My Top 5 Novels

One thing that is awesome about novels is that how swiftly they can damage your life. You may start reading one on the start of a weekend before your finals, and if it connects, you get so involved that the marching exams don’t feel so important.. or say fearsome anymore. And by the time you finish reading it, there is not a day left to practice for the last battle where you’re totally expected to be wounded near to death. The feeling that you get at that time is abominable, but I think it’s totally worth the joy earned before.

You don’t realize it, but great novels try to transform you in many diverse ways. When you start reading a novel, your mind creates an imaginary world for you where you’re the main character of the novel. And, just before you’re done reading it, the world that you’re actually living in becomes unreal, and it becomes impossible for you to breathe without the elements of the novel actually present in your surroundings or at-least your mind. And, that changes the structure of your mind, the way you look at things and the way you think. A voice constantly authorizes your mind, trying to take you back to the life of the novel. You don’t realize it because they do it so silently, but you’re enraptured.

This scheme of gradual captivation is very fascinating and addictive, proven by the cruel fact that it keeps calling you back. But, in order to become a prisoner again, the essential requirement is to find the right novel. The one that is capable of executing this beautiful task. And, doing it is not easy at all. Everybody comes into this world not only with a unique DNA but also with different sets of interests. A person may like mystery series and the other a complete book that describes the pretty and ugly parts of life altogether. A person may like a mystery character who’s all genius and serious about his work and the other a character who likes to have some fun while solving cases. So, I don’t really know what kind of novels attract you, but here’s the list of the novels that completely transformed me:

1. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien

The title of the novel indicates about the story's main adversary, the Dark Lord Sauron, a magician who had in an earlier age created the One Ring to rule the other Rings of Power as the ultimate weapon in his plan to conquer and command all of Middle-earth. The novel begins from Shire, a land of hobbits, and continues towards the middle earth where the final war for the destruction of the ring takes place. The story runs around the struggles of the novel’s main characters: Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas.

2. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

A novel written in the 19th century in which Ishmail narrates the impassioned quest of Ahab to take revenge from the whale that ate his leg. The novel has the detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and extraction of whale oil, along with life on sea travelling in the search of whales beside a socially and religiously diverse crew, and the existence of God.

3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The novel is about a cast of characters living in the town of West Egg on Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story basically encircles the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan who’s now married to a man who loves money but not more than his wife. The story further proceeds with the passionate Jazz life that Jay Gatsby’s living and how it ends.

4. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Catch-22 is a word in English used for the situations where you’re in a dilemma, anything you do takes you down. This novel is basically about Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while the 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, west of Italy. The novel describes the struggles of Yossarian and the other airmen in the camp to perform their duties well and return home.

5. The Godfather by Mario Puzo

A crime novel written in the 20th century, about the lives of the members of a fictious Italian Mafia family, headed by Don Vito Corleone, that has settled in New York and become well known. The story deals with the childhood and older parts of the life of the Don and how his son, Michael takes over the control of the family’s affairs after the death of his elder brother and his father. Swinging between the rules set by his father and the harshness of the world, the son who never wanted to be a Don reaches the top most level of the business. The story also describes how it all ended for him.

Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The Theory of Dreaming

"Have you ever experienced bouncing around in gigantic bubbles in the sky? Have you ever undergone the punishment of a crime you never committed? Or have you ever felt like you've met someone before, when in reality you haven't even seen them ever?"
- - - I'm sure you have!

For ages people have been scratching their heads to discover the real reason behind various sets of familiar and unfamiliar images that are projected in human minds while sleeping. Dreaming has always been a fascinating subject and like all the fascinating subjects, it infects you with the craving to find out more and more about it. However, satisfying that hunger hasn't proven to be an easy task. Since the earliest of times, people have continued to believe that dreams are a medium of connection of this world to that of the supernatural. It has also been believed that dreams are actually the holy predictions of the future. However, no scientific base for this portion of nature was set before nineteenth century, that's when Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, first got a theory on dreams recognized on a large scale. His theory, called the Freud's theory, suggests that dreams are actually a way to re-experience a moment in the manner that fulfills your desires. This theory has been a base to many researches that are being carried out today. And since then, many learners of neuroscience from around the world have been involved in the process of continuing this quest. Some of them have been trying to find out why do we dream, while others have given all their devotion to conclude the legitimate answer to one of the most convoluted questions ever asked: How do we dream?

