this nature is rare. It’s the Bigfoot of relationships; it’s out there, but the images we have are so grainy and overexposed that no one believes the witnesses.

But it could be a bad relationship in disguise!

Everybody says that you’re better off single than in a bad relationship, but for some reason this is hard to ingest. I don’t know if it’s the ego-stroking that comes hitched to romantic attachments, or the feeling of being wanted, or what. I’ve had some pretty legendarily bad romances by now, and the truth of this has finally (thank God, thank God!) wiggled its way into my head. And I’m happy. Happy! Imagine that. I’m happy not to be under the boot heel of a less-than-generous man, and happy to be busy making myself the sort of girl that the sort of guy I’d dig would like to sweep off her feet. (How’s that for a garbled sentence?)

Of course I won’t object if Prince Charming shows up. Unless he’s fifteen, in which case I will slam the door in his face. But until the day the non-jailbait, non-cartoon version comes a-knockin’, there’s plenty to enjoy. Including the fact that I’m not too busy pining after some overalls to hear the door.

Hope redux

I’ve been listening to a song that goes:

Stitch in your knitted brow
And you don’t know how
You’re gonna get it out
Crushed under heavy chest
Trying to catch your breath
But it always beats you by a step, all right now

Making the best of it
Playing the hand you get
You’re not alone in this

There’s hope for the hopeless
There’s hope for the hopeless
There’s hope

I hate to be trite and stupid and blog about song lyrics. It’s difficult for me to express why exactly this song is important to me…

There are few songs, to be perfectly honest, that I don’t interpret in the light of romantic love. It’s entirely possible, and even likely, that the lyrics to this song were written with that sort of love in mind. But to me, this song is a narrative of the most important event in my life.

I haven’t touched much on exactly how my conversion happened. I think now is the time to do a bit of that.

You see, I was the hopeless. I wasn’t particularly unhappy. I wasn’t depressed – far from it. I was, in every way, a very typical 23-year-old girl. I fit perfectly into the social fabric of my college. In the context of parties, I had a wild and daring reputation. I could always be counted on for a good time. I had wonderful friends, and I loved them. I had the best boyfriend in any of my friends’ memories. They were all jealous of my good relationship fortune. Seriously. And I was set up to attend pretty much any med school I wanted. The future was bright. My life was ahead of me.

You’re wondering why I was hopeless. Like I said, it wasn’t depression. I just had an overwhelming sense of having missed the point, and that is the only real name I can give to it. I was a secular humanist. Not really a classical or strict one; I believed in God, but rejected organized religion on principle. It caused wars. Each tradition claimed superiority over all others. That tendency seemed a bit arbitrary, or petty to me. And I saw pretty much every religion that could claim any serious commitment to morals/spiritual refinement as an explicit and insidious attempt to batter the sex instinct out of humanity. Which was simply something that I could not condone. I thought religious people were provincial. Inexperienced. Limited. In my noncommittal theism, I fancied myself enlightened. And liberated from the petty dogma of religion.

But this turned out to be a front. I had over-thought the problem. I was thinking, nitpicking, as my education had raised me to do. And in doing so I left out the most important part of the equation. Faith gives life to the heart – as love does. Both romantic love and faith are really acts of love, and of the heart. I had never been a cold person. I had a rich love-life, taking my boyfriend, family and friends into account. Many people to love, to spend time with, to soften me.

But I missed God. I longed for God as a lover does the beloved. For a few months I felt sort of lovelorn. I would read brief passages from the Qur’an as though they were love letters. I would smooth the printed page with my fingertips, as though it were personal. It was between God and me. Nothing else mattered. The fact that it was a holy book didn’t matter. The fact that billions of people have read it didn’t matter. I felt that it was only for me. God sent me a letter, and I wasn’t sure how to answer.

I could not accept Islam. I could not accept Islam for the same reason that I could not accept other things: it was limited, socially truncated, subjugating to women. But I could not argue with the Muslims I met. The fact was that they all had a relationship with God, and I didn’t have one to speak of. I had the impetus, but not the means. They had means.

In effect, Islam was my forbidden fruit. It was something palpable, something I could see in the Muslims I knew. Their peace, their salaam, was unmistakable. Sure, I thought it was an antiquated, arbitrary, agrarian-based tradition to rise every day before dawn for prayers…but that, and so many other traditions that seemed so senseless and backwards to me, gave them a light to live by. A light I lacked. I was going from step A to step B to step C because the steps presented themselves in that order. But there was no goal. I didn’t know what lay at the top of the staircase.

