Stray Reflections by Jawad Mian

The Opening

“I wandered in pursuit of my own self; I was the traveler, and I am the destination.”- Muhammad Iqbal

Nana Abu was also the first person to introduce me to Allama Iqbal, the cosmic poet and spiritual godfather of Pakistan. I remember him telling me that we must strive to be Iqbal’s Shaheen, or Eagle—his avian symbol that carries a number of inspiring features: courage, independence, self-respect, self-control, lofty thinking, character and honor, spiritualism over materialism, constant struggle and endurance, perseverance, purity of the soul, and passion.

The Fall

“Every adversity, every failure, every heartbreak, carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit”.—Napoleon Hill

His next words to me have stayed with me ever since. He said, “May you get what you deserve.”
Life is not without its challenges. The critical test of humanity is how we lead our life and how we endure the challenges and trials that are inflicted upon us.
Hannah Whitall Smith, wrote: The mother eagle teaches her little ones to fly by making their nest so uncomfortable that they are forced to leave it, and commit themselves to the unknown world of air outside. And just so does our God to us. He stirs up our comfortable nests, and pushes us over the edge of them, and we are forced to use our wings to save ourselves from fatal falling. Read your trials in this light, and see if you cannot begin to get a glimpse of their meaning. Your wings are being developed. So what if you fall? How else will you learn to fly?

The Shrine

Hidden down in every man is some of the Divine. Ever since then he has gone over the earth digging, diving and climbing, looking for that godlike quality which all the time is hidden down within himself.
Faith is an endless pilgrimage of the heart.
The biggest loss in life is to have a hardened heart. We have let our hearts rust through years of neglect. If we could just rise above the ordinary faults of human life and see the Divine in our fellowman, we would take more care to guard our own attitude, speech, and action to prevent any undesirable impression from occupying our heart. For the wise—the clear-hearted ones—overlook the weakness in others because they see this weakness reflected as their own.

The Gospel of Wealth

In a famous article titled “The Gospel of Wealth,” which was published in 1889, Carnegie expressed that the chief problem of the age was the proper administration of wealth “so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in a harmonious relationship.”
This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: To consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community. The millionaire’s wealth was not his to spend, but his to wisely give away. Rich men should be thankful for one inestimable boon. They have it in their power during their lives to busy themselves in organizing benefactions from which the masses of their fellows will derive lasting advantage, and thus dignify their own lives.

Gratitude

He won’t conform. I respect that. He watches only the trend of his inner need, which is reflected in his work as a spiritual impulse.

Old School Macro

My father is a man of nature, and he loves maintaining his beautiful garden. As he gently observes the earth explode into different colors, I’ve never seen him enjoy anything more. It connects him to God. He can’t help but marvel at His creation. He has spent many mornings surveying the plants around our house and the flowers at his feet. The blossoming buds remind him of his youth. The trees remind him of his own roots. The scented plants retell his life’s story. The thorns are evidence of all the sacrifices he has made. The fruits he plucks are the blessings of his family. The withering flowers are a testament to nothing ever being permanent. Everything is loaned to us—even this life.
He didn’t demand success; he merely accepted it as an offering—if that was part of the Divine plan—for his pure intentions and sincere effort. He always made sure that he satisfied his end of the bargain. The rest he left up to the Heavens. In this manner, he was never disillusioned, and even the failures along the way seemed like a gift sent from above. He never licked his wounds, even after enduring fierce battles. He understood, as Rumi said, that the wound is the place where Light enters you.

Zaynab

“I am certain that children always know more than they are able to tell, and that makes the big difference between them and adults, who, at best, know only a fraction of what they say. The reason is simply that children know everything with their whole beings, while we know it only with our heads.”

Musicology

Nikola Tesla said, “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
We think of sound as it falls on our ears, but sound is actually a frequency spectrum. The natural tuning frequency of the universe is 432 hz, which vibrates on the principles of the golden ratio that is found throughout nature. Yet something happened along the line. For thousands of years, all of our tuning standards were based on the natural musical pitch of the universe (432 hz). But from 1950 onwards, for reasons that remain unclear, music was tuned to 440. The surprising revelation is that almost all of today’s music is out of tune with nature. Our ears are not built for the kind of music we listen to today. This is important to note because the ear is a conductor to the heart, and the sounds we hear permeate our entire being.

The Elegant Universe

Sonder n. The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Everything and everyone is interconnected through an invisible web of stories. Do no harm. Practice compassion. And do not gossip behind anyone’s back—not even a seemingly innocent remark! The words that come out of our mouth do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time. One man’s pain will hurt us all. One man’s joy will make everyone smile.

The Reader

A well-stacked library or carefully selected bookshelf opens up to a lifetime of conversation with the greatest of men and ideas. Their distilled reflections sit in purgatory on the pages of those books, unable to move until someone unchains them with their intellect or heart. If everything is aligned, they find freedom in the streets, homes, classrooms, mosques, and battle-fields of all time. If given due respect, books should be seen as our worldly inheritance from the most Merciful. A taste of paradise for the soul to savor, a reminder of the limitless joys a limited body with limited time can never hope for.
I’ve come to believe no amount of reading can ever teach all the thoughts and philosophy that arise in the heart. A person may either read a thousand books, or he may just open his heart and see if he can touch the root of all wisdom. I want to move away from bookish knowledge—which reinforces the ego and may take you farther away from the Truth that originates from the heart—and arrive at an awareness level through inner learning, which makes explicit the innate powers of man.
There are many types of people in this world, but there are two that stand out based on my observation. There are those who look at life through their minds, and there are others who look at life through their hearts. There is a vast difference between the two points, and I’m aware of my own tendencies to forego the mind and listen to the heart. I now let the depth of my heart lead and let the head follow.
I still seek mastery over secular subjects but only if I can translate a portion of that knowledge into experience and action, not just for use as a means to impress someone. Knowledge is sanctified only when it is seen as coming from the Source and must be ratified by practical example; only thus can knowledge be the impulse for internal change, making our learning permanent. As Rumi said, “Knowledge that isn’t from Him is a burden. Like a woman’s makeup, it doesn’t last.”

