5 current big pictures most lebanese are missing

As a population we are often fast paced and short sighted. It is probably due to the unstable situation whereby we have to live life day by day not knowing what security issues tomorrow would bring. This is an attempt to shine light on the big issues that get lost in the everyday turmoil:

 

5- Aline Lahhoud made us proud on the voice France.

She wouldn't have had to if we provided fair chances to our deserving talents.

 

4- You can definitely tell me when is the next nightlife event.

Can you recall when was the last Beirut bombing?

 

3- The garbage ordeal was resolved, Beirut streets are clean again.

The Naameh folks are still breathing the fumes of your garbage.

 

2- The snow season did not come this year, you're not going to ski.

The homeless Syrian refugees will not die from the cold.

 

1-Crime is probably at its highest rate since the civil war.

Do you think it's related to not having a government for the past year?

Take out the trash.

Beirut is swamped with garbage now that the processing company is on a strike. I will not dwell into that issue as I am not sure what happened exactly nor am I interested to know the details of Lebanese corruption after having such a pleasant Weekend. However, this phenomenon inspired me to list the top 5 things in my life that I think need to be thrown on the streets of Beirut, what about yours?

5- Past achievements:

Did you ever win anything? If so did you get a certificate? If yes then pick it up, tear it apart then throw it away. There is no point in cherishing past achievements. We’re still young and have much more time to do more.

4-Old diaries:
Many of us are hoarders. We hide bits of papers from our childhood, old diaries, some special first love letters, old video game boxes. Now that might be a simple expression of nostalgia but we should keep in mind how dangerous it is to live in the past. Every now and then I throw half of those belongings for time in sacrifice for him to devour and forget.

3-Security blankets:

Be it a person, a job or a major. The false sensation of security is the most devastating of all. In the darkest nights it might be a reassurance mechanism yet in the not so dark night it is only a constant reinforce of the inner doubt and insecurities.  If the blanket is tangible, burn it, move passed it. If it is moral, then think it through and let it be the fuel to a fire that will redefine your new life.

2- Old dreams:

When we are young, we dream big, some of us make it to those dreams while others are drained by the obstacles and end up settling for reality instead of imagination. Yet the old –now impossible to achieve- dreams still recur and bring you down for not fulfilling them. Hence is why I think one should eradicate them once they become too much of a burden.   

1- Dying friendships:

There is nothing as unfortunate and sad as having to cling to people only because you once coexisted in the same geographical and emotional area. We all have that one friend who is always seeing the glass half empty which is fine as long as he does not project that negativity over our lifestyle and everyday life. In that case, wrap them in a bag and refer them to the streets of Beirut. 

Not so great moments

What if you could eavesdrop on any conversation in the world? Would you choose napoleon’s military plots, Cleopatra’s love affairs, or the Beatles brainstorming session?

I remember when I was much younger a cousin of mine pitched this theory of sound waves being stuck in the atmosphere and how we can actually retrieve all of them one day and decipher the greatest conversations ever made. At the time I fantasized about figuring out historical speeches and uncovering big secrets. Now if I had the opportunity to go back to a conversation I would definitely revisit the ones I have had over coffee cups or cocktails with the awesome everyday people I have come across in my humble short existence. You see I believe in the power of the mundane over the extraordinary. “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” as John Lennon puts it.

I don’t know about you, but personally, it has recently come to my attention that in search of a greater future and a better moment I am missing out on the greatest time of all: the present. We spend endless time trying to figure out where we are going next and who will be there with us, thereafter, we end up apprehending while we should have been appreciating. I realize now that my most interesting conversations took place while I was planning a future that I ended up not pursuing. However it was that thinking process, that apprehension that fueled my days and forged my human interactions regardless of the end result.