Is dreaming a controlled feature of the human imagination? Or is it a self-driven function of the brain? A prominent theory, mental housekeeping theory, proposes that we dream so that the unwanted content can be eliminated from our everyday experiences. This theory basically indicates that dreaming is a self-driven stress removing function of the brain that activates whenever humans do not like the circumstances they're undergoing. Another extrusive theory, activation synthesis hypothesis, suggests that dreams are nothing but mere signals transmitted while humans sleep to gather notions and moments from their memories. And when they wake up, they build a story out of the dreams to make sense out of it all. This theory has been extensively researched upon, and so far, neurologists have come to advocate that dreams have a strong connection with our memories. They say that we have already lived what we see in the dreams. However, this argument does not appease the situations where a person visits the place completely strange to him or does a thing he's never done before. But then again, it's a vast subject and scientists are still progressing towards the perfection of the pursued theories.

The theories stated above are based on scientific method and reasoning, however the following theory was basically initiated by religious thought and is now taken on by a group of neurologists in Australia. This theory (there hasn't been a decided name for it, so let's cal it the dream-soul hypothesis) says that dreaming is actually a process related with one's soul. When a person sleeps, his soul departs the body though still connected through an invisible medium. Now, the person gets to see where ever the soul goes, meet whoever the soul meets (this is how we meet dead people in our dreams) and literally experience whatever the soul goes through in the dream. Have you ever felt like you've been to a place before, when actually it's your first time there? It's because your soul has already been there in a dream. And, when the soul comes back from this expedition, the person is ready to wake up. It is also said that in order for the soul to re-enter the body, it has to find it's way back.
Have you ever wondered why you get so disturbed when someone tries to wake you up from a deep sleep? It's because your soul is trying to find the right way.
And, another extension to this thought is that if somehow the soul does not manage to find the way back, the person enters a stage where he can feel everything but not wake up. This situation is commonly known as "coma". The period a person takes to get out of coma depends on the time his soul takes to get back to the body. This theory does lack the proper scientific reasoning, because science rejects to admit the presence of souls. But, it's still the most intriguing of all and scientists have agreed to excerpt the truth out of it.

Along with work being done on the theories stated above, there are many researches presently going on around the globe to take the idea of dreams to perfection. The neurologists are doing all they can in all the possible dimensions to extract the information. And, they're doing it not only to cool the global curiosity, but also to take proper benefits from dreaming.

Yes, dreams do have benefits, or at-least that's what they say.
In some societies, dreams are used to cure illnesses. In some, dreams can be used to predict the future. These benefits do not seem to exist at all, but who believed in a light bulb before it was brought into existence? Imagine a world, where dreams could be used to make things right. Imagine a world where illusions could be used to construct a better reality. Believe in science. Have hope.

Share the article if you found it useful.

Help taken from:
http://siivola.org/monte/papers_grouped/copyrighted/Dreams/Dreaming_and_the_Dream_-_Social_and_Personal_Perspectives.htm

 http://www2.ucsc.edu/dreams/Articles/purpose.html

Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This post isn't really something that may be of your attraction. It's just something that I'm writing to reinstate and fulfill the resolution that I made for the next six months.

So, the promise that I recently made to myself is that I have to really learn Norwegian. I understand it a bit, I know a few words and phrases to help myself with starting conversations with people, buy things from the grocery store, ask for rest rooms in motels, etc. But now I'm actually going to learn to understand, speak, read and write it. And, I have to do it all before May 2015. They say it's an easy thing to do for those who understand English well. Let's see if I get to do it or not. 

It's a hard thing to write for someone.
And, even harder to write for free. :p

The Professional Journey - Slideshare

The start of my 'professional journey' at slideshare.net. Seems enticing. 

Been a long time.
My not so hard routine has been molested by a harsh infestation of Bachelors.
However, I've managed to get started on the new group of paragraphs.
Won't take a lot of time.

- Perhaps

Post by Thoughts Deciphered into Words.

- Tupac Shakur

Something extra in this Ramadan?

What is the remedy for all the bad that has been happening in Pakistan? What can we 'as the agents of the Pakistani Nation' do about it? And, does 'whatever we do' have to be enormous?

