Freedom Hallucinations

This morning I got up with some hallucinations about freedom and didn’t want to let them go, so I’m capturing and captivating freedom here J

Being a freedom advocate, I love to see it and apply it in everything. But what is freedom and how we know we are free or not. For me freedom is freeing yourself of anything you haven’t chosen. Freedom goes hand in hand with choice.

When we were kids, choices were made for us. We went to school our parents chose for us. We followed a religion we inherited from our parents. We lived with people chosen for us. Every choice was made for us by the older and wiser people.

But when we start growing up, we may or may not question everything chosen for us. We start getting rebellious on everything. We don’t want to listen to wise choices made for us. We want to think and consider ourselves. This is what people call adolescence phase. Parents are always afraid of this phase; which takes place between 10 and 20 of age.

For me my adolescence was different, instead of making my own choices, I was looking for reasons to accept others’ choices for me; knowing that they are the wiser and of course believing in their sincere intentions.  I was a very obedient adolescent.

However, when I got to the higher school phase, I made the first choice in my life. I chose my faculty all of my own. I had no objections from the wisers. However, I put a challenge on myself. The faculty I wanted to join didn’t necessitate a very high score for my higher education certificate. However, I challenged myself to get the highest scores that enable me to join the highest graded faculty. I did it and got the highest degrees, however I chose to leave the 1^st and 2^nd degree faculties and join the 3^rd degree faculty I wanted, regardless of wiser people’s choices for me. I faced many objections. And I felt hey that’s the first decision I’m taking in my life. If I go back to my childhood phase, I would have chosen a different school also.

I don’t see why parents perceive the adolescent phase dangerous. Is it because their offsprings are heading elsewhere? Is it because they might start discovering things and life facts parents don’t want them to discover? Is it about control out of love? They think that they won’t be able to protect their kids from life tides? What is it that makes people freak from the adolescent phase; that instead of becoming their children’s friends they become their enemies? Let your adolescents practice their freedom before their desire for freedom become a stubborn attitude and rejection of anything coming from you even if they know and believe it is the right thing for them. Wake up parents.

People think I’m crazy when I say I would never be able to raise my children on certain beliefs or order them to take certain decisions. I can’t impose anything on them even when they are just kids. I think if they want to play in the streets, I won’t object. I want them to discover themselves, make their own choices even if they later regret them. I want them to choose and make mistakes. I want them to experience freedom of choice in everything to know how to live on their own and face real life tides.

If I talk about the freedom of choosing your religion, which is a taboo in our Arab societies, I would say that I’m a Muslim in mind, heart and soul. However, I’m not a Muslim because I was born a Muslim. I searched for logical answers and found them in Islam. I see logic in everything in Islam. This was the second choice I made. I see a logical explanation in every principal, incident, command, word, etc. in my religion. For me Islam is not any more an inheritance, it is a matter of freedom of choice.

Back to the adolescent phase, do you think we have this phase once in life? Of course not. It is only that the first time you encounter your adolescence, you find everyone interested in interfering with it because you are just a kid. This is the first “So you think you are free?!” phase.

With time, you may start to question everything in life. Have I chosen this job for myself? Have I chosen this position? Have I chosen to be workaholic? Have I chosen to go with my parents' or work bosses' desires? Am I fulfilling people’s expectation of me? Are their expectations mine? Are they part of my own desires? Do I love my job? Do I have a role in life that I chose? Am I the one who chose to be obedient to my parents or this is the social norm that I have to follow? Is this the place I want to be in or it is where I just am? Are all my life conditions imposed on me and I’m just coping or am I the one who chose everything?

I went and still going through this phase at my late twenties and with the start of my thirties. Psychiatrists call it the Thirtieth Crisis as one of my friends told me. I started to question everything and why I’m not satisfied with my stable life. I found out it is not my own life. It is simply what others expect of me. It is just the life that I found myself in. It is an imposed life, not by my parents only this time but by the circumstances of life as well as people’s and society expectations, which I didn’t give myself time to consider or make my own choices about. I realized I have to free MYSELF BY MYSELF to think clearly of what I WANT. I freed myself of people’s expectations, social norms, my attachments, my place, everything that may block my thinking of what I want. I thought about it and realized I need a challenge, as I challenged myself in my first minor adolescence phase.

