Tag: loneliness

A cure for anxiety – Extract from Remembering God by Charles Le Gai Eaton

Anxiety

 

I have revisited this quote countless times this week and I feel I will visit it countless more. A reminder of the nature of affairs.

Fatalism, as an attitude to life in general, is retrospective. Only when something has happened can we say that it had to happen. The notion that it makes people inactive is disproved by experience. The courage of the Prophet’s Companions, going into battle against overwhelming odds, must certainly have owed something to the conviction that the outcome of the battle was in God’s hands, not theirs, and that they would die not a moment before or after “a time appointed”. If their time had not yet come, the enemy’s weaponry would prove to be no more dangerous than a child’s toys; if they were fated to meet their end that day, nothing they did could prevent this. In our time, countless men and women suffer extreme stress in their work and this is often due to the belief that “everything depends on me”. For the Muslim, everything depends on God; nothing “depends on me”. Paradoxical as it may seem, the conviction that all is pre-ordained is liberating, whereas belief in total freedom of choice creates, for those who hold it, a prison of anxiety and uncertainty. It is for us to act. The outcome of our actions is God’s business, not ours. It is for us to do what is right under all circumstances. Subsequent failures does not mean that right action was, after all, wrong.

From Charles Le Gai Eaton’s book Remembering God

A supplication taught to Muslims by the Prophet Muhammad. On reflection, it is easy to adapt this into your life no matter what your religious inclination.
hammi-wa-alhazn

You’ll find it where it hurts most to look

ReviewCaffeine coursed veins

Lead to empty hall brains

With no lights on

But echoes of chains

The pains, the strains

The soul drained.

No we’re not at all insane

Just wanting higher plains

Trying to leave our mark, our stain

Not wanting to be contained

Trying to unshackle

The rein

Until none of me remains

And my ego does not complain

My spirit can soar, unrestrained

My attention to The Real

Not the profane, not the mundane

And I no longer feign

-ME

On writing.

50

Franz Kafka said to his adoring Fiance

You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind. That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.

Yes, this true! I agree wholeheartedly with him. Any writer that needs an audience to complete his work is a show pony, not a stallion of the desert of words.

Backwards

weve got it wrong

We’ve got it all wrong.

We try so hard to ‘keep our head above water’ when the pearls of life are buried deep into the abyss of the ocean.

We’re ‘just trying to survive’ by killing ourselves to pay bills.

We’re ‘getting by’ without moving at all.

We’re ‘getting through school’ but our schooling is not thorough, then again if we were to hold ourselves to account, the meaning of the word is being fulfilled, people are most definitely ‘schooled’.

We’re ‘battling along’ but we wouldn’t have the physical integrity to run to the local convenience store let alone battle anything.

We’re ‘trying to find ourselves’, but this is the biggest hoax spread today, as if we’ve all become lost and we need a ten year journey to reconcile with who we are.

If the internet were invented first, people would not bother with facebook, twitter, forums and the such. Picking up the phone and conversing would be the in thing to do, better yet, meeting up in person, watching the creases of ones face move as they speak, feeling their emotion or lack thereof, watching their body language, hearing their laughter, tone and meter in their speech would be so fun, but alas we’re happy to ignore the real things. These are far too many things to co-ordinate for the modern day cerebrally severed being.

In my world celebrities aren’t real. The people who quietly go about their business interest me. Their dreams, hopes, thoughts and intricacies make me wonder. They intrigue me, they fascinate me. You want to grab my attention? Seek none and I’ll notice you.

Reminds me of a quote from the secret life of Walter Mitty where Sean Penn said – “Beautiful things don’t ask for attention”.

-ME