Category: Ego

The virtuous wolf


Where is my prose snarled a hungry witch,
of crimson cheek and skin of lavender,
ego unfulfilled and hips that bare,
oblivious to the lurking scavenger.

The remnants of rib and soil,
pheromone for severed souls,
a waft, a zephyr, myrtle and sage,
and lustful pangs that she can’t control.

With whisk and ease came the wolf,
hearing her plea for excavation,
with a lifetime of ravage and hurt did he answer,
aloof with misery and devastation.

We perform best where our habits  reconcile,
where we return to our defaults,
I ravage because I’ve been ravaged.
I do to others what’s been done to me,
it’s how I love, how I hate.

I eat away until I reach the pit,
by then, I’ve become my prey,
or they’ve become me.
It’s hard to tell the difference.

This attachment is beyond the pull of gravity,
this attraction more like blissful insanity.

A man  waltzing with prose between his teeth,
ever an incisor for a willing player,
blood covered hands, nails and underneath,
content only as a soul slayer.

This grief, this wail, this mourning and shrill,
this distance and indifference, and reality pill,
this noise, and orchestra, and blunt tip quill,
this rapture, sin and Frankenstein will.

It’s grotesque and tender and poetry at once,
a culmination, an opus and the crescendo waiting for a home,
a bare skin canvas waiting for the cut,
in the end a wandering sail boat,
taken by winds, a storm and white wash foam.

And there resides that scavenging wolf,
torn between hunger and the thrill,
ever the demons, a wrestle till death,
hell with every pant, a battle of will.

This carnality for the pulse,
the race for fulfilment and satisfaction,
the lure of the woman, the dance with the devil,
the lustful glance of distraction.

-Wesam El dahabi

There is no prison worse than the one of being trapped to base desires.
The wolf is the carnal ego leading us down the path of destruction.

Worth

At some point you have to admit,
that your shadow is daunting,
that fear eclipses your potential,
stiffens you,
paralysing inaction,
remarkably unremarkable.

I was fifteen,
when I realised,
I had a lifelong journey ahead of me,
of taking what I wanted.

It needn’t be like a tyrant does,
that would be too heavy a guilt to carry,
and I have a vested interest in my longevity,
but meekness could not be the badge I wear.

To carry rage,
to contain wisdom,
to bottle up emotion,
a certain kind of fortress,
tight sealing and safe,
both from and to the world,
needs to be built.
Am I romanticising my development,
or am I staring my subconscious dead in the eyes,
I’d say both.

What are you doing to yourself,
inflexible,
and immobile.
Frozen at the crossroads,
of self doubt and complacency.

This comfort you adorn yourself in,
this robe of lethargy and victim-hood,
has to be removed.

A little discomfort,
a lot of exposure,
to elements that make you shiver and shudder,
wouldn’t go astray.

A healthy appetite of fear and apprehension,
won’t do you harm.

All you need,
are sharp tenacious teeth,
to bite at everything that comes your way.

But you can’t have that,
if like a leech you suck the world around you dry,
if you never give off fragrances of your soul,
oblivious and impartial to anything in return,
limelight, entitlement and praise,
the least of your concern.

W.E.

the stupor

the-stupor

Look at your feet,
struggling to find cadence,
a balancing act of blame,
and forgiveness.

Won’t you hear my cues,
of devotion and hypocrisy,
as I met out my mettle,
with fervent jealousy.

I puncture  my reality,
so you can see we’re all filled with holes,
so you can stop assuming you’re complete,
that you’re burdened with displaying whole.

There’s no need for all this,
for the bathe in the mud of your thoughts,
know that all this prattling and nonsense,
is a trap, in you’re ego you’re caught.

Drink then a goblet,
a flask or a barrel,
numb out your self,
with sobriety of truth,
knowing it’s your ego that quarrels.

W.E.

Futuwa

futuwa

Futuwa is the Muslim concept of putting others before yourself.
It can also be translated into chivalry.

When heard in colloquial circles, chivalry is understood as a noble and gallantry quality that knights used to possess when dealing with maidens and princesses.

But true Futuwa is not attached to self absorbency, nor is it a complete detachment from the self. The self is very much alive and kicking until our last breath. It is just that those who practise Futuwa, hear the self loudly, know it’s hiding spots, know how to draw out the utterness of it’s most base requests and quell it, so as to be of utter service to others instead.

So still, there is an underlying service of the self, indirectly.

By relinquishing the oft call to serve oneself, to put ones needs before others and engage in this myriad of current trending and disastrously ineffective and selfish mantras of putting ‘me’ first, be it in the way of self love, self care, self help, and instead taking the path of servitude to others through choice, through total and conviction filled devotion, one reaps the benefits without them knowing. They illicit indirect self care and very direct appreciation from others, be it manifest and pronounced or temporarily in passing from the receiver of help, albeit, the goal still is not to win appraisal, not to seek the rewards of recognition, but just to do, whatever it is one has to do for the sake of goodness and morality, for empathetic purpose and fulfilment of trust that we are endowed with by God.