Then I asked what kind of challenge. If I need a challenge I have to choose it. I chose my challenge which is completely the opposite of my stable life. I asked myself is this what people expect from me? The answer was absolutely NOT. Do I really want it? Absolutely YES. Am I ready to discuss it with people who don’t expect it? Absolutely NOT. Why? Because no one understands me as I understand myself. I want to take the challenge with no guardianship. Do I want to succeed in my challenge? Yes. But what are the success criteria? I’m the one to choose them. What if I fail? So what, I would learn to make better choices. SO WHAT? GO AHEAD. This is my OWN thirtieth adolescence. It came with stronger desire for freedom and release and a realization that freedom is never granted. It is you who make it.

One of things that makes people think I’m crazy is that I don’t have any particular opinion about people. It comes from my belief in freedom. We are free people, each one has to choose his own being. I don’t have the right to say this is right or wrong for anyone, or even have a particular opinion about or judgement on anyone. I’m not him or her. I didn’t practice his or her way of freedom. When people tell me that you have to advise people when they do wrong, I say hey people what is right and what is wrong?! It is us who choose what is right and what is wrong. If only I was asked about my opinion about a situation, I would say in MY OPINION this is wrong or right because I BELIEVE so since I SEE the situation from MY OWN PRESPECTIVE; which in return shouldn’t necessarily be the same perspective of the other person. If he or she takes my perspective it is ok, if not it is ok too. It is HIS or HER OWN freedom of choosing the perspective he or she wants.  That’s it!

Words that Found Their Way to My Mind, Heart, and Soul

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

Describing the 3 categories of the Turkish societies:
“We are stuck. We are stuck between the East and the West. Between the past and the future......The Modernists tell us to move forward, but we have no faith in their idea of progress. The Traditionalists tell us to move backward, but we do not want to return to their ideal order either. Sandwiched between the two sides, we march two steps forward and one step backward, just like the Ottoman army band did! But we don’t even play an instrument! Where can we possibly escape to? We are not even a minority or an indigenous people under the protection of the UN Charter. Then we could have at least some basic legal rights."


Don't you see that the past is a vicious circle? It is a loop. It sucks us in and makes us run like a hamster on a wheel. Then we start to repeat ourselves, again and again.


"Allah" she sighed. "You are closer to me than my jugular vein. Help me out of this dilemma. Either grant me the bliss of the ignorant or give me the strength to bear the knowledge. Whichever you choose shall make me grateful, but please don't make me powerless and knowledgeable at the same time"

I wonder why miseries unit ppl while the good don't. How many furnerals you were keen not to miss and how many weddings you had no problem to miss. Solidarity had to be in good and evil. Not in one of them only

"Some among the Armenians in the diaspora would never want the turks to recognize the genocide. If they do, they'll pull the rug out from under our feet and take the strongest bond that unites us. Just like the Turks have been in the habit of denying their wrongdoing, the Arminians have been in the habit of savoring the cocoon of victimhood. Apparently, there are some old habits that need to be changed on both sides"

Family stories intermingle in such a way that what happened generations ago can have an impact on seemingly irrelevant developments of the present day. The past is anything but bygones. If Levent Kazanci hadn't grown up to be such a bitter abusive man, would his only son, Mustafa, have ended up being a different person? If generations ago in 1915, Shushan hadn't been left an orphan, would Asya today still be a bastard?

Life is coincidence, though sometimes it takes a djinni to fathom that.
From the Last Page in the Bastard of Istanbul
"There is such things as collective hysteriya....It is a scientifically known fact that collectivities are capable of manipulating their individual members' beliefs, thoughts, and even bodily reactions. You keep hearing a certain story over and over again, and the next thing you know you have internalized the narrative. From that moment on it ceases to be someone else's story. It is not even a story anymore, but reality, YOUR REALITY"


For One More Day by Mitch Albom
"what causes an echo?" she once quizzed me. the persistence of sound after the source has stopped. "when can you hear an echo?" when it's quiet and other sounds are absorbed. when it's quiet, i can hear my mother's echo still."

Sometimes people are physically gone but they keep persisting like an echo inside of us




Thanks for the Memories for Cecelia Ahern
There is something unnerving about being forced to look at yourself when you are unwilling to come in terms with something. Something raw and real that you can't run away from. You can lie to yourself, to your mind and in your mind all the time but when you look yourself in the face, well you know that you're lying. I'm not OK. That I did not hide from myself, and the truth of it stared me in the face.
Felt by Joyce when forced to see her reflection in the mirror by the hairdresser


My hairdresser hands me my ponytail.
"Souvenir"
"I don't want it." I refuse to take my hair in my hands. Every inch of that hair was from a moment that has now gone. Thoughts, wishes, hopes, desires, dreams that are no longer. I want a new start. Anew head of hair.

