apropos of anything

I’ve missed these.

Reading something that reminds of where you are, and where you should be. Sameera has been using this poem by Hazrat Inayat Khan as her Gchat status for over a week now, and it’s so beautiful I can’t stop reading it every time I sign on:

I asked for strength
and God gave me difficulties to make me strong.

I asked for wisdom
and God gave me problems to learn to solve.

I asked for prosperity
and God gave me a brain and brawn to work.

I asked for courage
and God gave me dangers to overcome.

I asked for love
and God gave me people to help.

I asked for favors
and God gave me opportunities.

I received nothing I wanted.

I received everything I needed.

There have been so many days lately where I am angry and sad, and perhaps that is because I have been pushing myself so hard and therefore have always been hovering right around exhausted, or perhaps it is because I forgot that things are bigger than me, and while I may not understand why God does things, He does, and I should trust Him.

I am looking for a place that will print and mat this for me, for my office and for my home. This, and the dua that Dave made at Mansoor and Ayesha’s valima… am wondering if Papyrus or Sam Flax would do it for me.

Waking up when it’s cold outside and realizing your toes are toasty warm. There’s a line in Richard Adams’s Watership Down about how people who say they like the cold don’t really like the cold so much as they like the knowledge that they are secure against the cold. At first I took offense — I do like the cold, I do! I have so many more fashion options when it’s cold outside! — but with time I’ve come to acknowledge that he’s at least partly right. There’s such a lovely, drowsy feeling about curling up under blankets and being perfectly warm when it’s below freezing outside, like perhaps I was meant for hibernation and it’s just by accident that I’m a human and not a bear.

Funny little tidbits that pop up unannounced. These are the things that keep me going, especially on the tough days. My Twitter feed is a great reliable source, like when @shawnamama tweeted, “Noah: Mom, you said if I was good at the library, I could watch Dora. Me: I did. Noah: I was very good, except I ate my boogers sometimes” or when @poniewozik posted nothing with a hashtag that said #WorkIFeelLikeDoingToday. And even moreso, the people around me every day are full of hilariousness that make me laugh quietly to myself weeks and months later. I appreciate them, and I very much appreciate the ones who indulge my inclination for the occasional ridiculous and keep up the running jokes. It’s a small thing, but especially on the tough days, it means the difference between pushing through and hiding under my desk in the fetal position.

Photo credit: Tea.