The Quest For My Passion

“There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few that will catch your heart . . . Pursue those.” Anonymous


I am in a stage where:
1- I have accomplished much in my life on different levels i.e. education, career, & more.
2- But now I am in a point where the dreams and goals I pursued in my life have either been accomplished or don’t seem appealing anymore.
3- I have a wonderful life and yet something is missing. Simply I am dissatisfied & restless. What shall I do with the rest of my life? How can I make the most of my years to come! (Is this what they call mid life career crisis? :-))
4- I want to use my experience, knowledge, and talent to make a difference in some way and to enjoy it!

This is my puzzle! What catches my heart?

All I know in this moment is that this passion; has to make my life satisfying and fulfilling, matters to me, is intellectual & cultural, and can make at least a slight difference in the world.

"If" by Kipling, 1895

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Occupation 101: Voice of the Silenced Majority

I wanted to watch Occupation 101 for some time, finally tonight I managed.
Really I will recommend this movie to everyone one whether they are ignorant of this subject or not.



The movie tackles straight forward the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which is occupation. It is one of the few movies that tells the story of the Palestinian side & starts right from the beginning of the the first wave of Jewish immigration from Europe in the 1880's, the 1948 war, the 1967 war, the first Intifada of 1987, the Oslo Peace Process, settlement expansion, the second Intifada (2000), and the Apartheid Wall. The film also details life under Israeli military rule, and the direct role of the United States in the conflict.

The credibility of the movie stems from some of the most credible Middle East scholars, historians, peace activists, and journalists, and humanitarian, including Noam Chomsky, Cindy & Craig Corrie, Jeff Halper, Amira Hass, Rashid Khalidi, Ilan Pappe, and others.

It is worth watching.
http://www.occupation101.com/about.html

Value of what we have

I am wondering why some people don't appreciate what they have in life until they lose it. How they can't be grateful and thankful... How they can not live it and enjoy it.

Verse – A Poem by Nizar Qabbani

Friends
The old word is dead.
The old books are dead.
Our speech with holes like worn-out shoes is dead.
Dead is the mind that led to defeat.

Our poetry has gone sour.
Women’s hair, nights, curtains and sofas
Have gone sour.
Everything has gone sour.

My grieved country,
In a flash
You changed me from a poet who wrote love poems
To a poet who writes with a knife

What we feel is beyond words:
We should be ashamed of our poems.

Stirred by Oriental bombast,
By boastful swaggering that never killed a fly,
By the fiddle and the drum,
We went to war,
And lost.

Our shouting is louder than our actions,
Our swords are taller than us,
This is our tragedy.

In short
We wear the cape of civilisation
But our souls live in the stone age

You don't win a war
With a reed and a flute.

Our impatience
Cost us fifty thousand new tents.

Don't curse heaven
If it abandons you,
Don't curse circumstances,
God gives victory to whom He wishes
God is not a blacksmith to beat swords.

It’s painful to listen to the news in the morning
It’s painful to listen to the barking of dogs.

Our enemies did not cross our borders
They crept through our weaknesses like ants.

Five thousand years
Growing beards
In our caves.
Our currency is unknown,
Our eyes are a haven for flies.
Friends,
Smash the doors,
Wash your brains,
Wash your clothes.
Friends,
Read a book,
Write a book,
Grow words, pomegranates and grapes,
Sail to the country of fog and snow.
Nobody knows you exist in caves.
People take you for a breed of mongrels.

We are a thick-skinned people
With empty souls.
We spend our days practicing witchcraft,
Playing chess and sleeping.
Are we the ‘Nation by which God blessed mankind’?

Our desert oil could have become
Daggers of flame and fire.
We’re a disgrace to our noble ancestors:
We let our oil flow through the toes of whores.

We run wildly through the streets
Dragging people with ropes,
Smashing windows and locks.
We praise like frogs,
Turn midgets into heroes,
And heroes into scum:
We never stop and think.
In mosques
We crouch idly,
Write poems,
Proverbs,
Beg God for victory
Over our enemy

If i knew I’d come to no harm,
And could see the Sultan,
This is what i would say:
‘Sultan,
Your wild dogs have torn my clothes
Your spies hound me
Their eyes hound me
Their noses hound me
Their feet hound me
They hound me like Fate
Interrogate my wife
And take down the name of my friends.
Sultan,
When I came close to your walls
and talked about my pains,
Your soldiers beat me with their boots,
Forced me to eat my shoes.
Sultan,
You lost two wars,
Sultan,
Half of our people are without tongues,
What’s the use of a poeple without tongues?
Half of our people
Are trapped like ants and rats
Between walls.’
If i knew I’d come to no harm
I’d tell him:
‘You lost two wars
You lost touch with children.’

If we hadn’t buried our unity
If we hadn’t ripped its young body with bayonets
If it had stayed in our eyes
The dogs wouldn’t have savaged our flesh.

We do not want an angry generation
To plough the sky
To blow up history
To blow up our thoughts.
We want a new generation
That does not forgive mistakes
That does not bend.
We want a generation of giants.

Arab children,
Corn ears of the future,
You will break our chains,
Kill the opium in our heads,
Kill the illusions.
Arab children,
Don’t read about our suffocated generation,
We are a hopeless case.
We are as worthless as a water-melon rind.
Don't read about us,
Don't ape us,
Don't accept us,
Don't accept our ideas,
We are a nation of crooks and jugglers.
Arab children,
Spring rain,
Corn ears of the future,
You are the generation
That will overcome defeat.