Call me "Irresponsible"

He called me at the bank asking me to help him with something I had no access to. I gave him the appropriate department's phone number and told him that in case he struggled with his English, he could always ask for an "Arabic Translator", to which he laughed and said right away "My English is good man, I'll handle the issue".

Two hours later, I received a second phone call from him, telling me that he had no problem language-wise however, he failed the authentication test. I opened his profile on my computer right away when he told me that his date of birth didn't match. He said he was born on 06/16 and to my surprise I had it as 09/19. He got annoyed and wondered where I got that from. I apologized and asked him to call back customer service after I fixed the date.

An hour later he called back and asked me to go over his date of birth again. He sounded a bit frustrated. I was embarrassed and I apologized again for his inconvenience and assured him that we take customers information very seriously and that this mistake had never happened before. He said that he wanted to go over the year this time. I thought to myself, how irresponsible of me to enter the year incorrectly too, was I drunk or was I holding the keyboard upside down!!!!

I didn't have the courage to tell him the year so instead I asked. He answered and of course it didn't match. I said to him "I beg your pardon!" He gave me the year one more time. I said that I was sorry because his voice was getting cut off and I couldn't hear it correctly (It really wasn't, but I was shocked at that point). He impatiently told me the year for the third time. I said "Sir, you could not possibly be alive today if you were born then, you would have been dead for a good 578 years now".

I had the date of birth right all along as I was copying it from his passport when I opened his account. The 28 year-old man was giving a customer service representative working for an American corporation, during his visit to the United States, his date of birth in the Hijri Calendar (AKA Islamic calendar).

Heard the song "I'm an Alien, I'm a legal Alien, I'm an Arabic man in LA"?

This blog is not to be taken as making fun of any Arabic person because I would be making fun of myself first. It is the irony in this incident that I wrote about, nothing more, nothing less. Laugh on ...

The Economy of Words

She told him "You talk too much", he shrugged his shoulders and walked away murmuring "Because I know too much".

Our knowledge reflects what we are interested in, which is not necessarily the case for others. I think knowledge comes from listening, observing, and reading, not from talking too much. A man of a few words is a man who lets his actions, not his lectures, speak for him.

That answer sounded interesting when I first heard it, street smart if you will, and now I think of it as  plain stupid. It got me thinking about the blogs and songs I wrote last year, and made me want to challenge myself into continuing my writings with less words, yet without taking away from the meaning I'm trying to express.

So to start, I wanted to create some proverbs and take it from there. I came up with a few and tried to keep them as short as possible (well, they're supposed to be short right!) and I will be adding more, this is a start






There's a fine line between Self Confident and Arrogant, which one are you?

When I said "thank you for your inspiration", I didn't necessarily compliment you. It's the pain you caused me that worked up my creativity.

Music is timeless; it's a subjective authentic expression and it doesn't have to be current to make you current.

You don't need to write or sing or paint to be an artist, just dare to think differently.

 A man who is not capable of trusting others is a man who himself cannot be trusted

 

 If religion is right, then I take pride in being wrong

We are so caught up in our diets to a point where we don't realize that trimming the saturated fat has nothing to do with food.

When we were so young, the world was so big. It was full of dreams, possibilities, innocence, joy, excitement, care free uncertainty, and love. The world didn't change much, we just grew older!

Not Married Yet? What's Wrong With You?

I was not surprised when I ran into her during my vacation last year, I was walking in her neighborhood afterall. She looked the same, with her short straight hair, her heavy make up and most importantly her beautiful smile that lights up any place she visits. I stopped her without even thinking and asked "Mrs. Y, do you remember me?" She looked at me, looked through me, and I felt that I lost her for a second. I told her my name and she said to me that it's been 18 years. She immediately jumped into the marriage question without even asking "How are you?". I fulfilled her curiosity with the "Single" word so we could move on, but we got stuck there. She complained that her son was not married yet and that she was really sad about it. She said that she was not the kind of mother who puts pressure on her son to tie the knot but she was worried because she wanted him to have his own family, with kids running to him every time he opens the door, and a wife who cooks for him and keeps him company. I asked her the same question I ask other parents usually when it comes to marriage, "was that what he wanted too?" I then lost her completely, she said she didn't know, she just wanted him to be happy.

