Being Real and some wandering notes

Being Real is the craziest thing. You can be sad, happy, angry, an asshole, a kind person, a funny, rude, stupid child if you wanted! You can be straight up be whatever you choose to authentically and intentionally be, and it's already the coolest thing. Standing by your wonderful mess. Honesty with one's self about who we are and embracing that wholly, unapologetically and better yet effortlessly!! People are freakin awesome, and I have so much respect and awe for those who honestly embody themselves. Just real, for no one but themselves, from no where else than their hearts, in no other time than the present. Shit's dope! The moment we start trying to be one thing or another, instead of just becoming, we stop behaving like normal people; we perform or posture or sell our constructed image of ourselves in exchange for love.

If I give myself love at Home, I don't have to look for it in places I can't find it. If I give my friends Love at Home, they don't have to look for it anywhere but my actions.

You know what else is really cool? When someone is so comfortable in their own skin that they’re comfortable in yours too. They wear their scars proudly, their imperfections and wildly unique, unhesitating and unapologetically flowing mess of a self they so lovingly own, THAT’s cool. When you’re so aware and loving of everything that makes you You, and you still brave its unmitigated expression. Not to prove something, or win some external source of approval or validation, no, fuck that noise, but because it's a necessary outcry against the world of the dead and the blindly living. When someone embraces the totality of their lived experience without a care for either the world’s rejections or embrace of who you are. If you fuck with me, if you don’t, it doesn't matter, it’s not part of my concern when the only person who I care about fucking with me, is Me, and the Lord. When someone is gently and patiently caring for themself, so open and embracive of their brilliant imperfections that they love so dearly, the imperfections that demark us from the rest, the cuts that no one could ever truly feel with you, no one could understand why you are the way that you are, the violence it took to be this gentle, no one other than our loved ones. When you’re so comfortable with every aspect of who you are, that you signal to those around you that maybe their scars, their unique expressions of being, are worthy of the same care and fresh breath of air. If suffering does anything for us, it’s softening our hearts to the compassion we hold for others, for their struggles, and our own. If isolation teaches us anything its that we never suffer alone. If our humble sobriety to the incomparibility of suffering offers anything, its that if we’re to deem our human experience as worthy of liberation through struggle, and freedom through faith, we must be willing to grant that same humanity to every other human being that shares in nature. We all suffer, we all live on or die trying, everyone experiences their predicament uniquely and one person’s struggles can rarely be compared to another’s unless it's done by an empathetic heart, in solidarity. We are owed nothing for our suffering other than the right and responsibility to truely live. If I am worthy of this liberation, unless I misname my human nature or that of other humans, then so is every other human being who honors me with their story, their unencumbered and total expression of their unique self.

When I was younger we still celebrated Christmas before Allah sent a memo to all the local mosques about Santa being a Kafir. I freakin loved Christmas, the jingles, the hot chocolate, decorating the tree, making snickerdoodle cookies, those online Christmas games where you get to haul ass as an elf or a reindeer(!!!). My favorite part, weirdly enough, was untangling the Christmas lights. I was the Jimi Hendrix of Christmas lights, I'd untangle them for our own tree, my neighbor Orfali's tree, any tangled mess I could get my hands on, I was there. It brought me comfort pulling the lines apart, every untangled knot felt like one step closer to harmony. The messier the better hahahaha. I enjoyed finding order in storms of wire and bulbs, drawing paths out of labyrinths on the back of cereal boxes, finding clarity in the pictures of scattered puzzles. I think that's when I developed this sort of hobby of mine. I like picking up on the central thread in something's rhythm. People, books, conversations, STORIES, they all have their own rhythms and melodies. At the centre of each of them there's an essential thread, a line of harmony that we all return to, a homecoming in people, a central message a book always returns to, constellations stringing different views in a conversation, an intimate touch of individuality in every shared story. I'm not always good at parsing out the background noise, but when I see with my Heart and feel with my Mind, I tend to find what I'm looking for, and it tends to find me.