The land, people, things, riches all do not belong to us, how can they when WE don’t even belong to us.

I see circles of talk steering people to this empathetic path, but it is not a new concept, just because someone has coined it with a new term or marketable name.

It is, and always will be Futuwa and it is married to Muslim doctrine, most especially Sufi doctrine where it is taught in simple yet very engrossing detail. The sheer and brutal honesty of the way it is taught by their masters does one of two things. It almost always smashes the idols of self worship inside ones self, but it either makes the receiver of the knowledge bow and submit their ego, placing it on to the altar of truth for sacrifice, or it blows their ego up to gigantic proportions in rejection of it. Still, they know the truth inside, it’s just their choice on what to do with it and it’s at that moment right there, where you know if you are self absorbed and selfish or truly selfless.

W.E.

You, don’t really matter

i-matter
I can feel my skin burn from the glares of the generations growing to believe
these hyper bloated mantras.

People using the vulnerabilities of others to exploit them into false self worship.

The reality is, you don’t matter. You’re but a trickle of piss, in the river of life and
the sad thing is, you can’t smell how foul the odour is of your own passing.

It’s not your job to say if you matter or not, others do that for you.
You can’t say if you’re loveable or not, others do that for you.

If you want to matter, then be someone who matters, do something that matters.
If you want to be loved, you don’t love yourself, you become something loveable,
just like you expect to love someone who has qualities you deem loveable.

This frantically weak and depressed culture of youth walking around with,

‘Mum said I’m special’,

badges on their left breast is nauseating. You’re not! Your mother was a liar or ignorant or both.

Not everyone gets a trophy. Both sides don’t win. Not everyone is loveable. Not everyone matters.

As soon as you realise this, more importantly, as soon as you actualise this, you take on a promoted role of excellence amongst people.

Your humility is magnetic as people do not feel threatened by your inflated ego, you’re inflammatory sense of entitlement by default.

You don’t matter by saying you matter, nor even by saying you don’t matter. The first is delusion and ignorance, the second is pompousness or defeatist.

You matter by practising not mattering through blindness to the concept of either/or and being indifferent to the outcome.

If it matters to you that you matter, then you don’t.

Wesam El dahabi

-arrogance

arroganceSo this actually happened.

I’m a cafe surfer. I like the culture at most cafe’s for selfish reasons.
One being, I enjoy the crossfire of thoughts, flying through the battlefield of egos.

I’m always there inconspicuously, although the staff know me as a regular customer, I’m just a street walk in otherwise, in stealth mode.

They’re usually very confined spaces and it’s hard not to overhear fellow customers.

What I noticed is that people who busy themselves with something never have time for being arrogant.

The ones that busy themselves with serving others especially.

I went into a cafe yesterday and although I love their beans, the vibe was so filled with arrogance, you could walk out of the store and feel a strange calmness overcome you. Walk back in and the vibe was there again.

This wasn’t the first time I felt that way at their particular store.

They have another flagship store and I absolutely adore it and their staff, but this store, even though company owned, has some of the best beans in Australia and have been around for a while, was not on par.

From the minute I entered, the snares of waiters to the sideways look of the barista who was trying to be a revived version of Betty Crocker, maybe Betty Boo from head to toe, to be an image of something other than a barista, or perhaps she was the hipster barista, either way, her coffee making did not match her looks.

Funny enough, the store was not that busy at all compared to the other flagship store I usually visit.

I proceeded to order, tried to even compliment her on her look, because I hate the vibes of a person to be anything other than happy to make my food or coffee.
It didn’t seem to matter as she was too busy trying to matter…..visually.

Her coffee, despite the great beans was average, served to me in haste, dropped on my table like it was a weight of burden carried by the waiter, not a word from him either.
Usual culture at coffee houses, is the waiter explains the origin of the bean (speciality coffee roasters all do this) if you have a double ristretto or espresso with a single origin bean.

Doesn’t matter to me, I smiled said thank you but couldn’t get the ‘you’ out before the waiter was already racing back to the homeland to fetch my Persian ‘love cake’ and dump it on my table.
Followed by a dumped piccolo again, with no communication, no greeting, nothing.

Now I am not in the business of shaming places by calling out their names, so I won’t do it here either.

But I have experienced superior service from their other store which caused me to reflect. Why was the other store so inviting and warm, great coffee and vibes, whilst this one had all that negative energy?

There were a few factors I could think of.

The barista who usually sets the mood was foul faced, foul mooded and dry. She didn’t have any warmth about her, too stiff, too proud showing her dolled up appearance to actually worry about service and being warm with a customer ( I also buy their beans religiously for my own home consumption and their online service is outstanding).