However, once the apprehension is gone and the facts have been laid down, something even less productive takes place: we assign values to past moments. This is how when I want to remember today why I decided to specialize in psychiatry after general medicine, I go back to a specific moment in my first year of medicine, the one I attribute this decision to. However, if I were to dig deeper into my memory, I would recall being lost for a long time, not knowing where my next step would take me and hesitating multiple times before and after that specific moment. However, it is part of civilization’s romanticism to create these artificial moments and believe in them. I have been trying to break free from these clichés recently in an attempt to retrieve my “old self” (that concept by itself can easily warrant another full post discrediting it) and in that spirit I realized now I will not be going into psychiatry. So where does that leave me at? Nowhere really. I am still in the present where I left off before I started typing. Yet what is intriguing is how the past suddenly started losing its associated value and a couple of months from now that first year of medicine moment will lose its value for life and be forgotten.  

Take an easier example, how often does a song get stuck in your head? It probably happens on a weekly basis, then the song just fades away and gives its room in your head to another one. Here’s the thing, if a significant good or bad anecdote happens to take place while the song is stuck, you will for years down the road attribute the strong emotions generated by the events to the song. Yet the song by itself is devoid of meaning. This is how a particular Najwa Karam song takes me back to my old grandma’s winter house and reminds me of her although she probably never knew who that singer was.   

I am not arguing that one should not reflect on his past and analyze it. I am simply pointing out how often the great moments we look for in our daily lives are made up and how easy it is to just go on and create fresh new moments destined to become great one day.

In the end, the past and the future are two faces to the same coin which we toss around incessantly. What we fail to realize is how that coin itself is actually our present. In that light, we cannot start living until we have grabbed that coin and secured it tightly in our pockets. We cannot secure the coin until we stop those fingers from tossing it around in search for luck and victory because tossing only adds to the anxiety and never quenches it. In a nutshell, this is a post about living everyday independently of the one before and after it, this is a post about freeing the present from expectations and previous judgments.        

Secure your insecurities

Thoughts that don’t turn into words are often fatal.

There are things you just can’t say out loud. There are thoughts you simply don’t dare to share. Don’t go digging below belts; I am not talking about those thoughts. I am talking about ideas up above, in that small box you call the mind, things that fly through your mind and stick there, things that will not dare leave your mouth no matter how hard you try to regurgitate, I am talking about Doubt.  

I have tried to tone down my insecurities but they seem to reemerge all together whenever stress strikes again. The voices shout out visions of professional failure, distant lovers, unkind friends, and an undermining family.   

Every now and then comes a time to reshuffle the set of people around you. Every now and then comes a time to leave the decaying set of dysfunction you’re stagnating in and to move on in pursuit of better friends, a better career, a better lover. It is intimidating, yet as soon as you get off the new adventure boat and your feet step on solid ground, you will realize how exhilarating the journey was. Pause right there. Savor this moment; it will be the peak of happiness. From there on it is a downhill spiral. The doubt will return on your new island, it will devour your mind all over again until it has reached the sweet gray matter in that brain of yours. Make no mistake, it is not a streak of bad luck, it is your fault. You cannot simply travel past the pain and turmoil of your old heart without stitching up what was ripped, before remodeling what was broken because you cannot move on with your life until you have secured your insecurities.

Take my word for it, insecurities WILL recur if not addressed. I have gone through extensive thinking trying to figure out just how to do that and truth is I haven’t really figured it out yet. I am not a big fan of confrontation because more often those who fuel your insecurities are either aware and indifferent or unsuspecting and not prone to change. Bottom line is, very few people want to listen. In fact, we often try to actively change our life but fail. Instead we see people leave and others enter our daily routine by osmosis with very little proactive role. We see our career paths shaped by society, by a choice made a long time ago, we follow the masses ahead of us and very little input comes truly from our own will and desire.

There comes a time where you have to face the facts, some roads will always find a way to reemerge until you burn the bridges they stand on completely to the ground and close that chapter indefinitely. The active part will be when you light a torch yourself instead of just waiting for thunder to strike the bridge. There will come a time where you will forget those people existed, move on and build new bridges over the corpses; only then will you have secured those insecurities.