Breakdown of Lebanese reaction to tits: Liberals Vs. Conservatives.

"إذا خسرنا الحرب لا غرابه
لأننا ندخلها..
بمنطق الطبلة والربابه"
 نزار قباني

Our country is torn apart by a dichotomy. That has already been established and understood by the enlightened few who dare to see the many sides to every story. I think those people make less than 5% of the total population. That is an arbitrary number and being a physician in training, I learned to base my facts on evidence and evidence alone. Therefore, in no way am I claiming the following post as a fact, it is just my view of the current situation based on personal observations.  

In the past 24 hours, Lebanese social media and websites were invaded by pictures, videos and articles regarding Lebanon's olympics contestant Jackie Chamoun posing topless in a photo shoot 3 years ago. As would happen with every single Lebanese controversy (yes by the way this is a controversy), no one took a middle stance, everybody had a firm, unchangeable opinion and they were in no way reluctant to share it all over the internet. I found myself bombarded by the “conservatives” calling this a shameful misrepresentation of Lebanon and another proof of how Lebanon lost its holly values. On the other hand, the “liberals” turned the girl into a national hero and reloaded their usual speech against Lebanese government and medieval thinking. I frankly do not think anyone has to the right to judge her for doing whatever she wants with her body, however please note that even the "mighty" west has disqualified contestants over the years for past nude pictures resurging once they held an important position. Here I cite how Vanessa Williams had to step down from the Miss America title in 1984 after nude photos from her past were published. I don’t care why Jackie did it what she did. She has the right to do with her body as she pleases but she should be able to stand up for her actions which is exactly what she did today without having us use her as a weapon in our attack on a “traditional” Lebanon. Yes I am myself a liberal and I hate our corrupt system as much as anyone else but this really is not the battle you want to fight the system with. There are many more important topics to tackle in light of recent events. 

Now that I have gotten your attention with tits, off to what this article is really all about: Manal Assi.  Remember her? Maybe not? It’s probably because of something called sensationalism, an extremely common practice in Lebanon. Nizar Kabbani’s quote above makes perfect example of this. We like big shows and stories that grab everyone’s animal instinct for a couple of hours. We use it to get attention on facebook or to feel that we belong to a community that condemns and celebrates small problems and smaller achievements while the big picture fades away.No issue lasts longer than a week because in a country where the civil war was never really resolved, it is in its people's best interest to forget.

Anyway, Manal had her 15 minutes of fame posthumously a couple of days back. She is, no she WAS a 33 year old mother of 2 who was battered by her husband. He then called her mother and sister and locked them in the house with her as she silently drifted to meet her maker. Did you remember her yet?  Well who cares about that now, there were no tits involved, Manal could not possibly be an interesting topic to discuss in nightclubs or at parties, the very disturbing story is just too hardcore for our “liberals” to discuss. By the way, what is a Liberal again? Please do remind me. I can’t seem to grasp your definition. Is being a liberal about the alcohol, smoke and music? Because I always believed it was about the freedom of thought and philosophy. Although I am a big fan of Simone de Beauvoir, a feminist and LIBERAL, I seem to have missed the chapter on liberalism being directly related to objectification of women. Another chapter I have missed is how domestic violence is not an act against feminism. How can the news of a woman battered to death not make it into most of my Facebook friends wall while tits do. In fact most of both people attacking and protecting Jackie have one thing in common: they both zapped the TV remote control on Manale’s case but were appalled or amazed by Jackie.

Now it is up to you to choose if you want to join the 10% camp or stay where you are, that doesn't matter to me because i honestly do not care where you people stand on tits, but I think it is about time for you to move and mobilize so that we can finally pressure the government to issue an act against domestic violence. This will be the cornerstone in a series of decisions to implement protective laws for women rights, because once these are finally respected, then there would be exposed tits for all of you to argue over.  

  

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.