reflections 2024

it's that time of the year again

1. You must have faith. Faith in something—faith in yourself, others, your friendships, God, the universe, astrology, kindness, or art. Pick one; start there. It is a lighthouse. It is absolutely torturous to go on living life without it.

2. Skinny-dipping with your best friend under a full moon in the Aegean Sea will fix a lot of your problems. In fact, in that moment, I had no longings, regrets, pain, or rage. For the first time in a long while, I was truly present. Instead of running from the past or towards the future, I melted into the moment. I was at ease, soft around the edges again.

3. Poetry sometimes feels like a spell. I read a poem out loud, and something shifts. There is a new quality in the air; a new space, or an ancient memory returning. It may not change the world, but it does change mine.

4. Life doesn’t have to be so serious. We don’t have to cosplay as “adults” all the time—which is my prelude to say partying is back, or, in my case, has started. It’s one of the rare moments in my increasingly serious life that I feel closest to uninhibited, childlike joy. Why did anyone ever try to convince me otherwise? Yes, it’s a shame that, as an adult, the only acceptable place you can do that regularly is a club, but it is so back. I was raised in an extremely serious Saudi society by extremely serious parents, and now, do I want to live the rest of my twenties so seriously? To go through life without dancing with your friends until it’s someone’s wedding? No, thank you.

5. “You can’t have an unethically raised lamb, an unthoughtfully grown carrot, and expect a delicious lamb and carrot dish,” says Dan Barber. He also points out that when it comes to food, the ethical choice is almost always the pleasurable one. You could say the same about consumption in general. I was never an avid shopper, but I like beautiful things and want them. Fortunately for my bank account—but unfortunately for the people and the planet—it has become very rare for me to find something beautiful. But what makes something pleasurable, delicious, or beautiful? For me, I realise it’s the story of where it comes from, how it was made, and how it came into existence in the moments I interact with it. It’s important to me. Beauty, I’ve discovered, is as much about provenance as it is about presence.

6. “The world is made up of stories; it’s not made up of facts. Although we tell ourselves facts to piece together the story.”

7. Just like anything else, you have to continuously learn how to love. Sit down and think about what it means to be loved by you. Often, I find that I love someone, but I am not loving towards them. I love someone and not call them for weeks. I love someone and forget something important for them, like a birthday, a surgery, or their newborn’s name. I love someone and am unkind to them. It’s exasperated by our modern lives and the disconnection from our bodies and intuitions. It is hard to be loving when you work full-time, pursue your art or dreams, and have a vibrant social life or a dating life, and somehow you have all these people in your life that you love, but you have no time to be loving. Next year, I want to focus more on the loving. I want to be there—to cook for people, to bring them coffee and pastries when they are sad, to call my siblings often and listen to them figure out their lives, to visit friends who live in other cities and make time for it, to accompany a friend to the doctor’s, to be present and pay attention to someone’s grief or happiness, to hold hands more and hug more, to be there cheering for someone. There are so many ways to be loving, but you have to keep learning how to.

8. When you feel helpless in the face of wars, genocide, and general civil collapse all around the globe, turn to your own community. Do what you can around you—bring the homeless man across the street food every day, give change to every person who comes asking for it on the streets, or, at the least, make eye contact. Give out your extra duvet to the man sleeping on the floor in the middle of winter. Create a recurring payment to an organisation of your choice. It’s not going to take away all of your anguish, but it will help some.

9. Sacrifice exists in conjunction with a worthy life. To offer something up, you must first acknowledge its value. When I think about the sacrifices I have had to make, I am also reminded that I was fortunate enough to have had them at all.

10. My Spotify Wrapped has revealed to me that I have no taste in music. I’m boring, I’m predictable, and kind of silly. But that’s okay because I can’t be extraordinary in every facet of my life.

11. Romance is not dead. It is alive and well. But you must keep your door open. You have to let it come and leave as it pleases. It might be for a fleeting moment on a hot summer day, or it might come, sit next to you on a park bench on an autumn morning, or send you flowers all the way from America. But if you are really lucky, it might just stay through seasons. But I no longer demand it to be perfect.

12. “You must be happy in your life and with your life.”

Happy New Year to all of you! I’m always grateful for everyone who’s stayed through my chaotic posting this year.