Once upon a time, seems ages ago, I left a place that was single-minded about marriage. I arrived to a place where singles are allowed to live their lives with no judgment (or maybe with some, but at least not to your face). I embraced that culture and learned to love my life as is. Every day I meet all kinds of customers at my work place; the happily married with kids and dreams and future, the miserably married with kids and unfulfilled plans and past, the happily divorced with "I would never do it again" promise, the bitterly divorced with a mistress called Candy and a glass of whisky and a cigar, the totally indifferent ones with expired dreams and suicidal thoughts, and finally the singles. But regardless of the marital status, I notice that those people are not so different. What's different about them is the knowledge they have about themselves …………..  or the lack of it.

Married or not married is not something you add to your resume. You are not more impressive either way. You are more impressive with how you make the best out of your situation regardless what it is. Some people who are married wish they never got married, and some wish they'd  done it a decade earlier. But does marriage seem to be the taken for granted-future of any human being? Does it have to be the destination and the destiny? Does the fact that some people are not cut for marriage and prefer to be single sound pathetic to you? According to a research at UCLA (oh who the hell I'm fooling) according to most married people (at least the ones I know), Marriage is the ultimate goal of life, and according to a lot of single people, sadly enough, it is too. The reason I say sadly, is because it tells me that those singles are not happy with their status quo (Says the single man). Marriage is great, but it doesn't define you, it could possibly make you a better person, it could make you happier, but is it a guarantee? One thing for sure, it's not a competition, and married people are not one step ahead of single people.

My last customer before I wrote this blog was a single lady in her early 60s. She was happy and respectful and I might forget her name and her face altogether, but I don't think I would forget her smile and positive energy. She said to me that she wants to make sure her debit card would still work while visiting Australia in two weeks. I said to her that we wouldn't wanna mess up her trip by blocking her card. She volunteered with more information, telling me that she and her friend once a year plan a trip somewhere in this beautiful world to see something different and this year they're so excited about Australia. She had a book in her hand and naturally it grabbed my attention so she added, "every birthday my friends and I buy each other books, I love reading and discussing books with them." That woman, doesn't have kids, doesn't have a husband, made her own family with her friends and is making the best out of her single situation to the best of her ability.

The question thrown at me from time to time is "Well, who are you going to leave all this for? Who's going to carry your name?" All this what? I'm not a millionaire (yet) and if I had kids, I'd love to leave everything for my kids, but since I don't, why should I worry about that? As for my name, well, I would like my name to be remembered by the difference I make in life, otherwise, I don't want to be remembered at all.


I agree that marriage is a great way to celebrate life, and that having kids gives it a dimension a single person might not understand or have the privilege to enjoy, but it isn't just one way. Or is it? and if you say it is, what do we do now? should we ask Jesus why he didn't get married?

Perfection

She came to the branch where I work and anxiously looked around. She was clearly worried. I was helping a customer as she paved the walk way back and forth with impatience. She was a beautiful young lady with blond hair and blue eyes. But her impatience took away a little from her beauty. As I finished my transaction with my customer she approached me and screamed her heart out at me which took me for a second by surprise, but I immediately pretended that nothing had happened. I smiled to her, shook her hand and asked her slowly to have a seat so I could help her. Her words as she was yelling with difficulty were “My Debit card is not working, I need money”. She struggled so much in uttering those words because that young lady was deaf. I talked to the customer slowly so she could read my lips and assured her that I’ll be taking care of her. We used a pen and a paper and she was happy to learn that her debit card is back to normal.