Dreams Deferred

The natural instinct of a lion is to hunt for food. But consider what would happen if we take a lion out of the jungle and place him in a cage, and feed him regularly over a span of years—he would shed that instinct. If you then release him back into the jungle, the lion will run back to you and want to be caged again. The easy life creates in a lion the disposition of a sheep. The sharp-ness of his paws turn soft and become strengthless. The wakeful lion is lulled to slumber. Blunted are his teeth. We are the lions, Jawad. The lion is most handsome when looking for food. Tell me, why should we choose to stay in prison when the door is so wide open?
Life passes us by so quickly, and in my opinion, we spend too much of it planning and pretending, causing anger and resentment as we wait in vain. Instead of being farsighted enough to trust the end result, we turn fearful and lose faith. I knew that I needed more help than I can even possibly imagine to avoid running back in the cage, so I acquiesced to Grace. In the words of Rumi, “Doesn’t the ocean take care of each wave till it gets to the shore?”

So to answer the opening question: I don’t know what happens to a dream deferred, and I don’t want to either.

The Forty Rules of Love

passages from The Forty Rules of Love: This world was full of people obsessed with wealth, recognition, or power. The more signs of success they earned, the more they seemed to be in need of them. Greedy and covetous, they rendered worldly possessions their qibla, always looking in that direction, unaware of becoming the servants of the things they hungered after. That was a common pattern. It happened all the time. But it was rare, as rare as rubies, for a man who has already made his way up, a man who had plenty of gold, fame, and authority, to renounce his position all of a sudden one day and endanger his reputation for an inner journey, one that nobody could tell where or how it would end. Rumi was that rare ruby.

The Bridge Builder

For me, it promotes the spirit of volunteerism, taking care of future generations, building bridges to help people and to guide those who will follow behind.

We all like to believe that we have made things happen for ourselves. But others have lit the path for us to follow. The footprints have already been cast. The path we take has already been trodden. Once we recognize the contributions all the known and unknown people have made to get us here, we begin to grasp the design of life. It’s not what we do for ourselves, but what we do for others that truly counts. Build.

The Fault in Our Stars

Blogger Tim Hoch writes: It is little wonder that you believe the world revolves around you. After all, you have been at the very center of every experience you have ever had. You are the star of your own movie. You wrote the script. You know how you want it to unfold. You even know how you want it to end. Unfortunately, you forgot to give your script to anyone else. Among the many shortcomings of your family and friends is the harsh reality that they cannot read your mind or anticipate your whims. As a result, people are unaware of the role they are supposed to play. Then, when they screw up their lines, or fail to fall in love with you or don’t give you a promotion, your movie is ruined. Lose your script. Let someone else star once in a while. Welcome new characters. Embrace plot twists. Soon the curtains will be drawn.

Culture of Complaint

Sa’adi strikes at our self-centered ego: The sun, the moon, the air, the water and the earth are all serving you, aiding life’s purpose, and preparing for your food. Yet, you regard all this un-thankfully, absorbed in your own little troubles, which are as nothing before the great forces of nature, always working, night and day.
When our tongue desires to complain, we should go contrary to it and find a reason to be thankful instead. For anything that could be better, there is always something else that could be worse. If we overcome our culture of complaint and get in touch with gratitude, it will change the way we see everything. The thought of the self will vanish, and the thought of others will take root. Rather than always wanting, we will care more about giving. Instead of relying on our imperfect understanding, we will look up to find greater meaning. Even virtues, such as tolerance and forgiveness, will arise in our hardened hearts as they soften. Life will thus unfold itself more beautifully. Our half-empty cup will fill to the brim. So when I say, “I can’t complain,” you should understand what I truly mean: I choose not to.

Eyes Wide Shut

Helen Keller recounts this in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, telling of the many incidents from her early childhood: We walked down to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the sprout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word ‘water,’ first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness, a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew that ‘w-a-t-e-r’ meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away. I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house, every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. Once I knew only darkness and stillness, my life was without past or future, I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in, but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven.

