Turn a New Leaf

I like to think of the soul as a big sack, and the grudges we hold are like big rocks.
Imagine yourself walking around with a sack filled with big rocks in it, it must feel so heavy and hard to move. This is exactly what happens when our souls get stuck on the bad things that happen in our lives, we live our lives in inner pain and grief while all we need to do is put a hole in the rock sack!


Whatever the bad thing happened might be; it must add something to a person’s life. As long as we take it as an unpleasant experience or a lesson we can always consider it another page that we can turn and who knows how the next page is going to be. Many people actually started their lives and made it to their own successful track after they got disappointed in an earlier time of their lives. I say their own successful track because people are different and success has many tracks and as a matter of fact people can create their own tracks of success.


God gave each person a fingerprint that can never match any other person’s. So why should people be the same in everything even in their success stories! Success is what you decide it is to you, and not what it is to the rest of the world. If it was being rich and powerful to you it might be being generous and giving to somebody else. Whoever thinks that success can be defined is very wrong and as long as people are different every one will succeed in their own unique track.


It is only hard to do when we are still hung up on the thing or the people who hurt us. Sometimes we just can’t help but go back with our memories to the tough moments they caused us. Some other times by going back to the good moments we have shared in the past, giving them excuses and picturing them as angels while they are not. That is when we really need to consider and accept the fact that they too have brains and hearts, and they could always tell what could possibly hurt their loved ones, but they did hurt us anyways. In this case we need to open our eyes widely and start remembering what actually happened leaving out any sympathy or any kind of excuse to them, we need to stop day dreaming that far and start considering the damage that actually happened. I’d recommend not to start this process or going into its details if we are still vulnerable. Because we might make it worse by reminiscing on hurtful memories and may be never make it to the next page.


Whether it was a husband or a wife, a brother or a sister, a so called friend or even one of your parents, you can still turn the page, or you can sit in your place and think of how bad the thing they did was and ruin the rest of the pages yet to come. It is nobody’s decision but yours turning the bad pages, all you need to do is collect your strength and faith in god and start believing in a better day, and if the people who hurt us are still the same you better think that whatever they do will only add up to their bad pages. If you feel it is hard to do, I always believed in the saying: “Fake it till you make it,” Always remember whose bad it was and never let anything get your self-esteem or belief in yourself down even if you did contribute to it.


You can start by fast forwarding to a scene of yourself pain free and over your problems. That would be the first hole you put in your sack of rocks. Visualizing the sack when it is all run out of the big rocks is just like making a journey through the jungles of the unknown, to search for your way towards that destination the woundless, all healed picture of yourself until you actually find it. So let’s all hope we make the journey to that destination the destination I’d like to call inner peace.

Marwa Saudi
Elife Magazine - April 2010

Time

Time is a very powerful tool, and its outcome always depends on how we use it. For a long time I've always wondered what would the world be like if people used their time in ways that can actually help making the world become a better place, and was always amazed by the massive numbers of people who screwed up their outcomes and other peoples' by ignoring the vital role time plays ever since Adam and Eve and up till this moment. Everyday we see people wasting the time in which they might progress and achieve fine things in life and it is really sad.

Historical Proof:

It would help a great deal if we imagine the difference that might've been the reality now if only one past event was reversed, like for instance the bombastic Adolf Hilter's wars and gory ambition to dominate the world. It sure would've helped make the casualties and agonies much less if he had invested his time and skills in the well being of people in his time, instead of dedicating a lot of time and effort to satisfy his arrogance, taking his nation and the nations he conquered many steps back in time instead of moving forward.

Think Twice:

Now back to reality and I don't mean to make a big deal out of the everyday normal conduct of people nowadays, but I am just inviting people to the simple dream that can turn some of our facts into things we can live happily in peace with and at the same time be proud of.
To control one's arrogance and greed is not that easy, yet it can be done if people gave every selfish action a second thought before doing it.