The minute I made my final payment on my very first car loan, I started driving it around feeling good about owning it. I stopped at a traffic light and I suddenly heard  some kind of screeching. I recognized that sound, it felt that someone took a key and just scratched the paint off of it. I was pissed and as I rolled down the window to investigate, I heard a voice saying "I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry". The tone of the voice expressed fear and regret. It was the voice of someone who must have been physically and mentally abused. I immediately said “don’t worry about it, it’s nothing, really nothing” I wanted to get out to check on him and give him a hug had I not been in the middle of traffic. I added “Are you okay?” and he said “I’m alright sir; I didn’t mean to hit your car”. It broke my heart for he was a blind man, possibly in his twenties, walking with the help of a stick that he feels his way by.

That stick was what scratched the paint off of my perfect looking car and turned it into an imperfect one. I said to him “No need to apologize at all, we’re good”. I couldn’t care less for my vehicle. His closed eyes opened mine.

It’s so easy to drift away with the temptation of wanting to have the perfect life, the perfect apartment, the perfect car, the perfect lover and most of all, the perfect looks. But perfection is a state of mind. Perfection for some people is imperfection for others.

Life is all about sympathizing and knowing that what we worry about is nothing compared to what other people go through every day and every minute of the day. The less blessed ones are not there to just wake us up and tell us “Hey, you’re lucky, you have your health. What would you do if you were in my shoes? would you worry so much about the wrinkles on your face, the bone in your nose that you don't like, or the extra pounds you want to get rid of, or would you worry about not knowing what love or being loved is?” They’re there for us to reach out to and help, to feel their pain and offer understanding, love, and patience without feeling superior. To learn to want less and be content, yet want more to make a difference.

Bottom line is, we’re not going to take anything with us, we’re not going to maintain our looks. Looks fade, properties come and go. Living a good life is about appreciating what we have instead of taking it for granted. Living Perfection is about sharing what we have with the less fortunate  ones. 

Perfection is a smile you put on someone’s face

It’s the warmth you give to someone’s heart

It’s the light you shed in someone’s darkness

Perfection by itself is a flaw, an obsession, and an addiction.

Perfection becomes perfect when we help, share, accept, and love. Who said it's for God only ....

The Convenient Box

As he was rushing, climbing the last steps of the building to the rooftop to watch the sunset, it finally dawned on Johnny that, just like the stairs were over, his one year old love experience was over too. Johnny looked all the way down to the bottom of the stairway on that very last day of the year, as if he were evaluating the whole year and the progress of his relationship going up one level at a time, taking it slowly over 12 months instead of taking the elevator. And when the time came for a milestone celebration, it was the end instead. He couldn't help but let couple of precious tears fall down, glittering like gold as the dying rays of the sunset penetrated them quickly like an arrow aimed at a dove flying in a cloudy sky that he thought he would see blue at one point.

Johnny lifted his head up and let himself breath the freedom he was granted but never demanded. He looked far away as he was approaching the edge of the building roof, with eyes that had exchanged life with death and a face that had swapped expressions with wrinkles for his tears to run comfortably through. His face muscles failed him in keeping the fake smile he drew on to get through the celebrating crowds in the lobby. Instead, his lips started nervously trembling  as he watched the dying sun getting buried in a purple sky.

Death was the only thought on Johnny's mind. Everything represented the end; the end of a day, the end of a year, sunset, the rooftop, and the end of a relationship. A relationship he thought that it was his last chance to live and continue his journey of a life that already lacked options. He felt imprisoned where he thought he was supposed to feel that he owned the world

As his silent tears exhausted the energy out of his body, Johnny collapsed down on his knees and buried his head in his big hands. The image of a candle in a convenient box was the only image he saw himself turning into the past year of his life. As he reflected upon the year, he saw the box getting opened, sometimes slightly, sometimes all the way and sometimes in between, depending on how much of a candle light was needed. Johnny also saw the phases when the box remained closed and wondered why he was not able to see the writings on the walls of the box. It was warm inside, but too dark. A candle needs air to stay lit, that was not the case for him.

