"Everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before"

The title is quoted from Meryl Streep in the movie "The Bridges of Madison County".
"The Bridges of Madison County" is a movie directed by Clint Eastwood and starring him and Meryl Streep. This movie is one of the most romantic and teary movies I've ever seen. We as Muslims will not approve the movie plot one bit, but the movie is filled with so much tenderness and desperate feelings it's worth watching anyway. There is one scene in the movie that made me stop for a long pause and think deeply. But I'll briefly outline the plot for those who did not see the movie. The movie is about a woman married to a farmer and has two kids. Her husband and kids go to a town event and leave her alone. Comes a professional National Geographic photographer asking for the Madison County bridges so he can photograph them for the magazine. She offers him refreshments and a guidance to the bridges, and in the time of four days they fall in love so strongly that she actually packs her bags to leave her husband. On second thoughts, she doesn't do it, saying the phrase in the scene that made me think so hard about what a woman feels when she gets married. I quote her:
"When a woman makes the choice to marry, to have children; in one way her life begins but in another way it stops. You build a life of details. You become a mother, a wife and you stop and stay steady so that your children can move. And when they leave they take your life of details with them. And then you're expected to move again only you don't remember what moves you because no-one has asked in so long. Not even yourself"
This, to me, is a killer phrase. It about sums up what every dedicated wife and mother feels without being able to put the feeling into words. This life of details does not include a woman's own dreams and ambitions, and she's left with one of three choices: live for herself, live for her family, or try to take a piece of both. But that's it, she'll have only a piece of each, not the whole package. The woman decides after all that if she leaves, she'll eventually end up hating the mans she loved and losing her family. So she stays and lets him go, telling him that it is better to have her family and her four days of a love that comes only once in a life time that to lose her family and her love in the process.
That phrase she said about a woman's choice was so moving to me that I had to quote it and memorize its meaning. You see, a man never has to make such a choice because a man's priority is always his job, his ambition, his dreams. No one asks him to give that up for the sake of family. In fact, he's driven even more to pursue his career when he has family. A woman on the other hand, is asked to choose. No one can say that most women would be happy to dedicate their lives to their families. But no one should ask the woman to stop dreaming for herself because there are other more important people to consider. Why is it always that a woman comes last in the welfare of a family. A woman enjoys sacrificing her own welfare for her family, but wouldn't it be nice to have someone else in the family put her as number one? The responsibility of making the marriage work is on the woman, the responsibility of taking good care of the kids is on the woman. Who's taking care of the woman? Not in the sense of food and clothing, but in the sense of feelings and hopes. For a woman to do a good job with her family and not lose herself in the process, she needs a man, and later her grown kids, to say: "I'm listening to you, I know how much you gave up to do this, and there's nothing in the world that's more important that your happiness."
I don't know if I'm making any sense, but this movie has made me think a lot about a lot of marriages I see around me. I know for sure that women are beginning to wonder: Is it enough? Shouldn't I be doing something more for myself? Shouldn't they be doing something more for me?

What do you think?

Old dreams were good dreams, and I'm glad I had them.

Somehow along the way I forgot who I am and what I was. I was pretty much something in the old days of preliminary and prep schools; meaning before I came back to Egypt. I was always the top of my class, and later the top of my school. Teachers were actually fighting to get me enrolled in their classes. I used to be a cornerstone of the school radio team, music team, acting team, painting team, and science team. I used to go to competitions of all kinds; hell, I won a couple of times a best actress and best journal artist. I used to be part of every single event the schools contributed in. I wrote, I played music, I contributed in arabesque competitions, I thought of myself a force to be reckoned with. But I knew deep inside that all this was a way to channel my frustration of the world. Little did I know that the days of glory would soon end to be replaced with days whose dullness slowly killed my potential. Maybe I wasn't that talented in all of the categories I used to practice, but I sure enjoyed versatility in activity. To find today that for the last thirteen years or so I had little to no activity besides studying hard to get myself a place in a respectable faculty, then surviving the years of university and work with no action whatsoever, that was a real down for me. And I found myself to be completely alone if I wanted to practice the old hobbies that once were the sole consolation in my rough days. Am I chasing a wild dream? Am I over and done with the possibility to enjoy what little pleasure I can afford? I try to tell myself that I'll do OK once I restore equilibrium after finishing my Master thesis, but I'll have to wait and see if I can pull it off. I really want to appreciate life more, to enjoy life more, maybe this will lead me to revitalizing my interest in my job so that I can do it the way I used to and perhaps better.

Questions

This week, I began to seriously question my route in life and where it's taking me. I long thought that I had some clue to what I want. Not anymore obviously. Do I want to continue working at the university? If not, then where's my real passion? When I was younger, I thought a lot about acting or a career in music playing. At other times I thought about venturing into the business world. At other times, all what I could think of is going to a small town and work a trivial job that would make me able to read and play music most of the time. But university seemed like an open opportunity that was available and it seemed stupid to refuse it. Well, I'm not saying that at the first couple of years I didn't enjoy work. On the contrary, it was very gratifying to see that you can help students better understand science and give them the incentive to work on their strengths. It was fun enough to read new topics every semester and accept the challenge a student poses when he or she asks a question that's out of the lesson's scope. It felt cool to surf the net looking for add-ons to a certain subject that would make it more interesting for the students and lure them to listen. All that was great, even the sound of it now makes it feel great and makes me wonder; did I really lose interest in this challenging job? Or is it just boredom of the whole thing? There seems to be no clear answer to the questions, but suffice it to say the outcome is all the same. I'm sick to the very tip of my head of working, and that's why I began to wonder about what I really want to do with my life.

