"Those that'll tell don't know, and those that know won't tell." - Da Mayor, Do the Right Thing

Yassin has the wonderful presence of a Buddhist sometimes. He neither clings nor releases, doesnt’ push or pull others closer he just lets others be and come as they are. He remains grounded, centered and rarely judgemental. 

Far as I see it, most of our suffering comes from clinging onto stuff, moments, joy, pain, friends, loved ones, clinging resists an inescapable truth of the living world, that the nature of things is both their passage and their stillness. The pleasant and unpleasant, the good and bad, the meaningful and meaningless, it all passes. Clinging onto any of it is a resistance to an ever-changing world, decaying and rejuvenating in the same breath. I can’t place it but I recall Swagdy quoting something along the lines of ‘if you think you’ve faced your mortality, wait till you find out its your body that’s decaying!’ Letting it all go, letting life pass through into decay, without growing indifferent and careless, is necessary for the courage needed to love the nature of a dying world, and yet, a world we keep everliving. 

Over the last few years I’ve befriended an old street artists called Gary the Bray. He told me the other day that people are always putting on their masks, the characters they like to play around other people, and yet he also believed that most our actions are inescapably the performance of a character we’d like to be, that we’re all walking around on a big stage where everyone’s an actor. I feel like Shakespeare said something along those lines didn’t he? People front instead of braving their reality, their worth in the Light of Love. The trippy part for me is Gary suggesting that none of us have a choice but to front. Even when we’re being real we’re fronting being real, not in the way that’s obviously a performance of what this person thinks is ‘being real’, but rather that even when someone, by all measures of realness is being real, this is still a front. The only way I can wrap my head around this and still keep the obvious intuition we get when someone’s being ‘real’ as opposed to wearing a mask, is if a person’s real realness is a performance not because they’re fronting, but because the stage they act on is by nature a performance hall. Even if an actor emerges on stage from the place their heart was born, where their Mom is at, their brothers and sisters are at, the essential part of their nature, they would still be performing not because they have a mask on, but because they’re acting on a stage made for performance. A lot like that movie the Truman Show but its Real life! Well, I guess it’s more like ‘real’ life, Reality would have to be outside the bubble of our corporeal world, watching the show of human and universal history from their seats outside space&time. 

This still leaves a huge question mark on who we are, really, if all of this is just a show. Off the bat, who I am is not a rigid category, a profession, some interests, not even the aggregated and collected history of my life. Our nature is passing, a continuous and slow death, and a pulsing rejuvination and becoming. We are dynamic and ‘becoming’; in trying to establish rigid monoliths of who we are, unwaveringly, without room for challenge, we miss part of the picture. We are also rooted in our ‘being’, and if we disavow any shape in our wills, any sets of persistent wisdoms, beliefs, values, boundaries and preferences, we’ll miss the other part of the picture. We find two necessities then on the nature of our being and becoming, not clinging posessively or instrumentally onto passing moments, internal capacities and beliefs; as well as the need to actively and consciously individuate one’s identity as emergent but uniquely distinct from the community, culture, love you emerge from.

انا أفتقد الشخصية في بعض الأحيان

P.S: I’m a dumb bratty kid bro. Real life, real wisdom, can only be earned through experiencing who we're becoming over time. It comes from real challenges, new challenges that bust our ass as we grow up. When I look up at my big bros or sisters, my dad and my mom; there’s this respect and deference we owe them, just for having lived through more. Now I say lived, I mean grew through more, with awareness of their beautiful struggle and their hard earned wisdom. I actually have nooo fuckin clue how much rougher life can get, but it’s okay, because I’ve been through rough and bright times, and always made it alive to see another sunset. We can’t simulate experience and wisdom by reliving vicariously through the past we refuse to let go of, and the future we refuse to step towards.