In his book "How to Love" the legendary zen Buddhist teacher Thich Naht Hanh mentioned that
"The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. You can be the sunshine for another person. You can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment. Then you have something to offer the other person."
well, I keep thinking about Cairo, a city with around 8 million people, and yet it is difficult-almost impossible to find love. This is not only based on my experience, but the testimony of thousands of young men and women who suffer from a life devoid of romantic love, and the potential to settle down and have a family of your own. A lot of articles, Egyptian soap operas and movies have been produced to discuss this phenomena and analyze "why did Egyptian young people give up on love?"
I don't want to analyze the scientific reasons behind that, but I want to shed the light on my own personal experience- being a thirty-years old woman who always found it easier to fall in love with non-Egyptians in a country other than Egypt, and I always wondered why. As one friend once told me when we lived together in the U.S. in 2011 "Here, You will find love as easy as pie, you don't even have to go looking for it like in Egypt." For you know in Egypt, you have to do an effort to find love, all these arranged dates and advertising that you're looking for that special someone among your family and friends, and eventually you might end up being practical and getting married to someone you're not even compatible with just because you're too afraid of "missing the train."
I started with Thich Naht Hanh's quote because he really summed it up all for me: "It all starts with you." we often blame the other side for not being able to give love: men blaming women for being too demanding and greedy, and women blaming men for being cheaters and uncommitted, but rarely do we do the effort to look at ourselves and ask: what is it that we're missing? I would say that living in a strict society like Egypt with lots of rules about "should and should nots" make children lose confidence in themselves very early. They fail to choose their way, to be who they are, especially girls of course. We grow with a flawed emotional system that fails to receive love, we are so afraid of receiving true love because a lot of things have been mistaken with that exact same word. Now, when anyone talks about love, we often joke about it or label it as being "drama talks" because we stopped believing in it, if not in everything that matters in this life. And I don't even want to go further with speaking about self-love or self-acceptance because the term "self" is already an issue in such a society.
Moving from the self to the society, this is not a free country. The society has strong unspoken rules and guidance that it takes a rebel to break. Most of these rules are twisted I believe. Rules like "the most important thing for a woman is to marry a rich man from a high social class to be able to feel proud in front of her family and friends." and "a man has to choose a pious, religious, beautiful, submissive woman. to make a good wife". And "love is created for the sake of marriage," as if marriage is the ultimate purpose of love and not otherwise. and then the influence of the elders, whether they are family or religious leaders and they being the ones who have a final say when it comes to love and marriage.
And more and more chains: the traffic, pollution, noise, dirty politics, sexual harassment, poverty...can one really find love amid all this...can one even stand for a moment and ask herself/himself: what is love?
And then the emotional baggage, and accepting the fact that we can really survive without love, but we can't survive without watching porn, smoking shisha for hours, or drinking endless cups of tea.
That's how love looks like in Cairo!
"The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. You can be the sunshine for another person. You can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment. Then you have something to offer the other person."
well, I keep thinking about Cairo, a city with around 8 million people, and yet it is difficult-almost impossible to find love. This is not only based on my experience, but the testimony of thousands of young men and women who suffer from a life devoid of romantic love, and the potential to settle down and have a family of your own. A lot of articles, Egyptian soap operas and movies have been produced to discuss this phenomena and analyze "why did Egyptian young people give up on love?"
I don't want to analyze the scientific reasons behind that, but I want to shed the light on my own personal experience- being a thirty-years old woman who always found it easier to fall in love with non-Egyptians in a country other than Egypt, and I always wondered why. As one friend once told me when we lived together in the U.S. in 2011 "Here, You will find love as easy as pie, you don't even have to go looking for it like in Egypt." For you know in Egypt, you have to do an effort to find love, all these arranged dates and advertising that you're looking for that special someone among your family and friends, and eventually you might end up being practical and getting married to someone you're not even compatible with just because you're too afraid of "missing the train."
I started with Thich Naht Hanh's quote because he really summed it up all for me: "It all starts with you." we often blame the other side for not being able to give love: men blaming women for being too demanding and greedy, and women blaming men for being cheaters and uncommitted, but rarely do we do the effort to look at ourselves and ask: what is it that we're missing? I would say that living in a strict society like Egypt with lots of rules about "should and should nots" make children lose confidence in themselves very early. They fail to choose their way, to be who they are, especially girls of course. We grow with a flawed emotional system that fails to receive love, we are so afraid of receiving true love because a lot of things have been mistaken with that exact same word. Now, when anyone talks about love, we often joke about it or label it as being "drama talks" because we stopped believing in it, if not in everything that matters in this life. And I don't even want to go further with speaking about self-love or self-acceptance because the term "self" is already an issue in such a society.
Moving from the self to the society, this is not a free country. The society has strong unspoken rules and guidance that it takes a rebel to break. Most of these rules are twisted I believe. Rules like "the most important thing for a woman is to marry a rich man from a high social class to be able to feel proud in front of her family and friends." and "a man has to choose a pious, religious, beautiful, submissive woman. to make a good wife". And "love is created for the sake of marriage," as if marriage is the ultimate purpose of love and not otherwise. and then the influence of the elders, whether they are family or religious leaders and they being the ones who have a final say when it comes to love and marriage.
And more and more chains: the traffic, pollution, noise, dirty politics, sexual harassment, poverty...can one really find love amid all this...can one even stand for a moment and ask herself/himself: what is love?
And then the emotional baggage, and accepting the fact that we can really survive without love, but we can't survive without watching porn, smoking shisha for hours, or drinking endless cups of tea.
That's how love looks like in Cairo!
No comments:
Post a Comment