I wish I knew how it would feel to be free
I wish I could break all the chains holding me
I wish I could say all the things that I should say
Say ’em loud say ’em clear
For the whole wide world to hear“(I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be) Free”
Lighthouse Family
A truly beautiful song which describes exactly how I feel right now.
He’s running…
He’s pushing himself to run even harder, even further, even faster…
He doesn’t remember what he was doing before he started running.
Is there even a “before”?
He’s been running all his life for all he can remember.
Where to? Why? When he’ll get there? What next?
A blank…
He doesn’t know…
He remembers something though…
He used to know where he was running to…
He used to know why he was running…
He used to know what he would find…
He used to know where he would run next…
What went wrong?
A blank…
He stops. He thinks.
He must have made a wrong turn somewhere along the way.
He must have missed the guiding signs.
He thinks, thinks and thinks more…
He picks himself up, looks around him and starts running again…
He’s happier now…
He’s running in a different direction…
Yesterday, while on another train of thought, this idea came to my mind, and well I thought I’d write it down.
In every relationship there is a sort of power struggle.
Whether it’s a love, work, friendship, family or any other relationship, there always is this factor of who is in the position of power and who is in the position of weakness, about who has more control over the relationship and who has the upper hand.
It’s actually rare in a relationship for the two sides to complete each other and strike a perfect balance of powers. Most of the times, one of the sides has some sort of power advantage for some reason or another tipping the balance to his side and giving him the plus.
Sometimes you might not think of it, but then something comes along that makes you see it.
Just take the time, look around you, look at the relationships you’re in professionally or personally and you’ll see that in some you are in a position of power, while in others you’re in a position of weakness, and in some few others in a position of balance.
I guess it’s just the nature of things.
But it’s very important because it determines how comfortable you are and can be in a relationship.
Ok, What the hell am I talking about, I hear you ask.
Well, I’m talking about this new breed of Arab singers who have shitty voices, keep moaning throughout their songs and who look like they’ve just been picked out of a porn movie.
It’s incredible, whatever Arabic music channel you switch to, there’s some new singer’s video and the song sucks, their voice sucks even more, the music is ripped off and they’re totally offbeat.
But wait, they weren’t really counting on all the previous ingredients to lure you, they were counting on the semi-naked woman/women singing, dancing, moaning and groaning to do that.
Then there are the guys who have a bunch of girls strip dancing in the background while they sing about something totally irrelevant.
Where has all this come from?
Why has the woman body become so cheap?
I can’t believe it.
I know this is yet another attempt to immitate the west. But believe me sometimes I feel they’ve even outdone them.
I mean western videos do have a lot of sex, nudity and all, but not to the extent where you feel that the scene was just cut out of a B-rated porn movie.
This really has to stop. It truly should be unacceptable for stuff like this to be on our TV screens.
A media conference held by Al-Jazeera TV channel in Qatar this week tackled the thorny issue of what role, if any, the broadcaster should play in spreading political reform throughout the Arab world.
There are different views on this from people arguing that all media has an obligation to be involved in politics, to others who think that media should just inform and not reform, while other people would just like to see the channel translate its audience growth into income (obivously management, “I don’t care what you do! Just show me the money.”).
Anyway, I think this is a very interesting and important issue.
Al-Jazeera has access to over 35 million viewers who trust it and believe what it tells them. I don’t know of any political party in the Arab world that enjoys that kind of privilege.
So should it take advantage of this to push reforms?
Or should it just keep itself to informing people and opening their eyes to the truth?
And if media chooses to interfere with politics, where is the limit?
I think that Al-Jazeera have been a good source of non-propaganda news and a great forum for different people to express their opinions over the past years. That in itself reformed Arab media in a way and pushed for more transparency.
They can’t play the role of a political party because they’re not but they can contribute to and push forward the reform process by offering different opinions, showing what the truth really is and breaking the old limits of speech freedom.
The media can challenge and pressure governments putting them in a position where they have to be transparent, change and listen.