These questions were constantly roaming around the congested blocks of my mind for many days. And, I couldn't possibly think of a large-scale solution that could be implemented to get Pakistan and it's people out of their puzzles and miseries. But, due to my weakness of going to the very end of every thought and notion, I came up with something that we can adapt in our own individual selves, just in the name of trying to do something for the good of all. And, this idea that I came up with doesn't take something that can be qualified as "big", but according to my assumptions and perceptions, it's consequences do have the potential to be positively gigantic. (Don't mind me not telling you that the weakness does act as a 'blessing in disguise' at times). 

Love and do so without a halt. Love every particle of earth that comes inside the geographical constraints of Pakistan. Love every element of the national air that keeps us alive and swinging. Love the past, keeping in mind that it's gone. Love the present, with the surety that nobody can take it from you. Love the future, with the ambition that you have to make it bright. And, most of all.. Love the people who live around you. Because they are the ones with whom you belong. Because they are called Pakistani as you. Because you are from the same land. And, for us Pakistan is not just a piece of land.. It's our country, and it's people are our people. And we're responsible to help each other when it's time. 

This is what has been lacking in ourselves: The ability to love and help each other. And, the day it gets reinforced in our systems, will be the day for us to retrieve the dexterity of our greatness. 

So, in this Ramadan, I'm going to try helping as many needy Pakistanis in any way I can, along with following the fasting and praying routine. This is going to be my personal effort and it may not really count. But if we all do this unanimously, the aftermath can be considerable. What you have to do isn't enormous, but it's effects will be. 

Pray for me and my family. I will pray for you all. Ramadan Mubarik. Mazel Tov.

Hi There!
Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

~ And there are moments, when the person you've been hanging out with for years, seems like a total stranger to you. The mutual dependency, understanding and bonding that you've had with them fades out for a morsel of time. Nothing about them seems familiar. I don't know about you, but I've had such notions for many people at many times. And, I've never been able to find out the real reason. Is it because of something terrible that they've done, is it due to a flaw in human remembrance, or is it because humans are supposed to feel this way 'occasionally'? 

~ For a long part of our lives, we all think of ourselves as the agents of our destiny. We all have the notion that we possess the power to control our fate, sharing this feeling of self-sufficiency. But, do we truly have any choice when we fail? Or when we succeed? Or does a force larger than us decides our way? Is it the simple theory of evolution that takes us to our destination? Is it science that sets the options we have?

Or is it God who controls the anatomy of fate?  

The Young Man

He couldn't understand the reason behind his incapacitation to see anything clearly. He had other important things to make sense of too, but the disabled sight was the biggest of his concerns at that instant. It was nearly 2 o clock in the night, and he was battering his eyes again and again, just like having to restart a machine occasionally when it gets old and rusty. He was a young, strong man of 73 years of age; young because he had this vehement of doing whatever that pleased him, and strong because he was standing straight after every fraction of castigation that life put him through. But, apart from his poetic youth and plausible strength, his mechanism was still nearing the days of inevitable expiry. His bones were becoming weaker, and his intelligence obscure. His old, exhausted mind was getting insatiable of keeping up with his youthful heart. But for now, he was sprawling on his bed, trying to find a way to get the ability to see properly. And, just then, he remembered that he wasn't accommodated by the technical support he needed to be able to see things right, he wasn't wearing his glasses. This sleepy remembrance was another drawback of his increasing age. But, then again, something is better than nothing, so he wasn't angry or annoyed about it. He opened his drawer situated on the left side of his bed, took out his metal-framed Zeiss and put them on. He could see now. He could see everything clear and vivid.

The name of this person was William Ron Locke. He graduated from a moderate university in the United States, spent a large part of his career serving the research department of the same university with his proficience at mathematics, and adopted teaching as his profession in the later years. 40 years ago, when he was 33 years old, he developed a mathematical theorem related to quantum physics. He believed that his theorem was correct and it could extend the horizon of quantum physics to a modern proximity. So, he started working day and night to find the proof to support his claim. It’s obvious that he was an ambitious man, but more than that, he was someone with a stubborn belief of never giving up on anything. And an example of his determination could be that now, even after 40 years of restless work and devotion and getting abandoned by his wife and children, he was still trying to find the one expression that could complete his theorem. And tonight, he had an idea related to his project while he was dreaming, so he woke up to make another attempt to succeed in this challenge.

