remember when you were little and you thought you had such HUGE problems? like when you were in high school or something and your curfew, that 10% paper, that guy not smiling at you, or what to wear to that dance occupied your whole week, and hours of phone conversations with friends.
fast-forward five years later...now you look back at that time and actually miss those trivial problems, because compared to the ones you have now, that (trivial) is exactly what they were. it makes you laugh (doesn’t it?) to think how little your problems actually were.
just think...in five years you’ll look back on today and think exactly the same thing.

A conversation I had with my mom a while ago:

Me (using my whiniest voice)
"oh mommy, I’m having such a bad week – I feel sad."
My mom (sounding all sympathetic)
"azizam, what’s wrong?"
Me (to be honest I don’t really have a reason)
"I don’t know. It’s just...nothing. and everything. Exams and I feel ugly and I just feel down."
My mom (giving me a hug)
"oh sweetie, i know. life gets really hard sometimes. actually the saddest thing happened to me today too."
me( happy at the idea that SOMEONE understands) (not happy that something sad happened to my mom, just...you know...)
"oh really? What happened?"
my mom( still with so much sympathy for me in her voice)
"one of my students came to my office hours crying – she just found out she has cancer."
me (head dropping, feeling so ashamed I want to kick myself)
"oh..."

"suppose that someone takes a lover in the mistaken belief that this lover is a good man and likely to make him better himself, while in reality the man is horrible, totally lacking in virtue; even so, it is noble for him to have been deceived. For he [the one who loves] too has demonstrated something about himself: that he is the sort of person who will do anything for the sake of virtue" (Plato’s Symposium, The Speech of Pausanian, 185b)

Why is it so hard to recognize what is really truly good and distinguish it from what is not? (more on this later...)

"do you want a beer?"
"no thanks. i don't drink."
"why not?"
"i don't like the smell of alcohol."
"really? you don't drink cause of the smell? that's it????"
...(pause)...
"well no, that's not totally 'it'."
"then why?"
"it's also because i believe that reason is the greatest gift that God has given humanity. the effect of drinking is to dull your reason - to make it not work properly. so i think if i drink it's as if i'm saying to God, 'dear God, thanks for this awesome gift and all but that's ok, i don't want it, you can take it back.' "
"hmm...i used to not like the smell either, but it grows on you after a while..."

OH MY GOD, finally, after MULTIPLE attempts, i figured out how to post a picture on my profile!! yaaaaaaay and a woo-woo! take that computer demons...!

my friend called me up the other day:
"bita, come on, let's go downtown."
"um...i can't - i should work on my essay"
"oh don't be a bum. come with me"
"to be honest, i'm too lazy"
"if you love me, you'll come"
"ok"
it made me wonder, is "love" another way of saying "i can make you do whatever i want you to do"?

the time on this is screwed up - its totally 10:20 pm right now...
well, i wanted my first entry to be about something important, but there is something on my mind right now. and this is a personal blog, so here goes...
i just talked to a friend of mine. he told me something that i was not sure i felt comfortable with. i didn't want to tell him how i felt because i knew he wouldn't understand. he would think that there was no justifiable reason for me to feel uncomfortable with it (even though there is). and even if there isn't, emotions don't really listen to the language of reason. do you know what i mean? sometimes something bothers you for what seems like no reason at all - or maybe just because you are a human being, which means that there are times when you feel weak and insecure. is that a good reason? "i am being stupid right now because i am a human being"...seems about right.
anyway, he made me tell him. and then he got mad at me. he forced me to tell him this and then he got mad because i was honest! i didn't know what to do. i wanted to take it back - but sometimes i feel like i have verbal diarreah (i just checked microsoft spellcheck and i've spelled this word correctly - yay!), i just say things without thinking. but then again, this is a good friend of mine - with friends you can say things without thinking, right?? isn't that the point of friends? (but maybe...maybe i need to ask, are we even good friends?) i don't know - the gist of it is, now he is mad at me for feeling the way i do. but how do you stop yourself from feeling things that are not good to feel?

i have a blooooogggg. yaaaaaaaaaay!!