Butterflies and rainbows are fake

Marriage is an entirely different concept in Islam than it's current idea in society. In the West, marriage is just a whole lot of papers that don't really mean anything more than an exchange of money. In the East, a lot of it still has to do with forming bonds between two families, and very little has to do with the two people involved. Of course that's a very black-and-white version, but that's basically what a lot of it boils down to. Personally, if I wasn't Muslim, I probably wouldn't bother with marriage either - love and commitment can be established in so many other ways than just signing in a few places.

But in Islam, marriage is much, much more. Islam is something that works best when it is practised as a whole, instead of bits and pieces here and there. It contains guidelines for something so personal as how to get over sadness as well as something so global as how to rule a nation. An integral part of the system is the family unit, which made much more sense to me when I was studying developmental psychology. When a child grows up with a good home environment, he/she has a much lesser chance of committing crime or developing psychological disorders. The family unit starts with a marriage. Marriage is the basis of building a society in Islam. The other issue with our current society is that we are very detached from other people and each of us have a huge personal space. In a marriage, people learn to share that space, so they are constantly faced with challenges that they need to learn to overcome. But, marriage is also about supporting each other. When two people work together to achieve a shared goal, they can stop each other from veering off in the wrong direction and be motivational to each other.

But when Islam is mixed in with culture, both Western and Eastern, that is when problems occur. When Easter cultures are brought in, the 'pride factor' from parents enter the equation. It's no longer purely about two people being compatible with each other in terms of personality, intellect and physical attraction - it also becomes about family status', wealth and even something so mundane as skin colour. The Western culture brings its own Hollywood-like expectations which teaches young people that relationships are all about love and rainbows, 10% problems and 90% excitement. I am guilty of this as well, so I know how easy it is to fall into such traps. But seriously, at some point, people need to open their eyes and observe real life relationships and realise that after a while, the butterflies kinda die in your stomach.

Everything is a test and a blessing, people, EVERYTHING.

End of rant.

Awkward Encounters

It's sort of like walking straight into someone, then moving out of the way for them, only to face them again because they have also attempted to move out of the way and in the end you two end up doing a little dance. Except, when the encounters are initiated by you, and half way through it, neither you nor the other person know where you are going with your banter. You can feel your face burning, but since you are the one who initiated the meeting, you can't exactly run off with an excuse. You realise that you two live in entirely different books, let alone ever being in the same page. Difference is scary when it people are okay with where they are and are not willing to change, but then, maybe the other person is thinking the exact same thing about you.

Note to self: only converse with a purpose!

It's such a beautiful day out today. Yesterday was very different - it was raining heavily, I had an exam, I was scared out of my wits. I had a lovely day though, despite it's emotional lows. The coffee shop I went to had a smiling person behind the counters, who called me "miss" and used sentences like "it's my pleasure". People genuinely smiled, despite (or because of?) the rain. There's something about well made coffee that just makes everything better. Speaking of which, today's one was horrible.

I should study for my last exam.

And they come unstuck

Six years, seven months and four days ago!

Struggling to swim

I only remember fragments of my life before Australia. I remember daydreaming a lot, which I still do. I remember not being able to concentrate in memorisation - still am not. I don't remember being fussy about the way I look. I guess that's because I used to fit the general criteria of what was considered to be 'pretty' - which should not really matter to a ten year old anyway (but it often does, especially when kids get bullied for it, or rather, the lack of it). My grades were not great, but I was good at understanding English, attended a good school and generally picked things up faster than others. So, I had neither a low or inflated self esteem about my intelligence. When I came to Australia, I was considered to be one of the smart ones, though it was expected because schools in Bangladesh make kids work harder - it was new to me. I went through the next five years of schooling with the mentality that I was, indeed, one of the smarter kids. :)

This kind of got crushed once I changed schools in 2008. As one of my teachers put it - the new kids at this new school were used to being the big fish in little ponds, and all of a sudden, are thrown into the ocean, where they aren't so big any more. Before this, I was used to putting in very little effort in my school work, but the effort I put in was done with enthusiasm. The last 2 years of schooling drained every last bit of enthusiasm I had towards structured learning. But, I must've put in some kind of effort, because I ended up with a mark that said I was somewhere just below average in my school, but way above average in the state. However, my efforts were overshadowed by the stress of meeting expectations, so if I was given the choice of re-living those two years - I most definitely would not do it!

In the first semester of university - I remember studying hard for chemistry. I enjoyed maths up to a particular point. I hated one of the other compulsory classes that we had to do, but it was so easy that I ended up with a distinction anyway. My marks reflected each subject accordingly. I hated the 2nd semester of my first year - the subjects that I was doing probably required a lot more effort on my part than was given, but I was very unmotivated because I absolutely hated physics and optics (a combination of maths and physics). The other two subjects were chemistry and bio - and although I liked chemistry up until that point, I don't really know what happened - things probably got too hard and I gave up. Bio - I have always had a love-hate relationship with it. The system that was put in our bodies is complex and fascinating, which is why I love knowing about it, but hate learning it because it requires a lot of memorisation.

