Read the following passage on New York Times this morning:
“Knowledge isn’t in my head or in your head. It’s shared. Most of what you ‘know’ - most of what anyone knows - about any topic is a placeholder for information stored elsewhere, in a long-forgotten textbook or in some export’s head. One consequence of the fact that knowledge is distributed this way is that being part of a community of knowledge can make people feel as if they understand things they don’t.” The thing about routine is that it gives you reassurance and security, the lack of which you might sense when you are on the road, elsewhere. Not to say that being elsewhere and lacking in security is bad - it kind of forces you to stay alert and attentive, constantly conscious of your surroundings. I was not ungrateful when I had my usual Monday breakfast - scrambled eggs with vollkorn bread and a cup of cappuccino - and skimmed through the headlines of Der Standard and New York Times in the lounge at the Vienna airport. Only the almost intrusive stare from two businessmen sitting in my immediate vicinity at the henna on my right hand reminded me of the travel I just left behind. Soon enough the henna will fade because it does not match the high heels I feel obliged to wear on most of the days. Everything that’s not meant to last forever never really gives us a hard time letting go; it’s those that started off with the promise of eternity that leave us wondering what went wrong. Nothing went wrong. It’s the natural state of things. Rousseau said, the truth will not be shown to us before we have learned the art of forgetting. I guess forgetting is not at all as bad as we are led to believe. Maybe forgetting is natural; the unnatural is the constant reminding so that we don’t forget. Just as I naturally forgot almost all the French I learned, which would have come in handy in my effortful communication with the Moroccan people I encountered (although sometimes they randomly speak German and Italian as well). Knowing more languages certainly has its perks - I understand many more people when they talk. But let’s not forget that lots of communication is not conducted through language. The world that can be expressed by language is not the entirety of the world. The truth that can be described by language is not the entirety of the truth. I felt quite at ease on my first night in Marrakech while sitting in the peaceful riad, sipping delicious mint tea and attempting a simple conversation with three good-tempered Berber men and one French woman. They hardly spoke English. I find it safe to maintain that the premise of communication is not language, but willingness. It's nothing grandiose that I have to make a song and dance about it (though I might literally do it), but like every time you go somewhere new, a part of you is reborn. You don't become more of you, but a richer version of you. We embarked on the desert trip with an American couple living in Bulgaria that magically also chose the same accommodations in Marrakech and Chefchaouen. We witnessed the splendour of Dadès Gorges and counted the countless stars on the dunes of the Sahara together. At dawn we mounted very early to the top of a dune to wait for the sunrise. The chilly morning wind enwrapping fine sand grains thrashed my face gently and engulfed the murmuring sound from the people sitting nearby. I tried to think about something but my brain went blank. Time seemed to have stopped. I sat in that moment without any urge to go backward or forward in time. The sunrise was not visible through the clouds, so we walked quietly back to the tents without making a fuss about it. I later saw a tiny sun exuding pale light hanging in the middle of the grey sky on the back of my camel. Camels are awesome, I thought. Our driver Aziz, an amicable Berber, said "InShaAllah" a hundred times a day and on the third day I finally grasped its meaning. If God wills. You can plan all you want but it will happen only if god wills. Neither he nor I am religious, but the point is not so much the God. It's the same old argument - who is in control of your life, yourself or something else. Is it fate, or is it arbitrary, or is it a well-planned combination of the two, if such a plan is at all possible? Or are your self-made decisions the sole explanation of where you are and what you are? What are we anyway? It's like trying to give a definitive definition to an undefinable thing because we are supposed to be ever evolving, not stagnating. Maybe we only need to start worrying when we are actually able to give ourselves an unambiguous definition - when we stop becoming and start being. Or maybe what we are and what we are becoming are fundamentally the same thing, if we look at it from a different angle, disregarding the time element. I drew a postcard with water color (my friend is an artistic type with adequate equipment at any given time) and sent it to a friend. It's the doors and walls in various shades of blue in Chefchaouen. I really didn't care that much if it would reach its destination or not, knowing for a fact that it was drawn and sent on its way, which I will also forget sooner or later. InShaAllah. So they would say.
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