Do not despise your day

When you open the door to your home and feel safe, hearing the voices of those you love inside, or when you wake from your sleep and rise without assistance, heading to the bathroom without searching for a hand to lean on or a cane that stood by your side all night, what does all that mean? These are many things we have grown accustomed to, which are considered great blessings, yet we often fail to perceive or feel their details in the moment. For others, they are wishes they hope to see even a quarter of realized. Health and well-being, the importance of having parents, contentment with life’s smallest blessings, the calmness of our days, a pleasant and tasty meal—these are all blessings whose significance we do not truly feel in our ordinary days until we lose them. The loss of a mother or father wounds us deeply, without a single drop of blood shed. Our pain gnaws at our ribs. When crises weave their threads into the fabric of our psychological environment, things that once tore the calmness of our lives, happiness fades within them. At that moment, we see the past through new eyes and with a completely different understanding. “Contentment is an unfading treasure.” We wrote many essays on this phrase while sitting at our school desks, writing it merely for the sake of writing, without truly grasping or comprehending its real meaning. Those who believe that contentment means stopping our dreams, accepting failure, and settling for the idea that what happened is simply our fate, and that the wheel of effort stops turning for us, are mistaken. Contentment means striving for the best without despising what you currently possess. Contentment never negates the ambition for a better life and greater success, nor does it diminish the joy of the day you are living. Satisfaction never cancels out any aspiration. Do you know, dear reader, what is the most beautiful thing in life? It is to be content and grateful for everything you experience today, without closing your eyes to look ahead. The temptations of life today have swollen and expanded due to the allure of social media, and how many advertisements open up to us the lives of others in all their beauty and allure, without showing us their repulsive details, which cameras avoid—such as their conflicts, anxieties, and depression. True happiness is calmness in everything we experience, in every detail of our daily lives, from a morning cup of coffee to sleeping with a peaceful conscience late at night, without our train of life passing by waiting for events beyond our capacity. The hardest thing here is to wait for circumstances to change, while forgetting that life does not wait for them to change. And among the hardest aspects of this topic is when we discover at the end of our lives that the most beautiful days of our lives were those ordinary days we passed through without realizing their beauty... only after they had ended. Yes, dream and wish, travel and rejoice, laugh and play, develop your life to the best of your ability, even if the time to achieve your dreams is long. Enjoy yourself on the way, any way, to reach any destination, any destination that holds your happiness and peace. Iqbal Al-Ahmad