After wearing the glasses on his chafed up eyes, he stood up from his bed and walked towards the switchboard to turn on the light. But, just then, he noticed that there was a hailstorm outside and the electricity was not running. So, he decisively lit up the oil lamp placed on one corner of his study table. The intensity of the light coming out of the lamp wasn't something that could be compared to the light of a bulb, but it did the job for him. After lighting the lamp, he slowly sat on the chair, picked up his pen and started writing some sort of a function on a page. He was forming the one function that was required to complete his equation. And, for the first time in these forty years, he didn't have to cut anything and rewrite the corrected version of it. Because, it was the first time that he was doing everything right. Every mathematical character in the function seemed like it was meant to be there. Everything was perfect. And just after an hour, when he derived that function and put it in the equation, the joyful molecules of water appeared in his eyes. It had been a long time since he last cried, and he could not control it tonight. His hard work had paid off. He had just developed the most advanced theorem of his time. His life was complete, and his aim achieved. And, it was the first time he felt that he had aged, not because he just got his life time achievement, but because he had no other goal to score anymore.


Having an aim or an objective is one of the most important things in life. It makes you productive, efficient and alive. And when aimless, you’re not doing much for yourself or for the people around you.

Mr.William Locke's pursuit got him several awards and admiration. He died of a natural cause, just 5 months after the acceptance of his theorem.

 
Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A Quest for Answers

There are many ways to define our unseemingly flimsy existence, many ways to give it meaning. It's like a sculpture, which we've framed with what we've done, and which we're still carving with what we're doing. A morsel of our existence is based on our past. That small fragment, that personal almanac of our good and bad memories is like a virus that is running inside our veins along with the reddish, thicker molecules. All those memories remind us of what we used to be, and we think about them every now and then, one memory at a time, hoping the ones we choose to remember don't betray or trap us. For it is the cruel irony of life that we are destined to hold the good with the bad, the right with the wrong. This is what defines us, what makes us weak and strong at the same instant, what makes us human, what we must admire, what we must hold on to for a while. But, I believe that we should also have the ability to move on, the wisdom to see the glimpses between the cracks of right and wrong, where light streams through, we must understand that the larger portion of our existence depends on what we have yet to do, and we must strive to make sure that whatever we do, does good to this world. 

At some point in time, we all want to solve the mysteries of life. So, we start asking questions to understand what we're dealing with. Answers to the questions hold a lot of meaning to us, they can give us the peace we've been searching for so long. But at times, questions are more powerful than answers, and the most difficult of those to answer is "Why?”. "Why is this happening? Why can't I do anything? Why am I so helpless?" These questions become nightmares to challenge our sleep. Still, we keep on thinking about them, because we believe that there is a reason for everything to happen, and if somehow we manage to find those reasons, we might get the ability to change the course of things. But, we fail to realize that some things don't depend on a reason to occur, they just happen to take us closer to our destiny. We don't understand the system by which destiny works. We’re not sure whether we choose our destiny or does it choose us? So, we don't stop until this search for answers extracts every element of strength out of us. And, when we're defeated in this unexpectedly "big" quest for answers, some of us head towards a tiring, more demanding search for "self". "Who am I? Why did God create me? What do I have to contribute to this world?" Another set of questions, harder to answer. And, in this ongoing search, there are these days when we find something genuinely new. Something obscure, cloaked. Something that we had no idea was there. And on that day of self-discovery, a question remains: "What kind of person are we? Does the good or the bad inside us win at the end of the day?" 

So basically, in all this investigation, our prime objective is to achieve the intelligence that enables us to define ourselves, the purpose of our lives and our destiny. No wonder, only a few of us get to the end of this journey, and a very minute fraction of us actually likes what we find. It might take a very long time, but at least we get the satisfaction that we know what we have to do with ourselves and our lives.

Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

~ The idea of maturity does not revolve around the dexterity to talk about big things. Maturity comes with experiences, learning and observations. Maturity is the state in which you're able to understand small things.

~ I like the notion of dreaming. Dreams seem to me like an exquisite edifice that has captivated all the strength of the universe. They are the places where I can do anything, where I can be anyone. And whenever I'm dreaming, I just don't want to wake up, because everytime it seems like I'm the main character of one of Christopher Nolan's directions, and I'm about to deliver the best dialogue of the movie. 