Helen had cultivated a sense of kinship with the rest of the world and graciously embraced life. Everything around her breathed of love and joy and was full of meaning. She called this inherited capacity a “sort of sixth sense—a soul sense which sees, hears, feels, all in one.”
1903 book, Optimism, Helen draws on her life and reflects on the universal quest for happiness: Certainly most of us regard happiness as the proper end of all earthly enterprise. The will to be happy animates alike the philosopher, the prince and the chimney sweep. No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right… Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they could be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life—if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing… The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

The Sixth Sense

Close both eyes, to see with the other eye.—Rumi

Inayat Khan speaks to this intuitive human faculty: We sometimes experience in life that which we see without eyes, hear without ears, and express without speech. It is the soul that sees, but we attribute sight and hearing to the eyes and ears. In the absence of the soul, neither the body nor the mind can see. When a person is dead the eyes are there, but they cannot see; the ears are there, but they cannot hear. When the eyes are closed, do you think that the soul sees nothing? It sees. When the ears are closed, do you think that the soul hears nothing? It hears.
Once the eye of the heart opens, a new consciousness is awakened. Our outlook changes, our insight deepens, and we develop a Divine point of view. We cultivate new ways of observation that bypass the ordinary senses, leading to greater unfoldment. This is beyond the understanding of the intellect, which distrusts thoughts that do not originate from the knowledge of the mind. And yet, it is these reflections, that spring from the depths of the unblemished heart of awakened souls that make explicit the innate powers of man. The whole world begins to seem different when this sixth sense awakens.

The Holiday

Seneca’s sage words on travel as a cure for discontent:

“Do you suppose you alone have had this experience? Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. Though you may cross vast spaces of sea, and though, as our Vergil remarks, “Lands and cities are left astern, your faults will follow you whithersoever you travel.”

Socrates made the same remark to one who complained; he said, “Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason which set you wandering is ever at your heels.” What pleasure is there in seeing new lands? Or in surveying cities and spots of interest? All your bustle is useless. Do you ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee along with yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you… That trouble once removed, all change of scene will become pleasant; though you may be driven to the uttermost ends of the earth, in whatever corner of a savage land you may find yourself, that place, however forbidding, will be to you a hospital abode.
The person you are matters more than the place to which you go; for that reason we should not make the mind a bondsman to any one place. Live in this belief, “I am not born for any one corner of the universe, this whole world is my country.”

Saving the World

At some point in their life, everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one really thinks of changing themselves. Confucius believed, “To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”

I Am

We are all just a car crash, a diagnosis, an unexpected phone call, a newfound love, or a broken heart away from becoming a completely different person. How beautifully fragile are we that so many things can take but a moment to alter who we are forever?—Samuel Decker Thompson
First, it has been scientifically proven that the entire human race is connected. The string theory and quantum entanglement shows that this has more to do with the design of the universe than the simple fact that we are all humans. We are all wired to be compassionate; thus, some of the key sources of deep contentment are having many positive relationships, doing random acts of kindness, and serving others.
Second, society is at fault for training us from an early age to be goal driven instead of values-driven. These goals separate us and make us feel competitive. And when we inevitably don’t meet our goals, we feel sad, upset, angry, or tense. Actually, cooperation, rather than competition and “survival of the fittest,” is nature’s most fundamental operating principle. True human nature is to cooperate and unite.
Third, Tom learned that the heart, not the brain, may be our primary organ of intelligence and that human consciousness and emotions can actually affect the physical world. Yet we often denigrate the “emotional” heart for the “logical” and “rational” brain.
Fourth, and most important, part of what’s wrong with our world is that ours is a culture in which the pursuit of pleasure and the acquisition of “things” are seen as the ultimate measure of one’s happiness. This violates a fundamental law that all of nature obeys and mankind breaks every day: nothing in nature takes more than it needs. And when something does, it becomes subject to this law and dies off. Tom narrates in I Am: “A tree does not take all of the soil’s nutrients, just what it needs to grow. A lion does not kill every gazelle, just one. We have a term for something in the body when it takes more than its share. We call it cancer.”

“Live simply, so others may simply live.”- Gandhi

The Resistance

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance. It prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius.”—Steven Pressfield

In his book, The War of Art, Steven Pressfield delivers a battle plan to recognize and overcome Resistance. “The pursuit of art, originality, selflessness or excellence in any ethical form is, beyond all its other aspects, a discipline of the soul. It’s a practice. A means to and method for self-transformation.”
- First, procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance. We don’t tell ourselves, “I’m never going to start my own business.” Instead we say, “I’m just going to start tomorrow.”
- Second, rationalization is Resistance’s right-hand man. Its job is to keep us from feeling the shame we would feel if we truly faced what cowards we are for not doing our work. Resistance gets a big kick out of that.
- Third, Resistance is experienced as fear. The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. Fear can never be overcome. So being paralyzed with fear is a good indicator. It shows us what we have to do.
- Fourth, self-doubt can be an ally. This is because it serves as an indicator of aspiration. If we find ourselves asking, “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are good that we are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
- And fifth, if we find ourselves criticizing other people, we’re probably doing it out of Resistance. Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. That is a sign more work needs to be done.

Recently, I came across a definition of Hell that I quite liked: “The last day you have on earth, the person you are will meet the person you could have become.” Let us strive to reduce the divide between that person and us. Work, struggle, endeavor.

Remembering Christmas

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only true gift is a portion of thyself.”

The Party

If God invited you to a party And said, “Everyone in the ballroom tonight, Will be my special Guest,” How would you treat them, When you arrived? Indeed, indeed! And Hafiz knows, There is no one in this world, Who is not upon, His jeweled dance floor.

Bilaliwood

In his lessons on friendship, Aristotle claimed that friends hold a mirror up to each other, through which they can see each other in ways that would not otherwise be accessible to them; and it’s this “mirroring” that helps them improve themselves as people. This is especially true of old friends who have known each other from a time long before we all wear our masks, trying to conceal our true selves from the world. The splendor of old friendships is that we don’t give two pence about anyone’s profession, status, income, religion, or previous history. Each man is simply what he is, and that’s the beauty of it: we don’t have to pretend.

