Tuesday, 19 May 2026

Acceptance

 



Do I mean acceptance or surrender? Either way, both are difficult to attain. It seems that for a man to survive, he has to accept his defeat on a daily basis. Or he has to surrender to his fate…. Do we even know what fate is? Let me ignore this “moment of truth”, and let me confess that I have been successfully distracting myself for so long. Maybe I only confront myself, my “selves”, whenever I pause to write. Only then I am honest, blunt and sincere. Isn’t it too early to lose hope? Haven’t I always repeated that “I have a big appetite for life”? So what happened, why am I just numbly wading through the days as if I was promised an eternal life. Why do I keep postponing every important decision, crucial action, and unavoidable confrontation?

Fear has controlled my life; it’s obvious! The fear of the truth, the truth of everything. Am I a hypocrite? Definitely! Gratitude? I just keep murmuring Elhamdolella without any sense of the word, without any consciousness. I acquired a new habit, an ugly habit of counting the days, x days till the summer, y days till the deadline, z days till my birthday, and so on. It seems as if I’m intentionally wasting my life, self-revenge? Yes, it is, I can’t consider it anything else. My body is betraying me on so many levels, I’m aging, and this is not a metaphor or even an exaggeration. Maybe my body is aching from all my disappointments, despair, and melancholic approach to every single aspect of life. It’s not about being sensitive, creative, or empathetic; it’s an ocean of pure sadness that engulfs me. The cocktail is diabolical: self-lashing, despair, sadness, weakness, numbness, hypocrisy, and a sense of indifference that is turning my life into a silly, boring game.

I wake up, and I depend on my auto-pilot. Days pass, and as I get better and better at the art of non-confrontation, the catastrophes pile up around me. I crawl slowly with a painful certainty that my whole world will collapse soon, or maybe my ability and will to keep going will come to an end.  There is something fundamental missing in my life. What do I miss or what did I lose? How will I know if all I do is waste my days on distractions? Why is it becoming so difficult to confront myself and face all my fears? Why am I experiencing bitterness in everything? “The world is coming to an end”, isn’t this what they say? But still, why do I have to feel such sheer pain, fear, and sorrow? My brain is turning my depressive thoughts into scary collages that blur my perception. Enough! I have to stop here, and waste more time on a mundane thing before I call it a day

Friday, 8 May 2026

FOMO or FOBS

 

FOMO

Isn’t this term among the trendiest ones? The fear of missing out! Seriously? May I coin a new term? Ok, what about FOBS? The fear of being stuck. Stuck in painful memories, unhealthy relationships, unrealized dreams and unfulfilled promises. Move, why don’t you? This what any of you would say. Easier said than done habibi, easier said than done. How can an ancient wreck move? How can I escape a very intricate web of sins, failures and weaknesses? 

FOBS, it’s a real nightmare that  haunts me every morning. For long decades I have that painful feeling of not belonging, neither to the place nor its people. No matter where am I or with whom, that idea or feeling keeps pulsating then the pulses turns to a wicked migraine that messes my already messy days. Being stuck! Yes I can’t deny that I have been stuck in almost every aspect of my life. Am I whining? No, no I am just stating that I am stuck and that recently I lost any hope of a real change. All what I wish for now is that things don’t get worse, am I getting older? Wiser or more vulnerable? Maybe this is the result of whirling around the states of attachment and detachment. One day I’m accepting my fate, my destiny and the fact that the whole world is deteriorating at a surprising pace. On other days, I pause to declare that I have to resist such a passive attitude and d something, anything to prove that I’m still alive. Missing out or being stuck, which state is more dangerous? But who is assessing? The others or me? Why do I keep questioning everything, a sudden wave of depression or am I becoming suddenly aware of my age, my responsibilities and my losses? I wish I could label my state as “ lack of spirituality”, won’t this be a good solution? Just pray or pray more and all your illusional thoughts will go away. How I wish things were that simple, but I know how I really feel, a sense of heaviness. Is it because of guilt , shame or anger? Haha am I repeating the cliches of the psychiatrists that I have dealt with? Could it be that I’m just sad, yes could this be pure sadness and I don’t know how to face it  or handle it. Maybe, I won’t ever deny that I’m vulnerable. However the whirling is getting stronger and faster and I’m aware of the passing of time and more painfully I’m aware of what I’m losing and missing. For years and years I had only one wish, one simple straightforward wish: CONTENTMENT! This is all what I want, I want the endless scenarios to stop running in my head 24/7. I need the fabricated consequences to disappear for a while and allow me to live, or at least experience life as it is. I want to have the will, energy and understanding to accept life with all its disasters and rewards. Why can’t I surrender to the limitations of my being and what I am offered and what I can do? Why can’t I accept that life is cruel and I should not take it personal. So whether I suffer from FOMO or FOBS, it does not really matter, my journey will come to an end and no one will have the time to analyze or even mention my fears.

Sunday, 3 May 2026

The "Sethians"

 

We have to admit that we are defeated, crushed, and what is left of us can barely survive. Yes,, we eat, reproduce, grow old, gossip, engage in lame fights, and die. But seriously, we are defeated, have been defeated for decades. This confession is crucial for us just to be able to survive. Once we realize that we are defeated and face this reality, maybe then we can act upon these facts. It took me years and years of denying, ignoring, and pretending that the situation is not that bad but it’s a hell of a nightmare. Adapting to a dystopian routine doesn’t make us heroes and will never improve the situation. Fighting the enemy is not the solution either! we are too naïve in our battles, genuine, pure, but simply too romantic to withstand an enemy that has been deeply rooted in our lands since the beginning of time. We always cherish that we are from the land of Osiris but at the same time, we tend to forget that it’s Seth’s land too! 

