I wanted to sit down on my computer for quite a while now to start a series of small articles about some thoughts that I’d been having recently. I have been analyzing people and life situations around me for quite a while now with a different eye. An eye completely different than the one I had of three years ago. I have changed a lot in the past three years, and I mean a lot, whether you know me deeply or on a superficial level you probably have noticed a change in my personality. I owe this to several factors that occurred in the recent past, which might come into discussion later in this entry or maybe following ones (if I ever managed to sit and write again).
Three years ago I have been so cheerful, welcoming life with a huge embrace, still preserving my somewhat big circle of friends…. Friends, hmmm…. I guess the better word for it is “acquaintances”. Now, in my fourth year after graduation I began to think about how people I know changed, whether be it friends, family or even people I don’t know; and I came up with the conclusion that YES people change, and people don’t only change but change A LOT .
I have been always criticized for being on the pessimistic side of things, this might have been right a while ago, but now I consider myself to be realistic to a huge extent. The first thing I learned during the past period of time was to stop getting my hopes up. Being raised an only child; I have developed an emotional character that tends to be easily affected. I still have my emotional character inside me but I have learned to tame my emotions and maybe shut them inside with some minor exceptions. During my last couple of years as a university student I was living on the false pretences of a Utopian community. Dealing with my friends and acquaintances, my family and extended family, things in my mind were always seen using the pink filter of life (totally lame expression btw :-)) , I had no troubles, my biggest concern was a midterm and my huge concern was to keep my GPA above 3.4 in order to graduate with honor, and what has that given me? Well I have to say it gave me an extra 100 Egyptian pounds in my starting salary than my fellow colleagues with less GPAs, such a huge fortune!
In the past three years my view of things changed, and yes you can consider that maturation, I think of it as that to a certain extent. I have gone through a lot, situations that I didn’t ever imagine myself being put into ever. I lost four of my most beloved relatives, ones whom when I imagined a photograph taken ten years from now I always imagined them being in it with me. This was the turning point for me, suddenly I was bombarded with the nasty of face of life. I grieved and somewhat I was given the vibe that grieving is not somewhat permitted, because life doesn’t allow you to grieve, you need to move on and step on and bury your memories so that you can be able to survive and be a useful human being, and sometimes I feel ashamed if I wanted to grieve.
Next, I started to notice how my friends changed, a lot of the people that I considered very close friends, I lost contact with after a fairly small amount of time of graduation, some of which seemed not even remotely interested to keep in touch, and each got sucked in his own whirlpool of life including myself. I started getting exposed to new types of people at work. I wasn’t in the false Utopia that I created before. Relationships with people started transferring more and more to nasty materialistic side, I feel that eventually I will be living in a jungle. I started to get used to that, I try to be materialistic as people around me in order to survive. I stopped caring if people who I consider close friends didn’t call or ask, I learned to be cool about these kinds of situations and I learned to suppress the guilt that I previously had regarding not being involved with my close friends as I want or care. I learned not to believe ninety nine percent of what I hear. I tend not to lie as much as I can, but apparently lying has become a major characteristic that one must acquire in order to lead a successful life (a little lying doesn’t hurt anybody, or does it ?!) I have seen people around me who were best friends and I was really happy to see such a relationship, but now they tend to hate each other or that they deal with each other in such a twisted way the makes me disgusted. Again leading to the conclusion that nothing is really worth my anger.
I am not pessimistic, you may tell me dahhhh, you’re kidding right? NO I am not :-) I was pessimistic earlier yes but now I am not. I learned/ still learning to deal with life in such a neutral way as much as I can. I don’t look forward to anything anymore. I want to have a better paying job? Yes I want, and I will try to find, but I would never imagine myself in a better paying job until my first employment day in such job. Do I want to build a family? Hell, yes J but I will not imagine myself being married until my wedding day, and I won’t imagine myself being a dad until I see my kid for the first time. Sometime I get weak and think and imagine, but I remind myself of the new mode of thinking that I embraced in order to get back on track. This is not an excuse to not do your best in what you do, but I advice anyone who used to think like me to try this new mode of thinking, and I think s/he will find it really worth it…
I promise that upcoming entries will be more cheerful!
Cheers
Hussein
May 15th, 2010