What I had wanted out of life ended by about forty, by my calculation. I wanted the right job – and I would be an M.D. before I was thirty. Check. I wanted to find, love and marry the right man, preferably sooner rather than later, and I thought I had found him. Check. I wanted kids. I would spend my thirties having children. Check. And then – when I thought about it, what then? My body would start to age. My daughters would surpass me in beauty. I wouldn’t feel the hunger of discovery in each of the areas of my life that I felt now, because they would be settled and familiar by then: family, love, career. All that would be left would be to enjoy what I could in the time I had left. And that was all. I wouldn’t be the wild girl at parties anymore; I’d be a mother. There wouldn’t be any keggers in my fifties – at least, I hoped not. All of the things it felt good to do as a teenager and twentysomething – rather, all of the rules/social conventions/laws that it felt good to break – would have lost their novelty by then. What was the point? Have kids, and then make the best you can of a marriage and wait to die? Seriously?

Even if the point was to do as much good as I was able to do – and this was a goal of mine – what would it leave? A good act is always satisfying in and of itself – I won’t deny that adopting my cat, or watching my niece for the day, or giving in charity come with innate rewards. But even these are temporary. And the effects of these acts are temporary. These things, done for their own sake, do not escape the cyclical and finite nature of life. Charity, development, justice – they are good things to work for, but their legacies (which I do not mean to diminish) are, in the end, worldly. I can touch the lives of as many people as I want, in as positive and giving a way as I can, but even those who outlive me will see their ends. And my legacy will be over. I will be over. There will be nothing left to show that I once existed. There is no way to tie oneself to something lasting and permanent by these means alone.

I didn’t see these conclusions as morbid. We’re all going to die; that’s just life. We’re all careening towards six billion uncertain ends, and we’re all struggling to make the best of our lives in the meantime. It’s foolish to ignore one’s mortality in youth. People die young. I realized this too. I wanted more. I was hungry for more. I wanted more than what I saw in my future: expensive cars, lots of sparkly diamonds, the most perfectly attentive and loving husband, a socially responsible career, lovely children. It wasn’t enough. It would end. I knew it. It was a painful awareness. There had to be more than the merry-go-round of life – the getting on, making the best of it as long as it ran, and then making an exit- and whatever more was, I wanted it. I wanted to devote myself to something permanent. Something greater, something bigger. I wanted a reason – for everything.

Once, when I was a child, I fought with a member of my family – my father, I think. I said something to him that, upon further reflection, lying in bed, I could not forgive myself for. This was my first experience of real remorse, and it came hard. I remember looking out at the street lamp from my bedroom window, and weeping, and feeling that I was lost. That it was over. I could never forgive myself.

Something happened. Something transcendent and amazing. Before I could console myself, I was consoled. And I stopped crying. It came from outside myself as surely as if my mother had come in the door in her white cotton nightgown and rocked me in her arms. I was forgiven. And then suddenly it was easy to forgive myself. This experience determined my understanding of God until I was 23. God had forgiven me.

I sensed in my heart that it was this moment – the importance of this moment – that could pull my life’s attention and give it meaning. I knew that only traveling towards this All-Forgiving One would satisfy my trajectory in any real way. Other hungers had their places and would be satisfied. But my thirst, my love, my traveling towards God could never be quenched, or trumped, or completed. This was why I admired the Muslims in my life so much. I may not have understood why they did what they did – I may have even disapproved. But they knew where they were going, and I was traveling without a map. Without a compass. Without a concept of the cardinal directions.

I try to think about why I’ve been blessed with this. With faith. I feel truly undeserving. I look around at other people in my life – good people. I don’t mean that in a bland, not-doing-harm way. I mean people who are devoted to the action of good. I know these people. They are trying to make the world a better place – often more than I am. And I talk to them about Islam sometimes, and they’re not interested. Which amazes me. Like really dumbfounds me. An early Muslim once said that if those who did not believe in God knew what happiness the Muslims held in their hearts, they would take up arms against them in an effort to win it – as though it were booty. Hearing this always makes me smile, because I’ve been in both states. If I had known what I was missing before coming to Islam, I would have tackled the nearest Muslim in the middle of the street and begged him or her to teach me what I needed to know in order to enter the religion. But that was it – before I was here, I didn’t know where here was. I didn’t know what sweetness faith held. How could I want something I didn’t know existed? They say faith has a fragrance – and those who feel attracted to Islam by meeting Muslims catch a faint whiff of it in their interactions. This was my experience. I smelled something lovely – I wanted to taste it. I have – I do. And now, now that I know, I taste, I see, I hear, I love, I feel what Islam is…if anyone took it from me (which, thank God, they can’t), I would take up a sword to get it back. Thank God there’s not a limited quantity. Whoever wants is welcome – and that is God’s bounty.

I can think of one instance that would explain why I came to Islam. One.