فرحة لا توصف

فرحة غريبة تملكتني الغد ومازالت مستمرة معي حتى اليوم بعد حديث مع إحدى صديقاتي التي تعرفت عليها مؤخرًا في دبي
اسمها إيما كندية الجنسية مسلمة الديانة بتكلم عربي مصري لبلب:

أنا: ممكن أسألك سؤال من باب الفضول ولم مش عايزة تجاوبي براحتك؟

إيما: أسألي

أنا: أنتي أسلمتي أذاي. أصلي ما اعتقدش أنك أسلمتي بس علشان جوزك مسلم. واضح أنك واحدة بتفكر كويس ومش بتاخد المسائل دي كده.

إيما: الحكاية إن أهلي ملهومش دين وربوني أنا وأخويا من غير دين خالص. لكن لما كان عندي 12 سنة حسيت أنه أكيد في ربنا خلق كل ده

وكان السؤال في هذه الحالة طاب أي دين؟ أي رب؟

كان ليا أصحاب مسحيين متدينين رحت معاهم الكنيسة كذا مرة

وكان لينا جيران بهائيين مصريين وفي مرة قال لي الأب فكري في معجزة الخلق أزاي جنين يتكون ويكون That Perfect بالصدفة

عندنا في كندا المتدينين متزمتين قوي وديمًا الناس بتتريق عليهم .... ما هو يإما متدينين مقفولين عن الحياة... يإما ناس بايظة جدًا وملهاش أي دين ولا Something to believe in

بس برضو لم اتبع المسيحية أو البهائية... في حاجات ما كنتش مقتنعة بيها logically

بعدين قابلت جوزي في الجامعة...أسمه إسلام متفتح واجتماعي ومرح وفي نفس الوقت متدين وطيب وبيصلي وبيصوم وبيتكلم بفخر عن دينه And What he believes in

فلاحظت أد إيه ممكن يكون في Balance between the two things: Life and Religionحاجة كده وسط

على فكرة هوه عمره ما حاول يطلب مني أو يخليني أسلم

اللي حصل بعد كده أني كنت بروح أحضر خطبة الجمعة بالإنجليزي في كندا

وبدأت أقارن

في الكنيسة الخطبة حوالي ساعتين لكن خطبة الجمعة 20 دقيقة وما كنتش متعبة زي الكنيسة

الناس في الكنيسة لازم يلبسوا Formal ويقعدوا على كراسي لكن في خطبة الجمعة الناس كلها زي بعض لابسين اللي يريحهم وقاعدين على الأرض

في المسيحية لازم يكون في Minister بيني وبين ربنا في الإسلام لأ أنا مني لربنا على طول

كمان ما اقتنعتش أبدًا إن ربنا ثالوث أكيد هو واحد

المهم إني أعدت سنة أحضر خطبة الجمعة وأقرأ وأصلي وأصوم من غير ما أكون مسلمة

وبعدين رحت The Islamic Institute in Canada علشان أشهر إسلامي وقابلت المسؤولة عن ال Institute وكانت كندية أسلمت واتعلمت الدين كويس أشهرت إسلامي وهي ساعدتني أعرف أكتر كمان

إحساسي بالفرحة بعد هذا الحوار لا يوصف

رغم اقتناعي بكل الكلام ده سعدت جدًا لأني سمعته من واحدة اختارت الإسلام دينًا بالمنطق والعقل والاجتهاد الشخصي واستخدمت كلمات ومفاهيم من الدين بتلقائية

كمان عجبني جدًا إن جوزها كان وجهة مشرفة ومعتدلة للدين بأخلاقة وتصرفاته مش بالكلام

وحسيت قوي بمعنى "يهدي من يشاء"... إيما هي التي أشاءت أن تعرف الحق وربنا هداها

آخر كلامي ليها كان أنا مش بس فرحانة بيكي أنا فرحانة ليكي ربنا يكرمك ويحميكي

السعادة اللي أنا فيها عارمة جدًا وعلى ووشي ابتسامة غير طبيعية وعندي انشراحة قلب لا توصف

يا رب أهدي عبيدك جميعًا