There was a time when I never called on anyone for help, even at the most desperate moment. I always believed strength was something I had to build within myself. Besides that, I did not want to expose my weaknesses to anyone.
I carried loads of debris, nicely zip locked and systematically filed into my haversack. Although it weighed me down, I had this false feeling of having full control of my life and a proportionate strength to endure and overcome. It took some tough lessons to understand that sometimes the greatest of strength is not only found within but in people who care for you; people who grab you by your collar and rip the haversack off your shoulders. Strength - it is not just about giving a helping hand, but to seek one when you must.
Life's strength can be so difficult but then, it can also be so simple. Difficult in as much as there is pain and disappointment in any life, but simple in how even the bleakest life can capture some rays of beauty and pleasure. No matter how disappointing or painful life is, I have always been able to find something uplifting in the midst of it all. I can remember times in my past, of being depressed because I'd lost some of the most inspiring people in my life that I never dreamed of having move on and grow out of my life, beloved friends, relatives and love ones.
Waking up each day, not knowing what I was getting myself into when I set my foot out the door, I took another step towards the future. But above all this, I sometimes cry inside, selfishly wanting something new and something different to happen, or something to go just the way I had planned. But I know that I can't hold back on the rest of my life forever. I have to come back into the world and face the reality that I have to move on and take with me only memories, and strive to do and dig deeper into what is ahead. Because with each day that you wake, not knowing what is going to happen, you attempt to pull through yet again, one more day of life.
But when life starts to drag me down, I start to think, vividly recapturing the feeling of having been blessed. Blessed with so many people and things in my everyday life; blessed with the gift of living and the power that I have to indulge in whatever my heart's set on, free to make my own decisions and be able to withstand the consequences. I find that the smallest and simplest things in life help lift my spirits and get me to my feet again when I am overloaded with life.
Something as simple as the sound and smell of rain or the halo around the moon made by ice crystals on exceptionally cold and clear nights sitting by myself, wondering what my future holds for me, made me look beyond the pain I held inside from the past. Crickets chirping on a warm night or the invasion of tiny frogs croaking in the distance and then disappearing into the night, dark skies filled with glowing stars or the moon brightly shining out the window, the smile from an unacquainted stranger or sunrise at dawn greeting me with a new day, just the living of my life is all the incentive I need.
The being of creation is enough to suspend any of life's endeavors. I know that I can reach beyond people into something more, something that I can relate to in my heart, the feeling of happiness, because I will only get to live once. I will only get to feel what life is for a given period of time, time that Allah has set for me. Even with the knowledge that I will someday die, perhaps even suffer in it, I cannot begrudge the world its favor to me to have felt the pleasures of living and the thought of have been loved by many.
From the sense that we are all led to find Allah in our own ways, we make our peace with the great things that are given to us. Even for those of us that might think it will all to go back into nothingness because we are so little, have started and give up on all that we've began. Life's so short, yet we live it like we have forever.
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