At times, Prophet Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him) would put something God had said in his own words. One of the things God tells us in this way is, “Whoever comes with a good deed will be given ten times its worth or more so, and whoever comes with an evil deed will be recompensed its worth or I will forgive it. Whoever draws near to Me a handspan, I will come to him the extent of a forearm. Whoever draws near to Me the length of a forearm, I will come to him the length of two outstretched arms. Whoever comes to Me walking, I will come to him at speed. And whoever comes to Me with the Earth’s weight in sin without associating anything with Me, I will come to him with forgiveness of equal measure.” [Sahîh Muslim]

I came an inch towards God, and was rewarded with something more precious than anything else in the world. I remember it well. I shared a bottle of wine with a friend. I drank most of it. I’m a small person; I was fairly drunk. Intoxication can bring forward our basest desires – it often did mine – but this time, I was stripped of the inhibition I usually felt in talking about faith. I admitted that I wanted a relationship with God. I wanted to pray in a community. I didn’t feel at home in church. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to be close to God, but was hopeless that I could effect this change in my life. I said it all aloud, to a friend who couldn’t relate. I cried. And that was it.

Islam came from the ether and pierced my heart clean through. I didn’t go searching for it. Converts often take a deliberate survey of some of the world’s religions before settling on Islam, but that was not me. I did nothing else. It entered my heart slowly, unnoticed (I would have fought the impulse, I think, otherwise). It got to the point where a Muslim friend of mine sat me down and said, “Liz, look – I think you’re Muslim.” And I was. I took my formal shahada within twenty-four hours. [literally, shahada means witness, but it is also the name of the statement one utters to formally enter the religion: I bear witness that there is no god but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger.]

And so God rewards the sincere. And I was sincere only for a moment – and an intoxicated one at that. That was all it took – and the world was new.

So there’s hope for the hopeless, after all. God is waiting to give us what we truly want – but out of forbearance, will not force it upon us. If we want, if we confess the desire – if we ask, He is waiting to bless us.

Want 101

As far as I can tell, there are at least 3 problems with forbidden fruit. At least.

1. It is forbidden. As in: you can’t have it. Ever.

2. There is probably a reason it is forbidden.

3. There is a possibility (probability?) that the only reason you want it is that you can’t have it. Please see #1.

There is this whole issue with resolving this, too. Really what we want, in most cases of Forbidden Fruit Syndrome (hereafter referred to as FFS in the interest accommodating my typing laziness), is imaginary. How can we know that we want a fruit that is forbidden? The only reason I want forbidden fruit more than, say, the really great ripe peach sitting right in front of me is because of the mystery.

I believe that mystery is at the heart of FFS allure. Because the whole thing about forbidden fruit is that you don’t know what it tastes like. By definition. It is not only forbidden, but because it is forbidden, always has been, and always will be, it is also unknown. And therefore mysterious. And therefore alluring. Mysterious forbidden fruit: MFF.

 

I’d post a picture, but it’s so Mysterious and Forbidden that I don’t even know what it looks like.

MFF always leaves one vulnerable to the development of FFS. Because it’s the mystery….how can one satisfactorily choose what is definite over what is indefinite? If you want to satisfy yourself that the peach is what’s best for you, you really have to taste the MFF. Otherwise, how can you be confident that the peach is what you want?

Actually you know what? That’s not really the problem. The real problem is after FFS has already taken hold. Once FFS has set in, you’re in trouble. And that poor peach is just going to rot on your plate while you agonize over what to eat. Poor little peach.

Because you’re staring at this peach, and it’s like the peach only reminds you that it is not the MFF. That is the only significance of the peach. The peach is a state of not-having, not-eating. Meanwhile, you don’t even know what the MFF tastes like. For all you know, it is worse than dry cat food and will give you a stomach ache for days. For all you know, it’s poisonous. But you don’t know and it’s killing you. You can’t rest until you know. And it’s MFF, so guess what? You’ll never know.

It’s a scary, crazy downward spiral, letmetellyouwhat.

So here’s my question: what if you know you have to eat the peach? What if the peach is a pressing matter, and the unblemished state of the available fruit basically means that somebody’s gotta eat it, and that somebody’s going to be you, but you’ve got FFS, and you’ve got it bad?

What’s the cure?

My approach has always been to inform myself as much as possible about the MFF, whatever it is, until I can really hang my hat on something I don’t like. It’s got that ugly green spot there. I hate green fruits. But what if it can’t be done? What if the available time and resources aren’t sufficient for information-gathering? When the choice is: X or Not X, but I’ve convinced myself that that means: (not the MFF) or (a miracle could still get you the MFF). How do I untranslate that?

I think at times I make choices that I feel are between two things, but in reality are not. In reality, I’m only deciding whether or not I want one thing. I can’t want the thing too too much, because of course I want something else. But the something else is a non-issue. I just make it into one. Because I like to make life difficult for myself like that.

Ay me. Infected hours seem long.