The Pilgrimage

“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised.“ It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”—Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

According to Paulo Coelho, we are all prisoners of our own personal history. At an early point in our life, everything is clear; everything is possible. We are filled with enthusiasm and not afraid to dream. But as the years go by, we simply let life proceed, without our noticing, in its own direction, toward its own fate. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our souls that it’s invisible. But it’s still there. In the silence of our hearts, it urges us to carry on, but only if we listen, intently. Life is not without its challenges. If we do not find ourselves being trapped by circumstance, we are simply told that everything we want to do is impossible. We are so afraid of failure that we start believing in this notion and stop believing in ourselves. What we need is the courage to confront our own dreams: the courage to try, the courage to fail, the courage to succeed, and the courage to keep on going, even when the odds are stacked against us.

“Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.”- Rilke

These days, “ambition” is a dirty word. People who are “ambitious” are viewed as either selfish or unrealistic. “That sounds a bit ambitious” is code for “you are going to fail.” Yet, it wasn’t always this way. We lost something important when we made a tacit agreement to keep quiet about our ambition. Because if you don’t acknowledge your ambition—even to yourself—you risk choking it. You risk not only falling short of the best that you could do, but not even attempting it.

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do, there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.”-Rumi

The universe conspires in favor of those who have set out on the path to achieve their dreams, even though we may not understand how. But to be worthy of a nod from fate, one must be willing to struggle. Not be paralyzed by fear. Naturally, we’re afraid that in pursuing our passions, we may have to sacrifice what we’ve won. We are afraid of losing everything we have, whether it’s the fame or the fortune. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same Hand. God has blessed us and taken care of us up until now. He’s not going to suddenly stop showing up tomorrow. Faith for me has become a complete liberation. It drives away your fears.

The great poet Allama Iqbal taught me an important lesson: Change yourself and your destiny will change with you. If you are dust you shall be scattered by the wind but if you become solid as a rock then you may break the glass. The world will shape itself according to your perception of it. Heaven and earth too will adjust.

Besides, in the end, it doesn’t matter whether we win or lose. I just know this: when I leave this world for my scheduled meeting with God, I only want to be told one thing, “Well done, Mr. Mian. You tried your best.”

The Greatest

“There comes a time in every person’s life when he has to choose the course his life will take. On my journey I have found that the path to self-discovery is the most liberating choice of all. There is a door to the heart of every man; it is either open or closed. When we value material things more than we value the well-being of mankind, the door to the heart is closed. When we are decent to others and share ourselves through kindness and compassion, the door to the heart is open. The greatest truth in life is that the happiness and peace of each can be reached only through the happiness and peace of all. Change is an inevitable part of life. The seasons change, our feelings change, our appearance will change, and our health will change. Life is easier when we accept these changes and recognize how every moment of our journey is an important part of the growth of our soul. The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did when he was twenty has wasted thirty years of his life. I would like to be remembered as a man who won the heavyweight title three times, who was humorous, and who treated everyone right. As a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him, and who helped as many people as he could. As a man who stood up for his beliefs no matter what. As a man who tried to unite all humankind through faith and love. And if all that’s too much, then I guess I’d settle for being remembered only as a great boxer who became a leader and a champion of his people, and I wouldn’t even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.”- Muhamid Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly, Muhamid Ali

What Babies Teach Us

“While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.”—Angela Schwindt

However different we may all be now, we were all babies once. It’s easy to play it tough now, to overdo our independence, but we have all been recipients of continuous selfless and exhaustive attention, at all hours and in multiple ways. And therefore, no one made themselves; there is no “self-made” man. Babies are a reminder that we’re dependent creatures. Today, they need us. Tomorrow, we will need them. Now, we hold their hand. Later, they will hold ours.
It’s easy to get sickened by our species: the greed, the status consciousness, the vanity. Babies don’t care if the car is big, they don’t pay attention to what one’s job is or how much one’s making. They teach us about the truest, purest, ego-free kind of love, which is about giving affection without an expectation of receiving anything in return.

Shibumi

Shibumi is a Japanese word, but because their language is so rich in subtle nuances and the word is used so often, it has so many definitions that apparently people have given up trying to define it. It just is.”
“Shibumi is an ineffable quality, a place of overwhelming calm that we should seek to find.”
Shibumi, a 1979 best-selling novel by Trevanian, nom de plume of Rodney William Whitaker, to learn more. Here’s an excerpt: Shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without prudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of a man, it is… how does one say it? Authority without domination? Something like that. Nicholai’s imagination was galvanized by the concept of shibumi. No other ideal had ever touched him so. “How does one achieve this shibumi, sir?” “One does not achieve it, one… discovers it. And only a few men of infinite refinement ever do that. Men like my friend Otake-san.” “Meaning that one must learn a great deal to arrive at shibumi?” “Meaning, rather, that one must pass through knowledge and arrive at simplicity.” With good intention and strong will, we can gradually, and above all graciously, bring shibui into our life.

