Abez Is... 
I’m sitting at the computer, daintily chugging iced-coffee out of a 40oz peanut butter jar. I’d be drinking out of the mayonnaise jar, but Aniraz claimed it first. Sooooooo….it’s 2:30 in the afternoon and I just woke up. Frankly, I’m surprised I woke up this early considering that it’s Sunday. I try to ruin my schedule and be absolutely as un-productive as possible on my weekends. I consider it to be recovery from working all week. So last night I was playing video games till Fajr, then I prayed and went to bed just as the sun was rising.
You know, my life may be Islamically pointless (or unfruitful, or directionless or whatever) but I am sincerely thankful that it’s very uncomplicated. One of my friends called me last night with marital problems, and by the time I got off the phone like an hour later, I was depressed for her, but also relieved that I wasn’t in her shoes. InshaAllah things will work out for her though, InshaAllah. (Three cheers for ambiguity. Hip! Hip! Hooray!) Without belittling or insulting her, I can look to my own problems and see them as less severe, and therefore more manageable. Any time you feel down, it always helps to look at someone in a worse situation, because then you start to see the good things you DO have and the bad things you don’t.
I know that not everyone buys into the, “It could be worse, I could be YOU!” theory, but it does work. Two years back I had my appendix out (the other one, I still have on left that bursts when I don’t want to go to work) and I was lying the emergency room thinking I was the most miserable person in the world when I heard the following dialogue from behind the curtain next to me:
Man: (crying)What do you mean? He’s not dead, he can’t be dead, my son…my son…You’re lying he’s not dead….
At that point I thought God, I am so NOT the most miserable person in the world. That same night, I also saw another woman in the emergency room who was far worse off than me. She arrived wearing a sari-blouse and a man’s shawl wrapped around the lower half of her bleeding body. Turns out she was on her way to a party, wearing a sari and riding on the back of the motorcycle. Her sari got caught in the back wheel, and she lost her clothes as the motorcycle crashed and she had road-rash ALL over her body. Road-rash (where you skin is ground away when you skid over the road at high speed) is actually more painful than you would think. My little brother was in a motorcycle accident about a year and a half ago, he got road-rash bad, lost the skin off the top of his hand, off his shoulder, one of his arms, one leg. There’s a certain level of pain you feel sometimes, when it gets so bad that a wave of violent trembling goes through your whole body, all the way down from your neck to your toes. It was excruciating just watching him suffer, I can’t imagine having to go through it myself.
What was my point? Oh yes. In times of trouble or stress, remember the following things:
1. Look to someone worse off than yourself for a grim reminder of how nice your life actually is as compared to how bad it could be.
2. If you think that things can’t get any worse, then remember that they can only get better! When you’re all the way down at the bottom, the only way left is up.
3. And what’s the Alcoholic’s Anonymous prayer? (like I should know, but I know it anyway) God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.
Not that I’m very good at always telling the difference, or at taking my own advice. I seem to forget my own advice when I need it most. But hey, maybe if I post it I’ll read it some other time and make myself feel better (?).
I’m just bummed cuz my momma’s leaving. Nuts. I guess that falls into the third category of the Alcoholic’s prayer, knowing what I can’t change, just being at peace with it. It’s not like my momma’s leaving us, she’s just leaving and then coming back after a long time. Makes me sad anyway. So now, having established that I cannot prevent this from happening, I have to move on to damage control. How can I make myself less miserable when my momma is gone? Swim. Blog. Work. Write. Drown my woes in 40oz of peanut-butter flavored coffee.
I like swimming, but I don’t want to work!!!! AAAAaaaaargh! Boy, this blog started out in one direction and has ended up in another. I give up. The more I write the less sense I make. Nuts. The End.
“Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” -Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five.
posted by Abez @ 6/15/2003 11:01:00 PM
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