I haven’t posted in a bit because I am quite upset about what’s happening in Africa. It’s just…a shame. So much shame. But when things get too overwhelming, I look at the sky and remind myself that I’m just a dot in the grand scheme of things.
Nafiza.
So I spent all night trying to fix the layout of my website. I finally got it done and I am pleased with the way it looks.
I’m pretty happy!
- jkd
This says it all. Hehe.
I was relatively happy until I saw the pictures of the people starving in Somalia. I even had something in my head that would show my “happiness” and then those pictures happened and I learned that 29000 children had died of malnutrition.
29000 children.
That took the happy out of my day and replaced it with a guilt so intense that I sat down and felt sick. They are dying from lack of food and water. Their bellies swell with hunger, their throats grow parched with thirst. And here in North America, people throw food away. They make it in copious amounts and then they throw it away. They have food fights. The disrespect, the waste, the tragedy of it all just made me weep.
29000 children who could have lived. 29000 children who didn’t. How do we live with ourselves?
I think this picture says it all. (I spent about an hour making this. Yes I have no life but look how pretty it is.) All the little things that make me happy. Looking at this made me happy today.
3rd August, 2011.
Nafiza.
today, reading this made me happy. i realized that i need to keep going and to remember to never give up.
- jkd
making coffee for the first time in my new coffee maker made me very very very happy today. i drank coffee after a 15 day haitus, and boy am i glad to be drinking it.
=)
- jkd
It’s difficult to find things to make you happy when your entire being has coalesced into one intense sensation: hunger. Everything else seems like fripperies that your fingers itch to saw away. I realized today that so many times in ourselves, it is we who make things and situations unnecessarily complex. Why care what other people say about what you do? You have your own life to live. A life that precludes commenting on theirs. I think to a certain degree, the troubles we encounter are the ones we welcome. Because it serves to deepen the sense of accomplishment we feel about something if there are obstacles to overcome. This is what being hungry teaches me. Thirst is another matter altogether.
When you are fasting, you don’t have energy for much. Every single time you move, every breath you take, the thirst deepens. I went for seventeen hours without food and water today and really, it wasn’t all too bad. What made me feel happy - no, happy seems a bit too frivolous in this case, grateful would be a much better word - what made me grateful today was the fact that I am lucky enough to live in a place, in a situation that I am not starving. That I have water to appease my thirst and food to satisfy my hunger. The people of Kenya to whom fasting and hunger is not limited to a finite number of hours in the day - they know what true hunger and what true thirst is.
Happiness today was in the little things. Wandering the isles of the supermarket. Sipping a drink designed to get me sugar-drunk. Snuggling up to my mom. Teasing my brother and bickering with my sister in law. Reading a good book and wishing someone the best. Today was a day where nothing stood out by itself but fit together with everything else. Just right.
Nafiza.
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