Letters to My Daughter

I had a lengthy discussion last night with a recent acquaintance about the ills of drugs and alcohol. This is a person I've never met, but have some conversation with over the past week. As usual, I argued against what I intuitively feel and what I've been socialized to feel (intuition and socialization are in sync fortunately): i.e. that drugs and alcohol are not that bad, that they are in fact social lubricants that make sociability easier. Shilli, who seems to enjoy arguments as much as I do (which makes him a commodity to be sure), introduced the concept of dignity as an issue to consider. His argument: Alcohol undermines an individual's self dignity by allowing her to loose her inhibitions and good common sense. He suggested that alcohol leads to further ills including rape, divorce, car crashes, violence. The merits of this second point are questionable because I think there are more cases of casual drinking without any harmful effects, than there are cases of serious...

I remembered today what keeps growing, strangely and unwanted in my heart, is the loneliness. A loneliness of the self, when you feel strangely disconnected from your soul, as if you've drained your ruh down the bathtub sink after your bubble bath that somehow left you more stressed. And I feel the people around me tolerate my moods but that their presence cannot fill this void that is enlarging in my chest. Moumie007: there is a saying by either rumi, ibn ata'allah or abdul qadir jilaini Moumie007: not sure who Moumie007: but it goes "when Allah isolates you don't go out and seek company, and when He gives you company do not go out to find solitude " Moumie007: zaid shakir talks about tech and social saturation Moumie007: how being constantly connected to people Moumie007: makes us forget the unseen world I walked in the rain today, alone, and satisfied with myself. Resisted the urge to call someone to tell him/her what I was doing, to ask how he or she was doing...

Alhamdullilah, I have come back from the depths of Flatbush and the dark regions of Brooklyn, alive, clean (because I bathed and then showered), and completely satisfied with myself. My first (and probably last) camping trip was excellent. It was excellent not because of wildlife (if bugs and moths are considered exciting wildlife), or the stars (there are none to be seen in Brooklyn), or the certificate I received from the Parks Department for the 30-hour training. My weekend was not excellent because, for the first time, I had the opportunity to experience the world as my boys Thoreau and Emerson did years ago. In fact, the concept of self-reliance is hardly relevant when you are sharing a campsite with 20 other people, most of whom are as unimpressed with Nature as you are. No, my weekend was excellent for none of these reasons. My weekend was excellent because I spent an entire day expanding my understanding of another human being. It felt like I spent the entire day with a 38 year...

Bismillah. It occurred to me after the last post that I wasn't sure how to post again to Sadia's Blog. Thus, the delay in my second post. It's much harder than people tell me, this blogging thing. Today I will be making my 2 hour train odyssey to Flatbush, Brooklyn to a place called Ecology Village, located in Floyd Bennett Field. I am being specific because I can't guarantee that I'll be coming back. There are never any guarantees in existence. This I say because, as I've already given away in the title of this post, I will be going CAMPING. First time. Stars. Nature. Dog Ticks. Cutter spray. Cooking my own food. And oh yeah, sharing a tent with 3 other individuals. No internet, no Dish TV, no civilized niceties. My goal during this adventure is to experience something like Pirsig did in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book that inspires me to know machines with as much diligence as I like to read theory about Nature. I would like also to remember ...

Bismillah. I read an article about the ever-expanding world of bloggers in Fortune Magazine several months ago. Promising myself that I would never join this narcissistic world, today marks the beginning of my broken promise. I broke my promise largely by accident. I was trying to make a post on Muniba's blog when I was diverted into creating my own blog. Damn technology. I've always kept journals but the thought of having others read my private thoughts, feelings, and insights seems troubling. In high school, when this internet craze over livejournal and similar programs began, I could not understand the motivation for sharing so much of yourself in an internet world in which you exercised no control. Not only do I have little control over who reads my blogs, I can't even grasp who my audience is exactly. Who am I writing for? What motives do people have for reading about me? I read another friend's blog one day, but only out of pity because no one comments on his unor...