Suddenly he heard the angry rhythm of the waves. It was louder than the voice he was infatuated with its never-ending and never fulfilled promises of tomorrow. Every wave splashed hard against reality, undressing it one layer at a time from all the dreams that were added on, in a fantasy he always knew on a certain level, would end. But suddenly ......... the angry waves calmed down and the voices of children's laughter shifted his attention from far away to a much closer place, a place where he was able to observe kids making fun of themselves as the waves were causing the castles they built on the sand to fall apart.

The waves turned into little splashes that started soothing Johnny's restless soul. And the minute his eyes, that were reflecting the glimpses of the dusk, caught the moon peacefully initiating a long silver stroke across the ocean's bed, he realized that the complete darkness he expected next, was merely the fear of the unknown. But Johnny knew one thing; the convenient box is no longer a convenient box. It's a precious box he had betrayed by allowing others to close. It's a precious box that he will carry in his heart and keep open all the time. Johnny finally went down through the lobby into the shore to walk. He didn't mind the celebrations around, he himself was celebrating at that point, by himself. He was celebrating a new beginning, a new light, and new possibilities. It was not the moon or the stars that helped him see his way, it was the candle in his precious box that lit the darkness around and showed him the way out of the building of despair into the shore of Life.

I have done nothing for myself

He sat down across the room from me with his wife next to him, and the minute he heard the very first part of my answer to his question, he interrupted me in front of all my folks who had come to visit, saying "Come back Tony, you have done nothing for yourself over there, you're 37 and still not married, you don't own your residence and you have no career".

It didn't come as a total shock, I was expecting it, just not from him. It was not his place to judge me the way he did. But he judged me according to his definition of success, not mine. I just said that I was happy and it's all that mattered to me. When I added that I had pretty much built a life for myself in the US, his wife stopped me from continuing my sentence saying "Stop building already, just come back, it's better for you here". But how is it better for me here? How does she know that? Does she know that I feel that I belong in my current town more than where I grew up? And what difference does it make when I am a minority in both places yet in one of those two places, no one ridicules me the way she and her husband did.

The next morning he saw my sister and asked her to convince me to come back. My sister, who never loses her cool, asked him for the reason I should come back and he said "Your brother did nothing in 11 years" and she went off on him. She mentioned to him some things I didn't even bother to think of, and she was right.

My philosophy considers being happy and enjoying the present as the prime reason to live, and the standards to being successful. And though I'm happy, his words got me bad. Why? I look back at those 11 years and reflect, I think of the 8 visits I made across the ocean all the way to my home town in Syria, I think of the 4 trips I took to Europe, Canada and Mexico. I think of the 10 visits I made to different US states and of the 13 trips I made across California itself. I loved every moment of those trips, I learned from different cultures and I met wonderful people.

In 11 years I have been in 2 major relationships, one of which, is current, but yes, I'm still not married and I'm 37. In 11 years I met four of the closest friends that I call best friends and a lot of people who care for me and would not use words that make me feel the way he and his wife made me feel. In 11 years I moved from one of the most dangerous cities in LA to one of the coolest places that costs me an arm and a leg a month in rent, and I don't own that place because I can't afford buying it.

In 11 years I climbed the ladder professionally from an entry level to the top, Managing entry levels, and I excelled at it. In May of 2009, I gave all that up, by choice, to start my own business, when I found out that it added no value to my life. And I admit that financially I took a steep decline.

In 11 years I made several attempts to break into the music industry, I finally managed to get two CDs out. Did they come back with an income? No. But that didn't stop me from doing what I enjoy. I will always write and sing.

All that came with a cost. I won't put down how much I could have saved had I not moved out of Inglewood, had I not had the chance to visit with my father before he passed, had I not brought him over to see where I live and how I live, had I not given up my career that was causing me so much stress to be able to save a grand or two every month, had I not enjoyed my hobbies as an outlet to expressing who I am, had I not visited with friends, dined out exploring the city and went out on different dates. Yes, I would have saved a lot of money if I didn't choose to live. And I would have turned into a bitter, stressed out, resentful man, who would have successfully owned his house and made something for himself.