Still, having media interfere with politics isn’t always good because of the media’s power to sway public opinion according to it’s ideas or interests sometimes.
So, yes for media contributing to reform, no to media controlling it.
It’s a common saying that We are what we eat. And in many ways it’s very true. But in these days do we really know what we’re eating?
Do we know what’s really in that burger?
Do we know what that pizza is truly made up of?
Do we know how healthy that fried chicken we’re eating was?
Do we know what kind of drugs, anti-biotics and hormones are in the meat, fruits and vegetables we buy and eat?
Do we know how healthy the animals or plants were before they were packaged for us?
No. We simply do not know all this. We just know that our food is not like it used to be. It’s unnatural now. How unnatural? No idea. How healthy? Is it healthy in the first place?
We hear of all the different stuff that’s happening. We hear about all the different reasons behind diseases like Mad cow disease and Birds Flu, …etc. We hear about the bad treatment of the animals, the bad conditions they’re in and the fact that they eat parts of other animals as well as each other’s remains.
It’s disgusting and revolting.
We hear about all the stuff that’s being done to vegetables and fruits, all the genetic tests being done on them, …etc.
Nowadays, neither fruits nor vegetables have any taste anymore. They’re merely tasteless different looking objects that we eat and try to convince ourselves we’re enjoying.
We are what we eat.
But we do not know what we’re eating, so we simply don’t know what we are!
We don’t know what the hell we’ve injected into our system during these years and years of eating this unnatural food that is being thrown at us.
We don’t know what kind of hormones, drugs, anti-biotics, diseases and more we’ve made part of us.
But we should know!
We should choose what’s good and healthy for us.
We should choose healthy natural organic old-fashioned food.
We should know what it is we’re eating.
We should know what we are!
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.
Buddha
I’ve had this idea spinning around in my head for some time now.
Would full-fledged democracy work for the countries in the Middle East or not?
And would the US really want these countries to have a true democracy?
Currently, these countries have different levels of democracy implemented or in some cases none, but how good would it be if they went the whole way?
These past couple of days I’ve been thinking about how much control a person has over his personality and nature and how effective he can be at attempting to change them.
It takes years for someone’s personality to be built. So many factors, experiences and people are involved in the process.
Is it that easy to just stand up at one point in your life and say: No!, I want to change my personality!
Can the work of years be erased and changed in a few seconds, minutes, hours.
I think it’s impossible.
What takes time to be created, needs time to be erased and recreated.
Of course, the time needed depends on how many changes the person wants to introduce into to his personality. But what’s for sure is that it takes time.
But why would a person want to change his personality or nature in the first place?
Depends. I think there are many reasons. Some stupid and some smart.
To sum it all, I think it’s so that the person can adapt to his surroundings better.
The teenager wants to change his personality so that he can be one of the cool guys he sees around him, the nice guy wants to change because he’s being taken advantage of by the people around him, the bad guy wants to change because he feels he’s being mean and unworthy of the nice people surrounding him…etc.
I think it’s always as a way to adapt better to the conditions and surroundings.
Sort of like Darwin’s theories of evolution and natural selection.
But how does a person start?
I think that the person should start by defining what the problems he’s facing are, and what things in his personality make him vulnerable for those problems.
After that he should think of how he can stay the same person he’s proud of being while adding a new layer that deals with the reasons of his weaknesses or simply removes them.
How effective is it?
I guess it depends on how serious the person is about it and how hard he tries.
It’s not an easy task because most of what makes up your personality has become sort of a natural reflex. Controlling that and overriding it with a new reaction and getting it right is not easy.
Why am I thinking about this?
Because there are certain aspects I know I should change in my personality to make me less vulnerable to certain things, and yet I’m having a hard time changing them.
Of course, there’s all that “I am what I am” talk, and whoever doesn’t like it can go to hell!
But still, there are things that I see as weaknesses in my personality that I want to change to my profit and not because of anyone else.
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
Albert Einstein
Man, do I believe in that more and more everyday!
It’s incredible how creative and unique people can be in their stupidity.
It just bugs me.
