"Just because something is fleeting, doesn't mean it's not meaningful"

My Oxford Year

The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.

-George Bernard Shaw

Wow, I love this quote

When I first came to this office, almost everyone was male. And every Friday they all went to Jumah. At first I was like, they all must be so good.

But with time, I started to see who they really are. Some come back after masjid, play music on the highest volume, laugh like crazy, even smoke electronic cigarettes. I was shocked. That’s when I realized—you can never know someone just from the outside.

Yes, they have well-paid jobs, good appearance, and if you look at their profiles online, you’d think highly of them. But in reality… no manners (akhlaq), no real actions (amal).

Still, I also learned that not everyone is the same. There are men here with akhlaq, with 5x prayers, those who don’t waste words, who carry themselves with respect. And my respect for them is endless—even if I don’t know their full reality either.

We should be careful. Not everything is what it seems.

I wish I wrote the way I thought—
Obsessively,
Incessantly,
With maddening hunger.

I’d write to the point of suffocation.
And I’d write a lot more than I should.

I have a maddening desire to submit myself to the profoundness of literature,
to surrender to the ideology of insanity,
to lose the concept of consciousness and lucidity,
to be beyond the human limits.

To be foolishly absorbed by art.
To have no desire except the desire to desire.
To let my soul wander off.
To lose my mind in whatever I believe is beautiful.

To write and write until the ink seeps into my blood.
To think and think until my skull rifts apart.
To be loved—most divinely,
most religiously,
most obsessively,
most fervently.

#meandpoetry