The following lines by Abu 'Ali ad-Daqqaq strike a chord currently:
"Each day that passes, a portion of me it takes away,
On the heart, a bitter taste it leaves, and then glides away."
Yes enchanted has bewitched my poetry reading:)
So much has changed in the past 4 centuries, 4 days, hours, months; for me, for you, for all of us.
I look at my student card of the cute girl with rosy cheeks and I want to laugh with her, tell her you don't know what's coming but you will enjoy it. I think I am at the age where I still have so much to look forward to. What about those parents who have lost children, what future do they anticipate? Or is life for them as it was for Macbeth, a reel of endless, haunting tomorrows?
Loss has fascinated humans for forever, because we hold on. It is the nature of this earth, we want to create, we forget that the energy balance is constant, newton's 3rd law as goldmimbar told me recently. Al-Kindi, one of the first psychologists said, "if we do not tolerate losing or dislike being deprived of what is dear to us, then we should seek after riches in the world of the intellect. In it we should treasure our precious and cherished gains where they can never be dispossessed…for that which is owned by our senses could easily be taken away from us". The psychodynamic movement in psychology was just an echo of Al-Kindi, where depression is seen as inner grieving for an object that has been lost: a breast, a teddybear, a loving caress.
I also fear loss. Baghdad is gone, erupted in fumes of self-aggrandisement and lack of pre-emptive action by Muslims to preserve our heritage. This is one of the reasons I yearn to study in Syria, it is one of the few places left where one retains the wisom of the ages. In its atmosphere, the bazaars, far away from the dreaded mass production gallows of Mr. Price, Edgars and Woolworths, leave you with a sense of delight as you search for treasures. I am a scavenger when shopping. I look through that which everyone else has discarded and create something. Um, I digress.
The only way, I believe, to counter loss is to seek it. Give of that which you want, says Deepak Chopra. It sounds crazy and illogical but there is some attraction to it. The hadith that says that no day should be the same as the following confirms this. The less mice the eagle keeps in its talons as it ascends, the faster it reaches a better destination.
