Self-definition

** This might sound to you like some self-help blabber but this is what I've been thinking about for the last 90 days or so.

There is a common scene in movies where the guy is asked in an interview: who are you? So the guy stops and dramatically leaves the office trying to find an answer to that question. The movie ends and we leave the sofa feeling pitiful for the guy who cannot define himself. But can you? Who are you?

I once received a piece of advice from someone. It said that I should not overthink and I should just be productive. But that didn't work.

Everything was ok until all of a sudden - when I gave myself some time to think - something was not ok. I couldn't really point it out. I felt a little lost. I was living by other people's definitions. Their definition of happy. Their definition of successful. Their definition of my own self! Just like wearing a costume tailored for you by other people. Yet, it never fits you.

So I had to draw a comparison between who I am now and who I was the last time I truly felt that I was being myself. And wow! Everything was so different! My worries, my ambitions, my role models, my concepts and my daily life activities. I don't know how and when all of this happened. And of course, you can't give up 2/3 of the things that define you then complain about feeling down and uninspired.. Well DUH! Because you are simply not "you" anymore. Consequently, you will never be fully productive and you'll never do anything wholeheartedly.

So what's your self-definition?

Cambridge Advanced defines "self" as "a set of someone's characteristics, such as personality and ability, which are not physical and make that person different from other people. "
Personality .. Ability .... Different!

By the way, you never ask yourself "Who am I?" when you're being yourself. Your mind doesn't need a verbal statement if you're whole being is practicing it. So the moment you ask yourself that or the moment you start missing an old version of your "self" … STOP! You need to get back to your self-made self-definition.

The bright side is … I found my self-definition when I lost it.
You are absolutely right, Thoreau!

Gracefully

He is running...
He has been running for a very long time
From east to west
Making sure everything was fine
Making sure everyone was fine
Making sure all the cracks were sealed
Making sure all the wounds were healed
Running
Running
And more running
Until he could take no more
So he stood at the centre of life
Between its furthest east and west
He stood right there
Silently
Falling apart
While everyone from the east and west
Applauded and wondered
"Wow! How does he do it so gracefully?!"

Monologues

I love love love those long reflective uninterrupted monologues. Not sure what the mechanism is, but they do something magnificent to my mind. It's like sauntering in the character's mind. Then I start wondering how much could be common between the author and the character? How much could be common between the character and myself? 
The ultimate thrill is when I find the monologue exposing thoughts I always considered bizarre and imagined they were exclusively confined to my disturbed mind. At that moment, I feel like hugging that character. Maybe I'm not that disturbed after all. Or maybe it's simply ok to be disturbed. :)

(Drawing by this talented young doctor >> Emy Elmorshdy)

Sustaina-WHAT?

What does the word sustainability -briefly- mean?

This will only take 2 minutes.. I promise! :)

Climate Change: We.Are.All.Going.To.Die

Hilarious. Hilarious. Hilarious. THANK YOU EDD!

Climate Neutrality

Copied from the UN publication "Kick the Habit".. Spread awareness!

Carbon-neutral, yes – that sounds familiar. But climate? The answer is simple: it is not just carbon dioxide, CO2, that is driving climate change, even if it makes up almost 80 per cent of the climate gases (including contributions from changes in land use) emitted by human activities. Carbon dioxide is the most abundant greenhouse gas we are adding to the atmosphere, but it is not the only one. The international climate change treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, limits the emissions of six main GHGs produced by human activities (see table). The gases are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), perfluorocarbons (PFC), and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6).

The term climate neutrality is used in this book to mean living in a way which produces no net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This should be achieved by reducing your own GHG emissions as much as possible, and using carbon offsets to neutralize the remaining emissions.

Sûk-en-Nahassīn

Recently, I have been travelling through time with a "book-friend" called Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt by R. Talbot Kelly.

The author showed a great deal of astonishment, which made me a very happy reader. With his words, I drew a beautiful picture of a city that I am familiar with (i.e. Cairo) but Oh my foes and Oh my friends, how different the Cairo I know is from the one he is describing!

"And now I must tell you something about the bazaars, which, after the mosques, are the most interesting relics in Cairo, and in many cases quite as old. First, I may say that the word "bazaar" means "bargain," and as in the East a fixed price is unusual, and anything is worth just what can be got for it, making a purchase is generally a matter of patience, and one may often spend days in acquiring some simple article of no particular value. An exception is the trade in copper ware, which is sold by weight, and it is a common practice among the poorer classes to invest their small savings in copper vessels of which they have the benefit, and which can readily be sold again should money be wanted. This trade is carried on in a very picturesque street, called the "Sûk-en-Nahassīn," or street of the coppersmiths, where in tiny little shops 4 or 5 feet square, most of the copper and brass industry of Cairo is carried on. Opening out of this street are other bazaars, many very ancient, and each built for some special trade. So we have the shoemaker's bazaar, the oil, spice, Persian and goldsmith's bazaars, and many others, each different in character, and generally interesting as architecture. The Persian bazaar is now nearly demolished, and the "Khan Khalili," once the centre of the carpet trade, and the most beautiful of all, is now split up into a number of small curio shops, for the people are becoming Europeanized, and the Government, alas! appear to have no interest in the preservation of buildings of great historic interest and beauty."

This is a paragraph in the book, one that disturbed me a lot actually. Look at the underlined phrase. Now I ask: did we ever have a government that knew what it was doing? Did we ever have a government that appreciated this country's treasures? This book was written in the early 20th century and I cannot imagine that the curse of clumsy authorities date back to then. Of course, in the recent times, describing our governments as "clumsy" would be the understatement of the century. You must add corrupt, dictatorial and ignorant... at least!

Will this ever change?