She Decides to Keep On Walking

A considerable number of people are walking around her, but she can't see any of them. All these buildings and structures seem like a large obscure edifice that's captivated all the haunting memories from her past. It is the same path that she takes to get back home every night after work, but it feels so strange. She has passed Uncle Sam's restaurant, is walking by Aunt Rose’s flower shop, and is about to cross Mia's laundry. These are the places that she sees every night on the way back home, but they don't look the same tonight. She's thinking that she has made a wrong turn. She has made many wrong decisions in her life, so technically, she is capable of making a wrong turn. But no, she is on the right dimension. She's exhausted, devastated. She's too tired to walk this road for another hundred steps to reach her home. She doesn't want to go home, not tonight. She wants to go far away, where her past can't chase her, she wants to walk away from it all. She has been through a lot of bad in her life, a lot that can shatter anyone's existence, a lot that can break anyone into a thousand uneven pieces. She can't even decide what her worst memory is. Was it the day when she found out that her father had another son from the woman he fell in love with after his marriage? Was it the day when her boyfriend left her all alone, because he had a mere notion that she was having an affair with another man while he was away? Or the day when her mother died in a plane crash? But, what difference does it make? At the end of the day, all these incidents brought an irrevocable change in her life, like a river suddenly reversing the direction of it’s flow, suddenly running uphill. All these happenings made her entire life seem like a fiction.

For now, all she wants is relief. She wants to go, lay down on the top of the tallest building in New Orleans, and look at the clear summer sky. She wants to lay there and feel that slight breeze that runs down your entire body, making your soul shiver and sense the incredible strength that it possesses. She wants to lay there naked, under an imposing dome of stars, unaware of whatever’s happening on the roads 20 flights down. She has always believed that it is not important in life to be strong but to feel strong. And all she wants now, is to feel free. She wants to believe that this is God's place all around her, and joy is in everything inside it. But, she can't do any of it. She has to get back to her hypocrite father who is laying numb on his death bed, waiting for her to feed him dinner. So, she decides to keep on walking.

She can't walk away from her life, despite all the darkness inside it. She can’t walk away from the truth. So, she decides to keep on walking, holding on to the hope that someday.. She will find the relief.

Hi There!
Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

~  When you start walking in the right direction with the hope that you'll reach the place where you want to be, but you don't get there. That is what I call destiny.

The NeverEnding Road

~  He has his hands inside his pockets, he's smoking a cigarette, trying to mush it with the pressure he has been forcing through his lips, and he's walking a road around the place where he used to live when he was young. But, he can’t remember it. He has spent a large fraction of his childhood in that vicinity, yet none of it seems familiar. This boulevard goes straight to somewhere he has forgotten, but he knows that he’ll end up in a nice place, because he has always believed that beautiful dimensions lead to better destinations.

On each side of the road, there are a few cemented structures with too many windows to open halfway each morning and to close halfway each night, there are lots of elms planted on a systematic distance from each other, which have their branches breaking the sun into graceful shafts of light. And, it’s going to be winter soon, so the leaves have started betraying their tenants and falling on the road making a rustling, dark green, carpeted path for him to walk on. And, the slightly cool breeze running with a considerably fast velocity is toppling the leaves and covering his footsteps as he moves on. The people that are moving around him are all strangers, he hasn't seen any of them before, or maybe he has but he doesn't remember, but he knows that they are all nice people who won't hurt him. All of this seems like an exquisite projection of his mind, a fascinating figment of his brain. Apart from that pain somewhere around the right side of his ribs, everything is so angelic and alluring.  He feels like he’s undergoing some catharsis, like he’s going to be pure when he gets to the end of the road, born all over again, given another chance to relive his life. But, he doesn't know where the road is taking him. He doesn't even know about the genesis of this walk. 

That’s the thing about dreams. You may know what you’re doing, you may think you know where you’re going, but you don’t remember where you started from. 