The Seeker

What you seek is seeking you.—Rumi

With a gloomy mind, Siddhartha leaves everything behind and decides to live the rest of his life by a river, where he had earlier met Vasudeva, an enlightened ferry man. He becomes an observer of nature, and the river teaches him many lessons, with Vasudeva as his guide. He learns from it continually. Above all, he learns to surrender. Siddhartha also realizes that he had learned something new from everyone he has met on his path. There is Truth all around. From that moment, Siddhartha ceases to fight against his destiny and thinks only of the Oneness of all life:There shone in his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of all things. He was an inspired man.
What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find. When someone is seeking, it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.
In place of hurrying on the path with our hands stretched out, reaching for the goal—which always seems farther away, fleeing from our grasp even as we think we are getting closer—perhaps we should walk through life with our arms wide open and our palms tilted toward the sky. In this manner, we would be open to receiving everything that comes our way, living in the present as opposed to in some uncertain future. Rather than feeling tired of life and the long road we still have to travel ahead, we would be free of worry and slowly discover the joy of surprising ourselves instead. Maybe we will learn something new on every step along the way.
When Siddhartha glanced at the river, he realized something: “This water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same, and yet, new in every moment!”
I’ve grown up to believe there are no coincidences in life. We are always in the right place, and everything happens at exactly the right time. Instead of obsessing about our goals or destination, maybe we should remain in the present moment and just let the universe move about. Like the river, life has its own flow; we cannot impose our own structure on it. We can’t control it—all we can do is listen to its current. Sometimes, when the outside noise dulls down, the quietness within reveals a lot, but only if you listen intently.

The Present

“Do you see the flowers which have blossomed?They don’t know whether the sun will rise tomorrow or not. They don’t know whether they will get water or not, but today they have blossomed in their joy.”

C.S. Lewis, the present is all lit up with eternal rays—the point at which time touches eternity.

Great Expectations

I’m very nuanced about what the word “success” means to me now. I still do what I love and work very hard, but life doesn’t feel like work anymore. I no longer mistake “doing” for “being” and feel closer to my natural rhythm.
The whole future lies in uncertainty. So I stopped trying to control, even predict, where I’m going. I surrendered the reins to my life once I realized that I was never in control in the first place. I’m happy to let the universe move about. I’m now living in a comfortable space that exists between the past and the future, and I quite like it. Here, it’s all about the journey, and I trust the path I’m on. As the poet Anatole France wrote, “If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.” The last four years have been the most fulfilling and rewarding, both personally and professionally.

The Woods

Through careful observation, Thoreau emphasizes the importance of solitude, contemplation, and closeness to nature as a remedy for the mass of people who have become disenchanted with their everyday lives. His aim is to have them consider their own possibilities for improving their situations, for overcoming their lives of “quiet desperation,” as shown in the following quote: “I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. As he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Abundance

Even after all this time, The sun never says to the earth, “You owe me.” Look what happens with a love like that, It lights the whole sky.—Hafiz

Wajd

Beware of confining yourself to a particular belief and denying all else, for much good would elude you—indeed, the knowledge of reality would elude you.—Ibn Arabi Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, also known as the “Great Master,” is one of the most influential Muslim thinkers in history. Born in Spain in 1165, he traveled from city to city in pursuit of knowledge, eventually settling in Damascus, where he taught and wrote. He dedicated his life to the spiritual path and left behind several hundred books and treatises on theology, philosophy, psychology, cosmology, and mysticism.
In Ibn Arabi’s terminology, wujud refers to the whole cosmos, to everything that exists, and wajd is an “unveiling,” or the opening of the door to Divine knowledge. Anyone who experiences wajd attains a new sense of awareness and some luminous knowledge from the object of his finding, wujud. The spiritual station is realized only through a relentless struggle to subdue the ego and through the complete passing away of the self and its attributes.

The Conference of the Birds

In the first valley of the quest, they learn, through much striving and grieving, to cast aside their beliefs and purify the heart for its sacred encounter. In the valley of love, they realize that love, actually, has nothing to do with reason. The valley of understanding teaches the birds that worldly knowledge is temporary, but wisdom endures. In the valley of detachment, the birds are roused to let go of everything they cling to so that they can feel safe and better about themselves. They shed their desire to be in “control” as they come to terms with life’s realities, accepting whatever comes their way with grace and humility. Then, stripped of the illusion that we, alone, are the center of our little universe, the birds realize in the valley of unity that we are all bound together—that there is, in fact, unity in diversity. Entering the sixth valley of bewilderment, the birds feel that they know nothing. To cross the final valley of death, every form of the ego must be sacrificed, even the conceit of rectitude. The birds come to realize their nothingness. Out of thousands of birds, only thirty reach Mount Qaf by the end. Many give up along the Way; others perish.– The Conference of the Birds, by Farid ud-Din Attar (1145—1221)

The Impostor

The Book of Life: We feel like impostors not because we are uniquely flawed, but because we fail to imagine how deeply flawed everyone else must necessarily also be beneath a more or less polished surface. We know ourselves from the inside, but others only from the outside. We’re constantly aware of all our anxieties, doubts and idiocies from within. Yet all we know of others is what they happen to do and tell us, a far narrower, and more edited source of information… It means that whenever we encounter a stranger we’re not really encountering a stranger, we’re in fact encountering someone who is—in spite of the surface evidence to the contrary—in basic ways very much like us—and that therefore nothing fundamental stands between us and the possibility of responsibility, success, and fulfilment.

Nature

The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendor of life, yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. To be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of nature.—Richard Jefferies
An investor is a professional observer.

