On the Dawn of a New Day

I find myself writing this early in the morning of another Monday. The first day of the week. The second week of the new year. All this appears to promise a fresh start to life. But there's no guarantee that life will deliver us the peace and happiness we seek. Nor can we expect that other people can ever solve our problems and lead us to liberation. Nor can we rely simply on faith or belief in our view of how the world works or how it ought to work.

We seek to be individuals and to assert our identity. Yet, we simultaneously wish to form part of the wider humanity. As Donne put it, no man is an island. We are caught in the conflict of human existence. In order to love others, we need to love ourselves. But to truly love ourselves, we need to love others. There doesn't appear to be any resolution to our human condition. However, aren't we in a interdependent relation with the world and others?

Are we not always open to the world that surrounds us in the process of defining who we are? Aren't we mirrors of each other, reflections of each other? And yet, relatively independent of each other? Isn't our very self ever changing and constant

at the same time? Does our temporary existence make us more, or less, real beings?

And, does it really matter? For, in the context of lived experience, engaging into idle speculation carries the risk of distracting us from the life's we should be living in the now. It can rob us of the opportunity to get to know each other better and, as a result, get to know who we are better. Such speculation may lead us even to reduce living beings to mere abstract objects without autonomous being or identity. Speculation may simply fuel our narcissism and confound the distinctions between genuine effort and artificial ones only seeking to glorify the self.

A self, which in truth, remains relative and is never absolute in its reality.

I pause and stop. For I'm thirsty. Neither these words or sentences can ever truly quench my need for nourishment. This is our human condition. Failing to recognise our frailty is an insult to our integrity.

Nine Haikus in Memory of David

1
The star of David.,
The light of my dead brother
Whom I never knew.

2
It shines still today
During my darkest hours
Bringing back a hope.

3
Not to be afraid
To question what people say,
For life is vanity.

4
Life comes and it goes,
Our bodies deteriorate
And our minds do too.

5
David, where are you?
You died before I could know
What death really meant.

6
I never forgot
You were one day here with us.
But I never knew.

7
I still search for you
In my own ways I still seek you
My unknown brother.

8
Yes, I was too young.
To remember who you were..
Or get to know you

9
Your are the reason
I never stopped asking "Why?".
You're my guiding star.

Awakening

I admit that I started this blog in an attempt to capture an Experience that changed my outlook on life in many ways. As you probably figured out by now, I don't have a defined plan or know what will emerge during the course of my writing. The fact is that I don't understand much of what is happening in my mind that much myself. What I can honestly say that, in many ways, I have changed.

Let me try to explain...

When all of a sudden, life seem to contradict your model of how the world works. When the priorities of your life appear less important. When you find yourself asking the questions that you thought settled again. Then you become exposed to an indescribable emptiness and vulnerable to the prospect of nothingness. When you realise, like the Jewish prophet Qohelet that life is vanity... Vanity of vanities!

This experience is personal inasmuch as it is universal. It's like waking from a long dream, only to realize that it was an illusion. A mirage that fooled you that you were drinking cool water, when in reality you were burning your stomach with scorching sand.

That's why it's often referred to as an "awakening". But when you wake up from the dream of a world which seeks only for itself and believes that its immortal, then you must be careful not to fall asleep again.

For even if it can be a lonely place, a state of awakening is a precious space in time that provides you with the opportunity of real growth.