The next semester was a good one. My fourth semester at uni saw another dip in performance - at that point, I thought I wanted to major in both neuroscience and psychology. Neuroscience required anatomy and pharmacology - both of which required memorisation of terms that I could not have memorised even if I had to save my life. I ended up dropping anatomy early. And needless to say, my pharm results were horrible. It probably did not help that at that time some personal challenges were also brimming to the top. So, I was faced with challenges in both my academic and personal lives, and not being able to handle them perfectly broke my spirit, quite a bit.

The challenges that I faced in the next two semesters - last year - was pretty well documented here, I think. I keep talking about them. All the time. I should really stop. (butinsummaryitwasacombinationofchallengesinacademicpersonalandworklives)

So why am I analysing my failures?

I had a job interview the other day. I haven't done too many interviews, but, in terms of my work life, I generally always got the jobs I wanted. I really wanted this particular one, but I got a rejection call the other day.

It made me think about how my failures have shaped me. I tend to attach myself to ideas (that horrible habit of daydreaming!) and when things don't go the way I imagined them to go, I get terribly disappointed. Of course, this is a natural humane response. But, I forget to remember that my days are numbered. I can't exactly do anything about my past failures except to accept them, because expecting perfection will set me up for more disappointments in the future. All I can do now, is focus on things that matter - things that'll prepare me for the absolute long term and things that I can control. Is this a defense mechanism? Maybe. But if we don't employ any kind of mechanisms to defend our hearts, the world will break it before we know it. And it's much harder to put broken pieces back together than to save a fragile, but intact thing. 

Rainy days and Mondays

i have an exam tomorrow it is raining i am having my first coffee in two days and it feels strangely refreshing my room is a mess and it has not been such a mess in about a week or two so the mess feels intrusive there are always too many people in our house so i would rather study at the library but i hate walking in the rain with a deadline in mind so i would rather not go to the library i also do not know what shoes i should wear when i go out because all my shoes seem to be drenched because they were left out in the rain accidentally i also accidentally dropped in a few blocks of cooking chocolate in my coffee so it should taste like mocha but i cannot yet taste the chocolate maybe i will be able to taste it at the end all at once my mum keeps waking up in the middle of the night and is not able to go back to sleep out of worrying about some things that she cannot control and she cannot control her sleeping patterns either or the way she feels she feels dizzy from time to time and feels like she would faint she is such a strong woman that i have never heard her say things like this before on top of that she is fasting today i am worried about her i have been sleeping too much lately because when i start to worry about things i cannot control i feel that i should forget about them and the easiest way to forget is to lose consciousness and all other methods of losing consciousness besides sleeping are haram so i have been sleeping a lot i have a song stuck in my head it goes how do you like your eggs in the morning i like mine with a kiss up or down something something frown as long as i get my kiss how do you like your toast in the morning i like mine with a hug dark or light the world is alright as long as i get my hug little z knocked on my door this morning and started calling me she has not done that in a while she had one of my magnets and wanted to put it on my whiteboard then she saw a few other things in my messy room and started exploring she saw the fan and screamed out fan and wanted me to turn it on but i told her it was too cold then she saw an empty juice packet and pretended to drink juice she makes me laugh then she climbed into my bed with me and saw my phone and wanted to call her mum but when her mum did not pick up we went through my photos and she named all the people she knew she especially loved seeing photos of little m my coffee is beginning to taste a little like mocha now but it is also beginning to finish i should really clean my room and while i am at it i should clean up my life too are you still reading is this annoying it is still raining i have my first exam tomorrow i really wanted to do well this semester because i really would like to graduate as soon as possible but then as soon as i started studying a lot i also had a fear at the back of my mind that my efforts will not pay off and so i started sleeping a lot because i did not like having that thought because that thought is neither legitimate nor illegitimate and since i could neither prove nor disprove it immediately it lingered but i know that if i do not do something about it today i would terribly regret it tomorrow in fact i probably will still regret things tomorrow but heck at least i will not regret it as much as i would have if i do not do some work now i read a story by scott fitzgerald he is the guy who wrote a great gatsby i hated a great gatsby because gatsby is a pathetic loser who has no life his entire life revolves around waiting for a girl he also wrote the curious case of benjamin button which had an interesting plotline but also had that element of lost love the short story that i read was called a new leaf and it too had that element this guy must have been dumped really badly there is a movie about his life i should watch it but i really liked one quote from the story i actually liked a few quotes but this one quote is what drew me to finding the whole story in the first place it goes her heart sank into her shoes as she realised at last how much she wanted him no matter what his past was no matter what he had done which was not to say  that she would ever let him know but only that he moved her chemically more than anyone else she had ever met i liked the quote because i can relate to it very well in the sense that for the longest time i have not met anyone who has moved me more chemically than anyone else i had ever met a lot of the times it does not have to be someone of the opposite gender that you are romantically attracted to like this woman in the story it can just be a friend but they must be interesting enough to change you beyond who you used to be although if it is someone of the opposite gender then romantic attraction is definitely the way to go because friendzone is actually a horrible place to live in so this is how thoughts run through my head without full stops or semi colons is this how thoughts run through your head too are you still reading is this annoying i need to go and brush my teeth it stopped raining but i still have an exam tomorrow.