When Breath Becomes Air

“How much of this will I remember?” I asked. “How much of what?” my mom replied, pouring us tea. “This. Zaynab. Our time together. We pour so much love and energy into our kids, and they bring us so much happiness. How much will I remember of these moments when I’m older? How much do you remember of us?” I could tell that the answer was not much. She summed up my entire childhood in six minutes. The few stories lacked any detail. There was only a sense of what Jawad was like. Her day-to-day striving, outpouring, and receiving… all forgotten. It made her slightly uncomfortable, I felt. That was not my intention.
After much deliberation, Paul and his wife, Lucy, decide to have a child. “Don’t you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?” she asks. He responds, simply, “Wouldn’t it be great if it did?” As he nears the end, Paul comes to believe that life is about striving, not about avoiding suffering. And that life’s meaning, its virtue, has something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. “Human knowledge is never contained in one person,” Paul writes. “It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them.” That’s what makes life worth living, even in the face of death and decay: Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.
Paul died on March 9, 2015, aged thirty-seven, with these final words for his nine-month-old daughter, Cady: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.

Live the Questions

We all start out as super curious beings. It is estimated that between the ages of two and five, children ask about 40,000 questions, which help spur and accelerate learning.
TED talk on “The Psychology of Your Future Self,” Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert posed such a question: Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our lives is change. If the person you will be in 30 years—the person for whom you plan your life now by working toward career goals and putting money aside in retirements plans—is invariably different from the person you are today, what makes that future person “you?” We set goals for the people we are when we set them rather than the people we become when we reach them.
According to Gilbert, this is not only wrong but also a source of much of our unhappiness. We tend to act like we know all the answers. That who we are at the present moment is the final destination of our becoming. But this particular time is only a point along our personal journey. So we must learn to be comfortable with questions—to let them guide us and help move us forward. Answers often freeze us in place.
In a 1903 letter to his protégé, the nineteen-year-old cadet and budding poet Franz Xaver Kappus, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. This. This is how you find your way.”

DAMN

Kendrick Lamar’s creative process starts with a whole bunch of premeditated thoughts. Kendrick thinks about the ideas and what he wants to say next. He lives with the concept and makes notes. His greatest skill is taking cohesive ideas and turning them into gripping storytelling: “This is more than just music for me. This is actually a piece of me. I’m obsessed with it.” Then, in the studio, he figures out the sounds, how to attack the track, and constructs all the pieces together. “Execution is my favorite word,” he states. “I spend 80% of my time thinking about how I’m going to execute.”
When Kendrick is completely drained of inspiration and starts to tamper with things that he shouldn’t tamper with, that’s when he knows he’s finished with the project. That comes with not wanting to actually rush the process. But also because he is his own toughest critic. He avoids reading reviews of his music.

“I’ve learned that my mission statement is really self-expression,” “My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap. God put something in my heart to get across and that’s what I’m doing. All I am is just a vessel, doing His work.”

The Writing Life

“Is this not what I always wanted?” I asked myself in doubt. The question called on me to figure out who I am. I didn’t have the maturity or sensibility to realize at the time, but I had become a different person. I wasn’t the same Jawad as the one who set the goal to be a hedge fund manager. Each day, we change, our experiences alter our perspectives, and over time, that multiples; yet I foolishly stuck to an ideal sucked in from the past. I dropped the idea to launch a hedge fund, and for the first time in my life, the wise guy in me had no plans. Six months later, I started writing Stray Reflections. Though I shared it with friends and peers, I really was just writing for myself. As Henry Miller said, “Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery.” I was still without answers.
Steven Pressfield wrote in The War of Art, “The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”
Good writing, like investing, is about seeking the truth. So I write to learn. When I’m writing, the doors of perception open. I’m constantly refining and redefining my own perspective as I try to find my way through a maze. The writing process reveals what is interesting and what is not and, by extension, what I’m supposed to be writing. That is a great responsibility. I myself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show or make me think about.

The Unknown

“You were pushing. It never comes from pushing.” When it comes to certain complex problems, we find ourselves continually caught in this loop of trying so hard that we stymie our own efforts. Many people will not tolerate a state of doubt, either because of the mental discomfort or because they regard it as evidence of inferiority. However, to be genuinely thoughtful, we must surrender to not knowing the solution and be willing to sustain and protract that state of doubt. The most important things show themselves slowly, and they do so in their own time.
When we let the problem alone, when we embrace the unknown and let the subconscious mind take over, then it has the space it needs to solve the problem itself. It’s only by having some distance from the problem that we can see it as a whole and understand what we should be doing with it. Somehow, we have to combine relaxation with activity.
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
When feeling totally lost about something, I disappear into the garden to read a few verses. Researchers have shown contemplating poetic imagery and the multiple layers of meanings in poems activate specific areas of the brain that help us peer into the unknown and interpret our everyday reality.

The Walk

Empathy for “The Other.” It is about seeing ourselves in each other.
“Questing… is not an ego trip,” Campbell writes in Pathways to Bliss. “It is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself… When we have truly given the gift of ourselves to the world—the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us—we find ways to make a positive difference, and to inspire others to walk their hero’s path.”

The Concrete System

The average American spends 93% of his or her life indoors. Adults in the US spend less time outdoors than they do inside vehicles—less than 5% of their day. Worse, they spend over 10 hours a day in front of a digital screen. Time spent in parks, woods, or fields has shrunk dramatically because of the lack of green spaces, digital technology, and parents’ safety fears. Three-quarter of UK children spend less time outside than prison inmates. A 2013 study found that four out of five children in the UK were not adequately “connected to nature.”
In the concrete system, we are all trying hard to be somebody, but here, in companionship with the earth, I realized the secret of being nobody. By a reduced sense of self-importance relative to something larger and more powerful that we are connected to, you can’t help but feel generous and want to improve the welfare of others. There is a sense of peace and calm in knowing that we can play a small part in the intricate cosmic dance that is life.

