Deep Impact: Outliers
To me, Baby Sheri is like my late brother (Allah Yirhamu). Very important people, here to teach us lessons we thought wouldn't happen to us, at all or not this soon. Baby Sheri and Almarhoom are outliers in our lives. They lie outside the realm of our regular expectations. Nothing in the past had a convincing point about their possibility (her birth, or his death). Secondly, they carry extreme impacts. It's simple, nil prediction, and incredible impact. They have given us sight. We were blind, we were SO blind, so vain, so self-absorbed, and living in the dark. We were blind with respect to random events that occurred in our lives, and may continue to occur again at any point in time. To me, life only has a meaning when it is a cumulative effect of a few significant shocks followed by after shocks to remind us it was not just a random illusion.
This goes back to that saying "what you don't know won't hurt you" but that is absolutely bullocks. It's the opposite, what you know will not hurt you. I don't think I need to explain what this means since the context is clear. My point is; we always feel that we can predict everything, we know what will happen tomorrow, we are extremely unaware of all of the errors we make (simple things like taking a flight that we might miss, or that might crash, and even though it doesn't happen every day, you could be the one, and it could have a significant impact on our lives). I didn't know until recently that mom's first cousin lost his wife and daughters all at once in a plane crash. I mean, who would think that you could lose your whole family in ONE instance.
Life only began to have a new meaning after I lost my brother, and the birth of baby Sheri added another layer of meaning to it, but more importantly a lesson, that there is a huge gap between what we know and what we think we know. We make severe mistakes taking life for granted, taking what we have (health, respect, beauty, wealth, stability, safety etc) all for granted. We fail to see we can lose it all, as well. I can fall sick tomorrow, I can die in a car crash, our city can drown by a heavy rainfall, I can lose all my money to get treated for cancer, I can lose my mental stability, and for all you know, this country can even be bombarded by an unknown enemy. Who knows? why are we so arrogant to think we know it all?. Same thing when we judge people, we can't assume we know people really well when we only see them in the ordinary course of life - have we seen them when they are really mad, or depressed, or shocked. Does that not not make you who you are, as well? isn't that just as significant to describe who you are, too.
Life is not the normality we experience, the routine errands and events, the repeated lunches at teta and so on. If anything, the only significant lunch at teta is when all of us in the family found her on the floor choking, and then, I thought I was witnessing her take her last dying breaths, I saw her face turn red, helpless on the floor, as she slowly raised her hands trying to recite Quraan. That is the day I realized how much I loved my grandmother. I FELT my heart tear apart. That is an incident that changed my view of Teta - I can't explain it in words - but instead of trying to breathe, she was trying to recite Quraan while everyone around her was screaming, and losing their mind in fear that she will no longer be with us.
How often do we engage in heart to heart talk? we all exchange easy small talks; that's why they say talk is cheap. It's business, vanity, cars, clothes etc. It's cheap. Finally, to make my point clear, Baby S and my brother are not exceptions, and something to sweep under the carpet. They are significant, and a starting point in our lives. We should thank them. God Bless them, always.
This goes back to that saying "what you don't know won't hurt you" but that is absolutely bullocks. It's the opposite, what you know will not hurt you. I don't think I need to explain what this means since the context is clear. My point is; we always feel that we can predict everything, we know what will happen tomorrow, we are extremely unaware of all of the errors we make (simple things like taking a flight that we might miss, or that might crash, and even though it doesn't happen every day, you could be the one, and it could have a significant impact on our lives). I didn't know until recently that mom's first cousin lost his wife and daughters all at once in a plane crash. I mean, who would think that you could lose your whole family in ONE instance.
Life only began to have a new meaning after I lost my brother, and the birth of baby Sheri added another layer of meaning to it, but more importantly a lesson, that there is a huge gap between what we know and what we think we know. We make severe mistakes taking life for granted, taking what we have (health, respect, beauty, wealth, stability, safety etc) all for granted. We fail to see we can lose it all, as well. I can fall sick tomorrow, I can die in a car crash, our city can drown by a heavy rainfall, I can lose all my money to get treated for cancer, I can lose my mental stability, and for all you know, this country can even be bombarded by an unknown enemy. Who knows? why are we so arrogant to think we know it all?. Same thing when we judge people, we can't assume we know people really well when we only see them in the ordinary course of life - have we seen them when they are really mad, or depressed, or shocked. Does that not not make you who you are, as well? isn't that just as significant to describe who you are, too.
Life is not the normality we experience, the routine errands and events, the repeated lunches at teta and so on. If anything, the only significant lunch at teta is when all of us in the family found her on the floor choking, and then, I thought I was witnessing her take her last dying breaths, I saw her face turn red, helpless on the floor, as she slowly raised her hands trying to recite Quraan. That is the day I realized how much I loved my grandmother. I FELT my heart tear apart. That is an incident that changed my view of Teta - I can't explain it in words - but instead of trying to breathe, she was trying to recite Quraan while everyone around her was screaming, and losing their mind in fear that she will no longer be with us.
How often do we engage in heart to heart talk? we all exchange easy small talks; that's why they say talk is cheap. It's business, vanity, cars, clothes etc. It's cheap. Finally, to make my point clear, Baby S and my brother are not exceptions, and something to sweep under the carpet. They are significant, and a starting point in our lives. We should thank them. God Bless them, always.
posted by Color at 11:28 AM
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