I question myself. I question the funds I have in my bank account today more than I did 11 years ago when I had only $ 3000.00 hidden in my jeans. I question the safety of where I live today more than I did when I lived at a place where crime rate hit all time high. I question the relationship I'm in today more than the casual dates I went on when I didn't know much about myself. But most of all, I question the reason why his words got into me the way they did.

There's no stability in my life today, so I live hand to mouth, but I'm lucky doing what I love to do and I hope that one day, I will be able to do what I enjoy doing the most and have that as a full time job. I am done fooling myself into the American dream. My dream is to live the present which is all I have. I live at a place that I have the privilege of calling home and feeling at home under its roof, I don't own it, but what difference does it make? I ain't taking it with me when I die anyway. And how do you explain any of that to him or his wife? And why should I?

I smiled to him and politely said "I'm happy where I am. My happiness has no price tag attached to it, and for me, it's all that matters. My happiness is the standards of my success, and that is what I have done for myself".

This is not a Love Blog

This is not a love blog, bye bye baby

"I keep on waiting, anticipating, but I can't wait forever
You say you love me, you're thinking of me, but we're never together"

A lot of times we relate to so much in songs because of the way they were written, the images they reflect and the feelings they express. Songwriters are people like you and I, going through experiences like ours. Some of them have the ability to express their feelings artistically, with so much eloquence and sensitivity. And others, express their feelings with simple yet sensational words. And that plays a string or two or even six in our hearts, depending on the experience itself.

And baby, I'm a songwriter myself and I love expressing myself, this time though, I'm not going to write a love song, or a song at all. I'm going to tell you in a blog how much I love you.

I have expressed my love for you over the past year in so many ways. The amount of love I have for you hurts, it might take an ordinary man, but with extraordinary commitment to deal with that kind of experience. And even though the "Wanting you" that turned into "Needing you" that became "Yearning for you" hurts so much, it's a privilege to live and enjoy that kind of pain. And I want to thank you for the experience because now, if I die, I have at least known the taste of true love with you, if you only knew what you are to me. Oh But you do.

It’s true; love doesn't know time and place. I fell in love with you right before I turned 36 and right after I gave up on the idea of being in love. Your love took me back to being 16. The thought of you, seeing you, hearing your voice and spending time together were the happiest moments of my life. Your love erased all the hurt and heartaches of previous relationships. I stand naked in front of you, and no matter how many layers of clothes I wear, your love sees right through me. I refuse to compromise the integrity of our relationship or be less than a 100% with you. I loved myself through your eyes. I felt that I was born to love you, and that gave me a better purpose in life. Nothing else really mattered.

I know that I'm romantic, but when you came into my life, I turned from being just romantic, into being a poet, an enchanter, a philosopher, a dreamer and a passionate lover. I wrote you songs and I sang them declaring my love for you on every page and every stage. I wrote down my philosophy and I loved the depth and dimensions you added to it. I dreamt of you day and night and I lived the dream and cherished it in my heart. I fell in love and I didn't want to resist any moment of it because it felt natural, it felt right and real.

And baby, you ….. you are the sexiest, most intelligent, passionate, bravest, purest and most beautiful soul ever existed on this earth. You make a difference, you touch lives, and you melt hearts and lighten darkness. I want to thank you but I don't think the words "Thank you" or "I love you"  are ever expressive enough to what and how I feel for you.

Please believe me when I say this, having to go separate ways is the most difficult, painful, brutal heartbreak I will probably ever experience, yet in my heart I know that it's the right thing to do. The only way left to keep that beautiful dream alive is to end what we have. I don't think my life would ever be the same again. And with all the tears and hesitation, it is what should happen now.

You taught me to love myself with your generous love. And that love for me is what's ending our relationship. I kneel down and pray for your well being, for your soul to find a mate, for the world to taste drops of your love and I, I will always love you.

Next time you fall in love, and I know and trust that you will, I just hope that you would let your man into your world the way I let you into mine, because the distance you kept me at, was just .....

 ........  pathetic

This is not a love blog, bye bye baby ...