Pick Your Battle:

So the next time you spend your time trying to come up with something clever and hurtful to say behind someone else's back or judge another person which may end up with you both in a big fight which can waste a lot more time, think twice and try to turn it into some positive criticism instead or you may even find it unnecessary to criticize them. This can actually help more than gaining another sin, as one can waste a long time judging a sinner instead of preventing him/herself from becoming one.

Consider the Consequences:

We can also bear in mind that wasting time trying to make other people's lives seem bad won't make ours any better. And because what goes around comes back around, people need to pick what kind of things they'd like to be getting back while they still have the time, and of course that kind of thinking comes before ruining someone's day or what could even be worse, someone's life or even your own !

Stay Focused:

It is only because time can never be restored once gone we’d better stay focused on what we want from our time and on how can we make it possible to watch our dreams come true. People need to put aside what doesn’t really matter and start looking for what actually does, and that is how the outcome becomes a reward.

Marwa Saudi
Elife Magazine - April 2010

The Best Version of ME

Sometimes deep inside us we feel that we are not getting what we truly deserve or that there is more to us, yet nobody knows anything about it। It occurs to me that most of the people I know are denyingly living in the shadows of other people in various ways. Some have obsessions living up to peoples’ expectations may be even abide by their rules, while others would kill just to look or live like someone else. Mostly, people lack the belief in changing into themselves. They’d rather live their entire lives following the lights instead of shining themselves.

"There are times in everyone's life where we do need to get out and expand and do all those things that make us the best version of ourselves!" - Meg Ryan

Why Not? Why shouldn't one try to be like somebody else??… Because to become this person is not only to become what we see about them from outside, because this person is when and where they were born, who their parents were and how, their surroundings since their day one in this world, its their good and bad times, their first and last time to cry or to laugh and why। I can go on forever trying to list those things but its endless.

On the other hand, if we take a thorough look into the insides of those people, we will definitely find out that they will never become us! This leads us to the thought that we are all different and special in many ways, our own ways। It makes me go back to wondering again, why would anybody give that away and decide to become somebody else?! Probably some down times can make us think of other people as luckier or happier than we are, but realistically talking, who doesn’t go through bad times?!!

We wake up one day to find out that the person we are supposed to be, never really existed. We discover that we have wasted a long time trying to become someone else, knowing nothing about how special the person we are might be, to finally see why isn’t it working for us the way it does for that other person। However, this shouldn’t be devastating because at least we have reached the point of realizing why we or other people don’t see how special we are, and that needs a bit of optimism and open mindedness in my opinion.

There are some healthy assumptions we can make at this point. Like may be we think of ourselves as “not special” because nobody ever cared enough to tell us so, or we may even be underestimated by the people around us, who could be either too busy being self centered or too busy working so hard to destruct any actually different person. But the worst is when it is our fault against our own selves, when we are the first to give up on whom or what we are by dreaming and aiming so hard at becoming someone else!

What is “Special” Anyway? I think we need to stop thinking of the word “special” as a hard to earn title. In fact we need to know that those special people are nothing but human beings just like everybody else. We need to ask the right question, which is how did they become special or how can anyone become special. I’d say being special differs from one person to another; a person for example could be special for having effective communication skills, another could be considered special may be because they always just be themselves, by living there dreams, by helping others, what really matters is that they believe in who they are and what they dream.

We need to invest enough time working on knowing ourselves to know what we want, instead of seeking what everybody seeks or has, without actually knowing whether it’s what “we” really want. We need to be brave enough to dive so deep beneath the surface of our being, embrace the changes we need, never compare ourselves to others, and in the process we need to accept our human flaws. As complicated and hard as it may be, whatever it takes we should bare in our minds that we owe it to ourselves to reveal the special person inside everyone of us, whatever the thing one needs to change is, stopping a bad habit, starting or ending a relationship, getting a job or quitting one, or even some extra pounds to lose, we need to take control and never let our fears of the new or the unknown stop us.

