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