I don’t know what to do, but I think that the declaration of defeat may grant us a moment of clarity, we may see things as they are, as ugly, dreadful and cruel as they are. Only then would we turn every single action of our days into actions of resistance. Never in my scariest nightmares would I have ever imagined that one day we would lose our monuments, our trees, our streets. The diabolical erasure of our identity is not a result of war, nor of a natural disaster. These are simply the acts of the followers of Seth, our fellow citizens, who share everything with us. The “Sethians,” if we can give them a name, made everything possible to dictate poverty on my people, poverty in every shape and form. It’s a nightmare, priorities blur, and when one sincerely wants to help, the whole context proves to be hopeless. People must be fed, I agree, but also they must be treated, they must be educated, they must read, listen to music, sports, talk with others, discuss ideas, know who they are, understand what’s happening, celebrate their differences and most importantly they must worship the God of love and peace. 

Mother Teresa, repeated more than once that she met Jesus in the streets of Calcutta. I am not sure if we have the patience, compassion, and energy to meet Jesus in the streets of our beloved land. Will we be able to tolerate well-embedded vulgarity, ignorance, fanaticism, and a long list of evil traits that infected our people? The “Sethians” did a great job, a long term plan that was well implemented, and those who were not directly affected were allured to leave the land of their ancestors, the options were not limited to wasting our best years in the deserts of the Bedouins, as there were also the options of mutating our sons and grandsons in cold sunless Europe, or the faraway lands of the New World.

 For those who stayed, the “Sethians” were ready for them. As they convinced them to enjoy their own bubbles, in a landscaped gated compound away from the filth, misery, mediocrity and vulgarity of their fellow countrymen. A ridiculously distorted version of our motherland was created between the walls for the weak, tired, and helpless followers of Osiris. So what could be worse than this? When would we declare our defeat? What can any of us do? In our long history, the periods of decline were called “ intermediate” periods, yes, they were long, scary, and harsh, yet we resurrected again, we got our cities burnt, our language lost, and our arts forgotten but we woke up again and again and again. Seth has always been here, has always been powerful, resourceful and patient and our Osiris has always been kind, creative, but unattentive. The eternal battle is still going, and now we have to declare that we are defeated. Those who are defeated have to face their fate, and to save what could be saved for the coming generations, the ones who must create our renaissance, and would wonder how our “period of decline” was that long. 

We have to be active even in our defeat. I may be too romantic in what I am saying, but struggling with what you believe in is less painful than lamenting what you have not done. Every breath, every pulse, and every moment must be spent on saving what could be saved. We have already lost what our ancestors had built and planted. Yet we have to save what could be saved of our people, their souls, their perception, and their conscience. We have always bragged about teaching everyone everything, being the pioneers of so and so, and the inventors of this and that, now it’s time to learn from others. Let’s learn from the Armenians, and know how they stretched their land to be present wherever they go, how to keep their language alive in their happiness and sadness, and to make sure that their culture is still thriving and fresh. Maybe Armenia lost swaths of its land, but no one can see the Armenians as defeated people. If the Armenian case is too vague for most of our countrymen, why don’t we learn from the Palestinians? Everything they do on a daily basis is an act of resistance. Even their mere existence is a form of resistance, yet their existence is an active one, a progressive one and should be inspirational for us. 

The contexts are different I know, but the situation in our motherland is extremely complicated. It is not about systematic corruption or retardation; it’s about pure evil. Armies of the “Sethians” are living among us, and they are relentlessly sowing the poisonous seeds of our final destruction. Will we be able to stand up for what remains of our land and people, or is it too late? All I wish is to be ready to live for our country as much as we are ready to die for it.

The Return


Yes, there must be a return. Every journey has an end and mine is not an exception. Farewelling people and revisiting places consume an enormous amount of time and energy. Finalizing all pending tasks and running around for last minute shopping is a great distraction, but I need to pause for a moment and think about what had happened. It was an opportunity, a rare one for me to grow, to detach myself, to keep a distance or enjoy being far and most importantly to reflect on the mess that I call “ my life”. Did I do any of the above? No, no, and the credit goes to “procrastination”, my old friend, who insisted on accompanying me more throughout the journey. He wasn’t alone, I was accompanied by so many friends: excuses, fake priorities, extended breaks and my eternal addiction to bad habits. 


Self-lashing, another old friend, popped up several times, but he was shushed by my numerous companions. A lost opportunity? it could be perceived as such, or another scar that one day I’ll lament having. Maybe lessons are not learned from journeys like that one, maybe lessons don’t need seclusion, nor distance, nor a brand new routine, apparently they need consciousness and someone who became fed up of his legendary failure. 


So, it’s relevant to call every day a journey of its own, every moment a journey. One between right and wrong, between doing what should be done rather than lingering on what I love to do. A journey of self-discipline or rather a journey of self discovery. Will it work? Will I survive such endless cycles of criticism and reform? Are all these thoughts part of my mid life crisis, or just a rare moment of enlightenment or truth?