And, this is his reality. He is in a dream, he has been there since the last 4 years. He has been walking that road for 4 years, but it hasn't ended. He has been smoking that cigarette and trying to mush it for the past 49 months, but it is still the same. And, that pain in his ribs, it is because of the bullet that went through his body, crushing and cracking the regions of his ribs it hit. He was waiting for his train near the Hoboken Terminal four years and a month ago, when he got shot by a robber after he refused to give away his possessions, and since then he is in coma. He always wanted to dream before all this, he wanted to feel the ability to do almost anything, but he couldn't. And now, he’s stuck in one for a very long time, and the only way to get out of there is to wake up, but he can’t. This road is the boulevard that goes to the firmament of heavens, and the day it ends, he will never be able to wake up, he will die and depart to the afterlife. But, it won’t affect him, he is happy to walk this road till the end, because it is by far the most beautiful one he has traveled. And, he is hoping to see the one person among all these strangers, that he has loved the most, he is hoping to meet her again and walk the rest of the path with her. It is this hope that has kept him walking for four years now, and the day he gives up, he’ll wake up and get back into his body. But, he probably won’t give up, because he loves that woman, and love is the strongest of all feelings. So probably, he will see her, the dream will end, and he will be in heaven.

Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The image used was originally posted by Todd Binger on flickr.
  by  Todd Binger 

~ Trance enhances my capability to think. The sound of a million instruments thawed together to form something parallel to a sedative, works as a catalyst for me to explore my sub-conscious, and forget about every other thing that stops me from doing so.

~ He's a different person. He has more control over his emotional self. He doesn't need anyone or anything anymore to depend on for his happiness. If he wants to be happy, he can find the required dimension. And, he enjoys the moments of sadness too, he understands the importance of sadness, and he believes that sadness is what makes him appreciate the happier, more delightful events of life. He's a different person, because he is stronger now. He is fighting a tumor, and he hasn't thought of giving up for once. He sleeps every night with the hope of seeing a new dawn, and he wakes up everyday with the thought of making that day the inception of a good life. He is determined, he has an aim, the biggest aim man has ever had, to survive! And, he stays happy, until his mind starts focusing on the mistakes that he has made in his past. He has regrets, some very big regrets that try their best not to let him sleep. Regrets that keep on toppling in his head. But, since he is a different person, he knows that God has planned what's best for his creation, so he tries to learn the good out of the history, and forget the rest. And, he has just one wish for his entire life, that he hasn't told anyone, not yet. He has planned to share it with everyone, the day he'll be a successful person, survive the tumor and have that wish fulfilled. He's a different person, because he wanted to be. And, wanting something is a stronger feeling than needing it.

Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Transition

~ Many of the people that I knew a year ago, aren't just the same. I've observed quite a few changes in them, admired the good, and tried to ignore the bad. But, they made me think, think about the flow of transition, about the inception of change, about the reasons behind all these transitions that we see in people. I developed a citadel of thoughts about the subject, with one statement on the glacis, saying: "Transition is the code of nature". And, after thinking about all this, I took a decisive step. "At many points in my life, I'll undergo "the process", but every time I do that, I'll come out as a better person."

Change is good if you're getting closer to a better life, otherwise you'll end up being a miserable person, hating yourself for you don't know how many reasons. Understand life and understand others, being nice is what you want to do, trust me!

Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Apologize or Lose

~ If you've wronged someone, accepting your mistake is the best thing to do. Making excuses won't repair that person's lost trust on you. However, an apology might convince them to give you another chance. I did it today and the other person smiled at me and said "it's okay", and I think my small circle of happiness has expanded a bit. Try it!

Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

~      A bunch of solutions are dangling in your head, along with the names of the hottest girls in college. Your mind is on the highway, trying to reach the end of every thought inside it, and then start the journey all over again. You're getting exhausted, "What's the right way? How do I do it? Why am I not getting the right answer?” your brain is having a lot of trouble with all these questions swaying inside it. Chewing the back of the pen in your hand, mushing it with your canines, soaking it in your saliva, you ride so far out on the road that you don't even remember that it isn't your pen. A friend gave it to you, who isn't a friend honestly, you hate him for you don't know how many reasons, but you didn't notice the marks that were already there on that pen when he gave it to you. And the moment you realize all this and acknowledge the fact that you've been licking that pen for half an hour, a little part of you dies, because you almost kissed your so called "friend's" lips. But, you don't care, because the clock is ticking, and there are only five minutes left till the examiner snatches your paper away. So basically, you're out of damns to give, because all you want is the answer. And then suddenly, another crew of thoughts pops up in your mind. "What if I fail this exam? My whole damn year will go to junk, what will I do then?" You start to have goose bumps, because you're going to be a failure, and the thought is very insatiable. "What will all those hot girls think? I couldn't pass an exam? Will mom let me go to this school trip? Will I get the new I-Pod I asked dad to buy me?” you're thinking out of the proximity of the situation, and just then you hear the examiner saying "two more minutes and you'll be out of the misery". Yes, it is a misery you're going through, apart from the fact that the examiner was joking. "Maybe it was not my day, maybe that question was just too difficult for anyone to solve or maybe that pen was not lucky for me", you're trying to find the perfect excuse to tell your mother when you get back home. But deep inside your core, you understand the fact that you've been a total omadhaun. "I am a failure, I didn't practice enough when I had time", you're coming to accept your mistakes. "One minute remaining", the examiner announces. You know that you can't find the loop, you understand that you're going down, you're probably thinking to leave the hall before that one minute passes and throw that pen in the bucket beside the door while you're leaving. "No man, you can't leave like this, you can't fail this exam, think harder!!!" your good self is trying to convince you to give it a last try, but you're too tired, you're not willing to look at the dancing characters of the question for once. But, going against your will, you agree to give it a last glance. And oh wait, Eureka!!!! Yes, YOU FOUND IT, you don't know how but you found the right answer. You're not going to fail the exam, you won't have to lie to your mother, you will get the I-Pod you asked your dad for, and nobody would think of you as a loser. You're happy, you just can't describe how you feel, you're ready to kiss that friend of yours all over again, who has suddenly become your best friend for the rest of your life and that pen is somehow the luckiest pen for you.

Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The Final Piece to Your Puzzle

~ The moments when you feel that something is missing out of your picture. When you search the entire room but come up with nothing that can fit the missing part. When you try your best to find the one thing that can keep you satisfied and happy for the rest of your life. When you fail again and again, but don't give up. And, you believe that all the struggle is worth it. Such moments are the hardest to survive. Because, the search doesn't end, until the day you find that final piece to your puzzle. But, when you eventually find it, you're certainly the happiest one in the universe. Good luck finding your final piece!

Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Be Alive

~ To live and to be "Alive" are two entirely different things. Many of us think that as long as the air keeps on penetrating our bodies, we're alive. Waking up everyday, blinking your eyes, going to work, eating your lunch, following the everyday routine, all these things show that you're living, not that you're alive. I read it somewhere that "To live does not mean you're alive, if you're alive, you need to look alive". Give sometime to yourself, smile a bit, enjoy a little, I know we don't have much time in our apparently busy routines, but it is enough to have some fun while we're at it.

~ There are times when you can't find a way to verbalize how you feel. It is supposed to be an easy translation, but there are just too many emotions and very few words.

Love Doesn't Cost Too Much

"When I first saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew" said William Shakespeare. Isn't love one of the most enthusiastic feelings all of us have ever had? Still, nobody has been able to define love to its proper meaning. Maybe, because everyone has a different style of comprehending things? Anyway, keep on loving, it doesn't cost too much. 

~ I'm not a writer by profession, it is just what I do for my personal area of happiness. I feel that writing is something I'm good at, when it comes to expressing my thoughts and feelings. I might not be very good at writing, but I like doing it. It's fun!

When's the right time?

I'll tell him everything when it's the right time, I'll ask her out at the right moment, I'm just waiting for the right time to clear all this mess, blah blah blah...(the list goes on). See, time is not going to be right till the time you are not prepared. And, time is the biggest excuse for our disability to do certain things. So, my word for everyone who is apparently waiting for the right time is that, yo take your time, make up your mind, do what you must do and do it without any excuses, in order to have no regrets. Gather your guts, and know that no bound can stop you from doing what you have to do.

~ Being wrong is just another obstacle, don't be afraid of that, start inventing yourself.

So today, I was sitting at a corner of the cricket stadium in the university, and out of no where, I started thinking that why is everything the way it is. After an hour, I came to the conclusion, that why is the question that has never been answered and never will be. ~

It's the 2nd day of the new year, but the feel is still the same as it was in the previous one. Maybe all the prayers were not so handy? Better start praying 365 days ;)