“It doesn’t change you; it just makes you more of who you are" - Barbara Streisand

And when we decide to listen to that little voice inside each one of us, it would really help if we stop responding to the noises outside। The effect of other peoples’ remarks on who or how we are or what we dream of, could be very distracting if not totally negative and frustrating sometimes. Change is the never ending quest. However, sometimes it could be taken for granted as a constant thing. It certainly needs to be stirred; it doesn’t work on its own, and it is an endless process. We shouldn’t aim at a final result because there will never be one। Settling down to the good feeling we get after a change, is to give up on the other things that still need to change. It could happen when we face a difficulty down the road, but nobody said its an easy one.

Accepting this fact will help us avoid taking any shortcuts that might provide a momentarily satisfaction, which can be a disappointment in the future.

“If at any point in our lives we took the easy way out, we’ll be just creating a bigger obstacle that will pop in our face eventually.”

People get stuck in their miseries because they are unable to dream of a better day, they don’t see the possibilities, they don’t believe in many things, most of all the power of belief and how it can help us change. Visualizing the difference, call it day dreaming or whatever, is like peeking through the window of the future, to get a clue of how good it would feel when the change we plan for actually takes place and translates our dreams into real tangible things. I believe this can turn the world into a heaven of opportunities and make us feel good enough to take a step forward.

Blinded by the present, the next special person could be right beside us but we are just too blind to see, too blind that this person might even be ourselves!

“Then why become somebody else while you can become the best version of YOU!”

Marwa Saudi

Euphoria Magazine(March 2010)

The Free Copy

"The instant, experience free, proven to work success recipe!"

In one of the hundreds of times I sat down to analyze the world or the people around me which I must say always ends with a bit of disappointment। I started collecting memories of me and some of my friends talking about one common thing. It was not like we all sat down and shared our feelings and points of view ॥ No! It was a series of phone calls, outings and moments of deep contemplation, and they all led me to the fact that we were or are still being pushed so hardly inside a photo frame with a free copy of a picture of one big happy family or as we sometimes see in gift shops, a picture of a happy couple with a BIG, FAKE, ear to ear teeth revealing smile!

For a very long time may be my whole lifetime I tried to decode the energy coming to me from the people surrounding me, especially grown ups। Here is what I could come up with at the beginning. I think they are trying desperately to put in my mind some concepts by telling me you should be special, not like the other kids yet you must somehow fit in the stereotypes that we can handle. You should think outside the box, BUT stay inside the house while doing it!!

Then I start wondering why is it worth fighting for to them, that they even keep setting examples and making comparisons between their own kids and those who have seemingly or "actually" made it through living the stereotypical life, the so called normal people who are ridiculously happy living the free, easy to access copy of that ridiculously fake photo given or may be even served to them by their parents!

How come they prefer spending their time and energy trying to impose the ready made guaranteed pattern but not on trying to be realistic and reasonable which I think should be a part of their adulthood, how come they never check the world around them?! Its so clear now that their is no such thing as a perfect life। On the contrary, we see lots of divorced people, people with addiction problems, and people drowning in their debts as a result of being unable to sustain an extravagant lifestyle॥ I try to imagine the older generations' feelings of guilt when they see the impact of the things they said and done to the younger ones but I wake up to the ugly truth, I found out that the majority of them have easily embraced the free copies instead of believing in innovation, to the extent that they even think of creativity as expensive, dangerous and simply not worth working for, which leaves the rest who believe the opposite, devastated and almost constantly looking for appreciation from their families or even from the rest of the world.

Finally, I go back to the attempt at trying to understand their message and I humbly declare its as follows:

* Be Good. "By only acting as if you are, you really don't have to work that hard to become actually good."

* Be Religious. "By watching every single religious program and then you can mess up as much as you would like, only as long as you keep it in secret"

* Get Married. "So we get to attend your fancy wedding and practice showing off"

* NEVER Answer back. "But you can curse us when WE turn our backs"

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