Closing Pandora's Box

The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.

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Photograph of path taken from personal photography available here.

You star. Splendid. Amazing. Astronomical. Sometimes I wonder whether stars know just how beautiful they are? Sometimes I wonder, do stars, whose job it is to illuminate the dark dark universe around them, know how much light they have? Do stars see their light or do they only see the darkness that surrounds them? In their journey through the universe, do the stars see their path illuminated by other stars, just as we humans use stars or do they ever look at themselves and see their magnificence? The stars can’t speak to me, but I know you can. Take a look at yourself and see your light, because you are everything and so much more than a star.

“Exhausting,” he said to her. “Kids are such work. I can’t wait to have kids of my own, but sometimes thinking about it is scary.”

“Hmm I feel the same way sometimes,” she replied. “Then I slap myself and shout silently ‘How can I bring such beautiful innocence into THIS world.’”

“When you look at the world what do you see? I don’t know about you, but I look at the world, I see it through eyes dark and colourless. It's a bit like blue jeans. No matter how blue they are to begin with, those areas that are constantly stretched and rubbed and poked lose their colour over time. Especially at the knees. Just before they’re about to rip and leave a gaping big hole, they turn colourless. Same with these eyes of mine. Death, failure, loss, destruction, persecution, sorrow and hurt. You name it, they’ve seen it all and they too have lost their colour. The thing is when something loses its colour, it catches other colours around it much more quickly. Like a plain white piece of paper can be painted any colour whereas a bright red one will not show all of them as well. And at this stage, these sunken eyes of mine notice the beauty, notice the hope, notice the love, notice the sacrifice and notice the good, no matter how small it may be. Indeed, there are vast areas lacking light, but if you look hard enough, in the right places, you’ll see it too. Look inside yourself, deep down where the soul resides and you’ll notice that no matter how grimy you may be on the surface the light within continues to burn burn bright. A street lamp gives the same light as when it was new, except the pollution of the cars and the dust deposited by the wind may make it seem otherwise. Now imagine that light multiplied 7 billion times. It would be blinding. The problem isn’t that there is no light in the world. The problem is that most people don’t know how to find it. When I have kids one day insha’Allah, if I fail to teach them anything else, I hope I’ll be able to teach them these two things: I’ll teach them about their light that resides within them. And I’ll teach them that if they share that light of theirs with others around them, it’s the best they can do. Even if the layers of grime and filth on a person’s surface is so thick that it only lets a small pinpoint of light, in the darkest of areas, that too can be illuminating. Remember that, and find your light my friend. If you lose your way, then I’ll share mine with you.”

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Photograph of streetlamp in the sunset, taken from personal photography [link].

I was going through my photos that are stored away in the hard-drive of memories. Dad brought this hard-drive a few years ago, solely for the purpose of storing photos and videos of the family. I came across this photo:

This photo I took myself, many years ago. I think it was the beginning of high school; year 7 or 8. On that day there was a blackout in our area, which is quite a rare occurrence here. It’s the only time I can remember it ever happening to be honest. While the house was flooded in darkness, I remember mum walking to the kitchen and fetching some candles a friend of hers had given as a gift a few days before. She gave me one too, so that I could continue doing my homework (I was a good little boy back then). Now that I think of the incident, I am made to realise that sometimes you need a little darkness to see the light.

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I’m also quite a lot behind on blog reading and replying to comments. Sorry guys, I haven’t forgotten you. I’ll get round to that ASAP.

[This is a scheduled post]

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Title: Bowl of oranges – Bright Eyes
Photograph showing flame – Personal photography