She set the tone for the others who seemed to be answering to her, perhaps she was also the manager.

Staff were extremely bland faced and uninterested in doing anything other than walking back and forth with orders.

The store was not that busy for them to be so detached, which brings me to my next point. They were not that busy customer wise which made them busy with their own selves, displaying their ego’s instead. They had time to be arrogant.

Their other store was so busy, too busy catering to the ego’s of customers that they had no time to focus on their appearance, had no time for frivolities, their baristas humble, smiling even though constantly pressured in a high turn over environment.
Their waiters, greeting and understanding to the high demand, walking out to greet you, find you a place, sit you down and know you by name!

Their coffee was far superior too (same beans and machines), but I guess the layman looking barista actually refined his skills with his hands rather than his character play (yeah, she looked like a cosplay character) image.

Now, some of you may ask, but aren’t you manifesting your ego too Wes, aren’t you in reality expecting something for yourself that you’re actually accusing staff of doing, i.e. being arrogant, being expectant, holding yourself to higher ideals than just an average customer? And you would be correct to ask, who knows, I probably am.

But I’m the one who was smiling at them, complimenting them, thanking them, trying to be as civil and pleasant as possible to urge a vibe out of them so I can eat my food and drink my coffee pleasantly.

I’m paranoid like that. What you make with your hands or others hands, and the vibe you carry whilst making it, transfers to your body and in turn your persona.

Bitter mothers, have bitter kids, sick kids because there is no blessing and goodness in the food they make.

If you think food is inanimate and it is lifelessly just a breakdown of macro-nutrients and other elements, then you’re too far gone to know any better. You need to detox your body and mind and come back to a connectedness and understanding of the purpose of food.

So I care about how I receive food and drink.

As a business, you should also care about how you offer it to your customers, it will determine how they feel when they taste your food and in turn when they leave your premises and what vibe they take with them.

In the end, I couldn’t drink the coffee fast enough, and only ate half of the cake.
I had no time for people who had too much time.
I didn’t want to become arrogant like them, although I think by writing this, the damage is done, here I am prattling about having no time for arrogance and yet I have wasted fifteen minutes being arrogant.

You see what I mean? It’s a vicious cycle.

Have no time for arrogance, busy yourself with what is important to your day to day activities.
W.E.

Ego, Junior isn’t the most important person in the world.

Ego
Junior gets no ego prodding from me.

We have to stop with this culture of building frail human beings.

You suck, there’s nothing wrong with being told that.

The quack psychologist who developed the bogus theories that children need constant coaxing of their egos is probably the most dysfunctional human being ever.

Children don’t need ego coaxing, they need to be told the truth so they don’t grow up to be flimsy and ridiculous non contributors to society.

This culture of putting junior first, before mum and dad, before grandparents, before teachers and neighbours, elders and so on, is creating severe dysfunction.

Adults, well into their thirties, some forties, flimsy and unable to stand up and rectify themselves, who flop at the first hiding life gives them, the first heartbreak a man or woman gives them, the first yelling an employer gives them.

‘You can’t talk to me like that!’ The ego quips.

‘I’m an individual, I’m special, mum and dad told me I’m precious’, all subconscious thoughts rearing their heads, sometimes manifesting in speech if the ego is big enough.

Junior storms out of their first job, because their boss told them to get off Facebook, in juniors words, not because they told them to get off, but because they were so mean.

If your child draws something crap, sure, you don’t have to tell them it’s utterly useless junk, but you do have to wake them out of their slumber. Explain symmetry, explain, balance, explain the appropriate colours, pink trees don’t cut it in the real world.

Explain that cars aren’t houses on wheels, sit with them and show them how to draw what is actually there, what they actually properly see and not to try and take shortcuts over and over again because you keep saying wow to junior.

When junior is horrible at addition, tell them they need to get off their I-Pad and if needs be break it in front of them. Don’t worry, their heart will be broken for a day, but it’s better than their life broken at  eighteen because they suck at addition when giving customers the wrong change constantly at their first job.

When they can’t spell or complete a sentence or read more than a page without complaining of a headache, don’t give in because you feel that you might be causing them psychological problems, the opposite is true, by you giving in, you’re destroying their psychological make up for their future.

At the first hint of difficulty in real world situations, marriage, work, social circles etc, they will just give up. They make for shitty spouses, employees and friends, always a spoiled brat, thinking the world owes them a pass, a stick for encouragement because teacher never told them they sucked and mum and dad always told them they’re the best and love them no matter what.

No, not true, if my son murdered someone, he can rot in jail and I would feel no remorse. The rights of other human beings and society at large is more important than my sons ego, or mine for that matter.

Truth is truth, falsehood is falsehood and ego’s will tell you otherwise, they’ll always find a justification.

Quit being a sook yourself lest you keep breeding generations after generations of sooks, brats and egotistical maniacs.

W.E.