Lessons for the future

• You cannot, ever, change the past. So, while you are in the present, don't do anything, that you know with certainty, that you will regret in the future.
• If you take a decision that you believe to be the best at one particular point, know that it is okay. Even if the result doesn't turn out as you expect.
• Try your best, or maybe, try to try your best. Nothing in this world is guaranteed. But if you don't try to try your best, you will have no excuses against your future self's regret.
• Everything is relative. You will always be a little smarter than someone and a little more stupid than someone else. Everything is a gift and a test from Allah, and you can only work with what you have.
• Don't intentionally hurt people. But know that you can never make every single person happy. And that is okay.
• Implement little, positive changes in your life, every day. 
• Know that you can die at any moment.

I know. I'm kind of boring already. Implementing these lessons will make me more boring. Oh well. 

A whole bunch of updates

I need to meet some new people. I seem to be talking to the same two or three people all the time- not that it's a bad thing- I love those people. But the less people that you expose yourself to, the less you remember that everyone is different, the more judgmental you become (or seem). The more that happens, the stronger your bubble grows. And you eventually spiral into a socially awkward mess. Socially awkward people can be cute, but they can also be uncomfortably... awkward. So yeah, I need some fresh faces in my life. The problem with being twenty-two is that you already know so many people that you should be spending time with but can't find the time to spend time with. Uni, work, family, uni, uni,  the internet - they all guilt trip you into thinking that you don't have enough time for them, so how on earth will you ever have time for newness?

I recently remembered how much I used to love public speaking in high school. I liked it because you could say some words, which, if they were different enough, or relateable enough, and spoken with the right kinda emotions - could change someone else's perspective, even if it's in a very tiny way. I have an opportunity to speak for sixty seconds about a pretty interesting topic, on Monday. I am really looking forward to it - I haven't spoken about something silly in front of an audience for a very long time!

We Skyped with nanu today. Her Skype sound wasn't working properly, so we had to speak on the phone simultaneously. Nanu is one of the most real person I've ever come across. She doesn't have a pretentious bone in her body, which is why I don't feel the need of filling up silent moments with her. I can just look at her face and keep quite, and know that she will talk if she has something in her mind, otherwise, she will just sit there and look back too. She always asks me where I am with my uni degree. It's always the same answer, but she seems okay with that. She takes everything matter-of-factly. She doesn't really talk about dreams, and I love that. I love the fact that she is an eighty-three year old woman who has learnt so much from life that she knows that worldly dreams can be crushed so bad that they are often irrelevant. I hate it when I come across adults who learn nothing from life.

My sister recommended a book to me - Organised for Life. It's for people who were not born organised, but want to reform themselves - ie: not my mother, but me. I can live with a decent level of mess I suppose (another one of my numerous qualities that is socially seen as something guys would have)... but I also suppose life becomes easier if you learn to live without it. I don't see myself turning into a clean freak who can't see a speck of dust on her furniture any time soon, but I can see the difference in my room already. One of the tips the author gave was to clean for 15 mins per day. So, I've started that yesterday - I set a 15-min-timer and start cleaning - and yes, it's working. :) (I know.. too early to tell.. but why so negative?!)

One of my friends dubbed me as 'Emma' last year - for my great enthusiasm in pairing people up, providing couples counselling and other Emma kinda stuff. I was talking to TA about this today, and I realised, I am no longer Emma. In fact, currently, I am so far from Emma and that it would be an insult to Jane Austen to call me Emma. I have learnt to stay as far away as I can from couples. TA said she had a similar experience where she felt 'scarred' by the effect that she had on a relationship - and I can relate to that so well. Even though a lot of our actions are well meaning, they have consequences that turn into nightmares and subconsciously change your perceptions so dramatically that people that met you before your change find it very hard to recognise you.

I finished watching the Lizzie Bennet Diaries today. It's a clever vlog adaptation of Pride and Prejudice - and although the acting is a little awkward at times, they did a very good job of it. The casting was great and fit the roles - the skeptic Lizzie, nice Jane, (super)hot Wickham - all of it. So yeah, I finished all hundred episodes in about three days. I've also been watching Vlogbrothers - they have an amazing outlook on life and seem to be able to summarise anything in about five minutes.

I should get a cup of tea and get back to learning about Sensation and Perception - a subject that sounds very philosophical and fun, but is just philosophical and tedious.