The Hikam

Some books never lose their relevancy, no matter how old. Ibn Ata’illah’s The Book of Aphorisms, written in the thirteenth-century, stands out as such. The book is a collection of 261 Sufi aphorisms, designed as a manual for spiritual development.
Bury your existence in the earth of obscurity, For whatever sprouts forth, Without having first been buried, Flowers imperfectly. For a seed to grow as a tree, it has to first bury itself in the soil. From the ground of insignificance, it sprouts forth to become a tree of significance, which yields flower and fruit. Likewise, for us to achieve true success, we have to bury our inclination for significance and reputation. The humbler one becomes the loftier he grows, the more arrogant one becomes the lower he plummets. Success achieved without humility will be short-lived.
If you are confronted with two alternatives, Opt for the more difficult choice. What looks easy and comfortable, May not be good in the long run. On the face of it, the easier choice will be of lesser risk while the difficult one will be less appealing. If we opt for what appears more relaxing, we will weaken our power to prevail over challenging and more rewarding tasks in the future and eventually succumb to a reduced state.

Entropy

We must all wage an intense, lifelong battle against the constant downward pull. If we relax, the bugs and weeds of negativity will move into the garden and take away everything of value.—Jim Rohn
The second law of thermodynamics describes the nature of entropy—that everything tends toward chaos and disorder. We see it in our everyday lives. A hot coffee becomes cold. Dirt piles up on the streets. Solid wood burns and becomes ash. Businesses fail. Our bodies decay. On a long enough timeline, entropy always wins. Therefore, life is characterized by our ability to temporarily hold at bay the ravages of entropy. Entropy is always increasing. Stated in another way, the availability of energy is always decreasing. To return a system to its orderly state, it takes more energy than that which was required for disorder to happen. Therefore, as Tony Robbins says, “Energy is not only the basis of our existence, it is the fuel that makes everything in our lives real and possible. The higher your energy level, the more efficient your body, the better you feel the more you will use your talent to produce outstanding results.”
If life seems to always get more difficult and complicated, now we know why. Energy flows through into all areas of our life. Maintaining our health, relationships, careers, skills, knowledge, societies, needs a never-ending effort, and this requires more and more energy. “Disorder is not a mistake; it is our default,” according to Shane Parrish. “Order is always artificial and temporary. The existence of entropy is what keeps us on our toes. Truly understanding entropy leads to a radical change in the way we see the world, and ignorance of it is responsible for many of our biggest mistakes and failures.”

The Edge

Melville jumped ship because he could not stand life aboard a whaler. He wrote Moby Dick. Hemingway spent most of his days in wars away from the fighting; hence, he became one of the greatest wartime writers. Kerouac was famously nomadic but wrote On The Road at the home of his mother. Jane Austen became the revered chronicler of courtship, love, and marriage. But she remained single. Emily Bronte was happiest in her own company, but in Wuthering Heights, she paints a viciously brutal world that led the Victorian public to think that it had been written by a man. And what can we say of Emily Dickinson? By choosing to live life internally, her poetry unveiled the secrets of the universe.
J. Krishnamurti: Edge is something extraordinary That comes naturally when you are watching without motive, Without any kind of demand, Just to watch and see the beauty of A single star in the sky, Or watch a single tree in a field… Then, in that watching In that alertness, There is something that is beyond words, Beyond all measure.

Xinyi

“Xinyi means a joyous soul.”
- Xinyi reached to her side and pulled out a notebook. She passed it back to me, “This is a gratitude journal. I request all passengers to spare a thought. It’s anonymous, so you can have a read, and if you feel something, you can write too.”

Letting Go

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need.—Lao Tzu
“letting go.” Dr. Hawkins states: The average person is preoccupied with the body, its functioning, appearance, and survival. The average mind is beleaguered with worries, fears, and anxiety. With such inner tension, by the end of the day the average person frequently feels like a victim: drained, empty, and exhausted… Research has shown “letting go” to be more effective than many other approaches available in relieving the physiological response to stress. A feeling that is not resisted will disappear as the energy behind it dissipates. So as a person surrenders, it is accompanied by a feeling of relief and lightness, with happiness and freedom. There is a general reversal of pathological processes in the body and a return to optimal functioning. Physical and psychological disorders improve and frequently disappear altogether.
Letting go is incredibly difficult and is not the same as giving up. Letting go does not mean you stop caring either. It just means we cease our attempts to own and control the environment we are living in. Reaching greater clarity comes “not by finding the answers, but by undoing the basis of the problem,” Dr. Hawkins writes. The basic idea is that when we are in a surrendered state, we are free of inner conflict and expectations. We let go of the attachment to our current experience of life and have no strong emotion about a thing: “It’s okay if it happens, and it’s okay if it doesn’t.” We develop an inner security, knowing that there will always be sufficient abundance.
Dr. Hawkins also states: When we are free, there is a letting go of attachments. We can enjoy a thing, but we don’t need it for our happiness. Then, money becomes merely a tool to achieve our goals in the world… In the state of acceptance, there is the feeling that nothing needs to be changed. Everything is perfect and beautiful the way it is. There is a decreased preoccupation with “doing,” and a growing focus on “being,” which allows us to experience the basic nature of the universe, which, it will be discovered is to manifest the greatest good possible in a situation.
Adam Robinson, “Each day presents us with 86,400 seconds, which means each day presents us with virtually countless opportunities to reset, recover our balance, and continue rehearsing our best selves.”

