September 4, 2011

shathaw asked: Salam:) your blog is really interesting blog i enjoyed scrolling it down, i was searching about saudi in that search tag then i found the blog i read about your days in Riyadh and that when i found it interesting i mean its interesting to read about peoples immersion about riyadh and living there um generally suadi ,also the -50 Questions to Expand Your Mind- the answers were really good ones and helped me a lot answering i can say most of the , yeah also Eid Mubark i hope it went well

You’re awesome! Thank you for your message. I write about Saudi - and the things I get up to here - a lot. Of course, I write about other things too but not as much. Riyadh is a very unique place and I don’t know how I feel about being here (even though it’s been 11 months!).

Those 50 questions were way too cool. I answered one everyday and really enjoyed them. You should work your way through them on your blog!

Eid was good, thank you. Alhamdulilah, I’ve just got to stay focused on the good things in my life!

August 6, 2011
50 questions - a reflection

About 7 weeks ago I started a series of posts on this blog titled 50 questions that will free your mind. The aim of the questions was to think about your life, the place you have in the world, and to contemplate your existence in order to see how you might be able to change your situation - to better yourself. I figured that answering one a day would be a great way to go about thinking about all these issues and to see if I could delve in to my own thoughts and opinions at the same time. I actually surprised myself with some of my answers.

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August 4, 2011
50. Decisions are being made right now. The question is: Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you?

Damn you, 50 questions, you’ve saved the most emotionally intense questions for last, haven’t you. How the hell do I go about answering this…

In life there are things we do and things that happen to us. Sometimes we’re active in our actions and sometimes we’re passive. How we balance that and deal with that gives a big indication of how we function as people.

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August 4, 2011
49. In 5 years from now, will you remember what you did yesterday? What about the day before that? Or the day before that?

Okay, I’m writing this post on Wednesday and queuing it for Friday. That means the yesterday this post refers to is actually Thursday. The day before that is Wednesday, and the day before that is Tuesday. Obviously what day is when isn’t the point of this question. The point of this question asks if we fill our days with experiences and moments that will stick in our minds or fade to nothing. For that reason I’m going to answer this question in two ways. The first is in the literal sense and the second in the broader sense.

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August 3, 2011
48 What do you love? Have any of your recent actions openly expressed this love?

There’s so much in life to love but we don’t pay attention to it at all. If you were to list the prevailing emotion that was crucial for a happy life it would be love. I don’t really want to go in to specifics but there are so many ways people show their love. Let me give a few examples.

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August 3, 2011
47. When was the last time you noticed the sound of your own breathing?

Other than right now and every other time I’ve seen this question written down?

The sound of a person’s breathing is what you hear the most in your life. It’s there with you the moment you’re born up to the moment you die. It never, ever, leaves you. Most people breathe around ten time a minute, I think? You hear it so many times in your life that you start to tune it out. You get so good at tuning it out that you don’t even notice it any more. There are times you do notice it, there are times it becomes so much. The simple act of breathing can cause so many emotional and physiological responses in ourselves and in others. Let me talk about some of them.

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August 2, 2011
46. What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?

Society is based on rules. We perform actions and people/our environment respond in certain ways. Some of these rules are personal, some interpersonal, and others are from God. A lot of the moral codes of conduct we have are there because of the way human society evolved and grew. Religion certainly shaped some of these lines of thinking, if not most. What was judged to be right at some point in time was deemed wrong at another. What we are judged on and how we are judged on earth is purely subjective. If you believe in God’s justice then that’s the only pure justice. Now, when it comes to doing something without judgment, the question is basically asking what sin (social or religious) would like to commit and get away with if you could. 

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August 1, 2011
45. If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?

This is such a good question to ask. It’s impossible for humans to not make mistakes. We’re not perfect beings and we falter or misstep or don’t give something as much as we should. The questions we then ask what we do to avoid mistakes and what we do after we make a mistake. I think both are crucial in understanding how our fear links to mistaking making in the first place

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July 31, 2011
44. When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just go ahead and do what you know is right?

There always comes a moment when you realise you’ve been thinking about something way too much, that you’ve calculated all the odds, that you’ve crunched all the numbers, and you know you have to do. At that point you take the leap. The question that most of us ask is when does that moment actually come about? I can only talk about this question from personal experience.

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July 30, 2011
43. What is the difference between being alive and truly living?

This is a really interesting question. I’ve been thinking about it a whole lot and I feel it comes down to subtle differences. Most people in life go through the same kind of experiences; on a day-to-day basis we wake up, go to work, hang out, and sleep. Where the difference between those who are alive and those who comes in is how the people make use of the time they have and the perspective they have in life.

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July 29, 2011
42. Would you be willing to reduce your life expectancy by 10 years to become extremely attractive or famous?

You might feel I was vapid or shallow to admit that I would reduce my life expectancy by ten years to become extremely attractive or famous but I say so without hesitation. Of the two options I would choose to be famous more than attractive. I understand a life of fame isn’t as easy as the media portray it to be but I feel it provides certain advantages. Let me explain…

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July 28, 2011
41. If you knew that everyone you know was going to die tomorrow, who would you visit today?

This question would have been a lot easier yesterday when I was in England. Being in Saudi means there isn’t really anyone here at the moment who I would particularly want to visit. Instead I’d jump in a car and drive to Mecca. If distance wasn’t an issue and everyone was waiting in a line for me then there are a few people I’d love to visit today.

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July 27, 2011
40. When was the last time you marched into the dark with only the soft glow of an idea you strongly believed in?

What a strange question. I’m guessing this question is trying to ask about the last time I formed an idea of what I want to do and started on a path to achieve that or follow through with the idea even though I didn’t have a fully functioning plan about it. Because I see the question like that, I will answer it like that. There are two answers to this question…

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July 27, 2011
So I couldn’t really sleep tonight…

which is kind of understandable because today is a pretty big day for me. I woke up an hour before my alarm for fajr on my own and just lay in bed for a while thinking about things. I had three things on my mind. Two are/were sad and one is happy. I want to share the two sad feelings with you.

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July 26, 2011
39. Do you feel like you’ve lived this day a hundred times before?

This question is deceptively complex. I’m really lucky this question has come up today for a very simple reason that I will get in to late. Most people have very repetitive days… We wake up, go to work or school, come home, do nothing for a while, and go to sleep only to repeat it the next day. It’s easy to feel that you’ve lived the same day so many times but is that really the case?

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