Ready To Launch!

Today, I begin to correct the modifications that my thesis supervisor pointed out for me. I also will start refreshing my memory on music theory and principles and start to read the huge amount of history articles and books that I've collected over the last couple of years. Wow!!! All that must begin today, and time is approaching midnight!

The problem with me is that I'm a night person, my energy reaches its highest levels after 6 pm, but the delimma I'm having is the job hours which usually require an early riser. But I'm beginning to handle this problem with moderating my late-nights and trying to sleep less than 8 hours a day. So my day usually starts at 10 am and ends at 4 am.

Now, what's with all these tasks? First of all, the most important task on my agenda is the thesis modifications. Some of the chapters require a thorough review, while some are quite good in their current state. But the problem is that both my supervisors are not satisfied with the results output graphs. Well, what can I do? That's how the results came out! But obviously I have to work my way around this somehow. I still have almost a month before I have to deliver the final version to the discussion committee, so I'm in luck to have sometime to fix the results problem. They told me that one of the committee members is a very knowledgable professor, if only I could ask him before the final show :) .

Now we come to the music theory and history stuff, well, this is only a way to boost my morales because I've postponed practicing my hobbies for too long, because of the faculty pressing hours and the thesis practical part (the application). I've decided to delay these activities no longer, I really need to get out of the work mood for a while. I need to feel that I can live a normal life that's not centered arount my job. Above all, I decided to break the circle of a long depression that's been eating at my soul. My plan is to have two hours for both activitie and increasingly extending the time as I make progress in my thesis modifications.

But, there's another task that needs to be done properly, which is the optimization of my application, I need to put the different classes and modules in order, I need to compress the code more, and I need to build a suitable user interface. I still don't knw if I have the guts to do this, because I don't want to pull what's left of my hair! Writing that code was a living hell to me, because I was totally alone and a novice in Java. But hopefully now that my thesis is almost over and done with, I'll be able to relax when I look at the code once more.

I hope, really hope, that I can pull this off nicely without problems in the thesis deadline. Because, I admit, I'm beginning to like it better to do the fun stuff that to do the work stuff.

Have a good night!

What the hell!

While everybody has this intensely great feeling about New Year, I don't! Maybe the first day of the new year I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but I felt awful since day one. Damn this is not a good start, but when you're so close to being in your thirties with no pulpable achievement on your side, you're entitled to feel as I do. But I have to admit, up till now nothing "bad" happened to me except for this continuous nagging in my chest that I should feel sad. Maybe I have a "witching" time periodically in which I'm obliged to feel gloomy, but what the hell! I think everybody is entitled to his or her own surrender to sadness once in a while, I have this theory that this may actually boost your morals in the long run. It does gives me the ability to go on and hold to the threads of hope and hard work. So everybody, don't hesitate to give yourselves a little "quality" blues time every once in a while.
Happy New Year!

A Comment on one of my friends feelings..

Today, I read a blog entry posted by one of my coleagues and friends, Haitham. It brought back some unwelcomed memories of friends and betrayal. So I thought maybe I can share my experience with him as well as everyone in this context.
Without delving into much details, I had a friend - actually she's still my friend - who at one time in my life when I was most vulnerable, ignored me for the sake of social traditions. See, I made a mistake when I was in high school because of her, and when I had to face the consequences she simply stopped answering my phone calls and refused to see me on the grounds that my company is shameful. Needless to say I was devistated - I was in the middle of my final exams - and I felt so lonely and betrayed. On the other hand, there was this girl who was not very likable, but she stood by me in the time of crisis. I never liked her, but at that time I respected her bonding and thought "Hey, there is a person who really knows what you really are and respects you no matter what the others think". But later my old friend attempted to reestablish our friendship as the mistake was metigated by my hard work and seriousness and eventually faded into memory. First, I refused all types of contact, although deep inside I felt I needed this to rebuild a self image that has been broken to pieces. But the two girsl hated each other's guts, so I had to make the "right" choice and hold on to the girl who stood by me. Eventually the girls managed to like each other by some mysterious strike of luck.
The girl who stood by me turned out to be someone completely different for some reasons I can't mention here, and I severed all relationships with her. Surprisingly I kept my relashinship with my old friend on good terms. But the bitterness is still there. When I get back to that dark time when I was abandoned by the only person in the world whome I loved and respected, I feel like I want to kill someone. My sister used to say to me that if it was her, she would've never forgiven that old friend. But I have this theory that as you grow older, you grow wiser and stop expecting much of people - even soulmate friend and significant others - and you start seeing things in a new light of understanding of human weakness and stupidness. I never trust my old friend too much today, and I'm always on guard with her, expecting the worse, prepared for the worse. But somehow this does not affect our respect for each other, and most of all, she's the one who came back to the relationship. Looking at it now, I guess this was her way of saying I'm sorry I sold you out.
The morale of the story is "do not expect much of people, but do not loose them either!"