The Saint

What is the difference Between your experience of Existence And that of a saint? The saint knows That the spiritual path Is a sublime chess game with God And that the Beloved Has just made such a Fantastic Move That the saint is now continually Tripping over Joy And bursting out in Laughter And saying, “I surrender!” Whereas, my dear, I am afraid you still think You have a thousand serious moves.—Hafiz

The Great Commandment

You shall love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.—Matthew 22: 37-40
“Don’t forget to show love!” At first, when I watched this news clip on Twitter, I thought it was cute. But then, as I watched the video again, his words, “Don’t forget to show love,” really stuck with me. I kept repeating it to myself over and over. It was a simple, yet powerful reminder from a four-year old boy to always be kind and attentive. It was perhaps the best advice I have ever received.
What would it be like to be continually living with such overflowing love, reverence, and humility? To do something for the sake of its goodness, to selflessly put another person’s needs before our own, without thought of any return whatsoever, and loving purely for the delight of loving? Sheikh Sa’di said, “Higher spiritual life is nothing but service to humanity.”

The Tragedy of Speed

There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living. There is nothing that is harder to learn.—Seneca

An Ode to Silence

Silence leads to stillness, and stillness leads to wisdom. When asked how to achieve enlightenment, a Zen master once gazed at the student with lips firmly sealed. When Buddha became enlightened, he kept silent. Words end where truth begins. The more we know, the quieter we become, and the quieter we become, the more we hear. “Silence is the root of everything,” said Rumi. “If you spiral into its void, a hundred voices will thunder messages you long to hear.”
The word silence comes from the Latin word silens, which means to be still, to be quiet, or to be at rest. It is not merely an absence of external noise because silence speaks, within us and around us.

The Apology

John Ruskin’s advice: “It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.”

The Entanglement

“What is it that makes us so unwilling to look at ourselves calmly and objectively?” I excerpt the answer from his book, Reflections: Fear, I suppose, and defensiveness. If we admit our weaknesses to ourselves we would—so we think—be weakened in the face of the world and less able to cope with the dangers and the problems that surround us; and, if we don’t build up our own “image,” no one else is going to do it for us. Of what use is a deflated balloon, even if there is a fierce-looking face painted on it? We must blow the balloon up and present that face to the world. But there’s a problem here. The more we try to live a lie, the more vulnerable we become. We’re afraid of being caught out by other people; above all, we’re afraid of being caught out by ourselves. A lie always needs to be supported by further lies, and then by still more lies, until we find that we have constructed a house of cards that may be blown down at any moment. What happens then? A nervous breakdown, perhaps, or what the psychiatrists call an “identity crisis.” Self-deception has its dangers, to say the least.

The End of Our Time

It turns out that when most of us graduate from high school, we have already used up over 90% of our in-person parent time. During our first eighteen years, we spend some time with our parents for at least 90% of our days. But once we move away for university and then later for work, we probably see our parents an average of two weeks a year—or about 4% of the days we spent with them each year of our childhood. Let’s assume we’re lucky and that we have twenty more years of coexistence. If the two-weeks-a-year thing holds, that’s less than 300 days left to hang with mom and dad.
- First, realize how much time has already passed. Otherwise, we will continue to live life unconsciously. As Seneca wrote, “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”
- Second, focus on priorities. Everyone hustles life along, but make a list of how you spend your time—and make sure it is how you want it. Time is, after all, the least thing we have of, to quote Hemingway.
- Third, quality time matters. If you’re in your last 10% of time with someone you love, keep that fact in the front of your mind when you’re with them and treat that time as special.
- Fourth, if you desire to spend more time with the most important people in your life, then make it happen. Putting things off is the biggest waste of life. As Napoleon Hill said, “The time will never be just right.”

The Dip

Godin states: You get what you deserve when you embrace the Dip and treat it like the opportunity that it really is. If you can keep going when the system is expecting you to stop, you will achieve extraordinary results. The people who make it through the Dip are scarce, so they generate more value. For whatever reason, they refuse to abandon the quest and they push through the Dip to the other side. The focus is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world. The Dip is the secret to your success.

Memento Mori

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything—external expectations, pride, fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.—Steve Jobs
“You may not wake up tomorrow.” Seneca urged us to tell ourselves this when going to bed. And when waking up, to say, “You may not sleep again.” To keep death at the forefront of our thoughts, he believed, would reveal the true insignificance of some of our worries and bring thoughtfulness into all aspects of life. He went on to say, “Let us prepare our minds as if we have come to the very end of life.”
I can’t say that I’m ready to stare death in the face, but I do think often about life’s impermanence. It is why I don’t hold any grudges, why I’m ready to make up with my wife soon after a big fight, why I don’t take my time with my children for granted, why I don’t sweat the small stuff, why I worry less about the future, why I am supercharged with even more ambition, why I desire no more than what is necessary, why I spend some time in seclusion, why I’m filled with so much gratitude, and why I see only my own mountain of weaknesses. In short, you could say to practice dying is to practice being a better person.