It’s been a while since I’ve written on here. To be exact, it’s been three years. Sometimes that happens when we fall into life and forget to keep up with essentials, like writing, blogging, being active in the things we are passionate about. We can’t always be fired up and passionate 24/7, it’s seemingly impossible. Sometimes we need to step away, take a break, and even discover somethings that are new that we end up enjoying even more than we ever thought we would. That’s life. What I have learned in the past three years are so many things. So many invaluable lessons as my life was happening in multiple directions and it was difficult to center in.

Lesson #1

When we lose ourselves, it’s important to remember what we love, what our passions are, and what our purpose is. When we fall into the abyss, we need to look up and find that sliver of light and hold on to the moments that we remember as being good. Don’t get into the trap that life is essentially meaningless because one day we won’t be here. Yes, there is a finality in life, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make the most of what our lives are and what they could be. Set some small goals, try to meet them, and grow each day in the hopes you are better than the day before.

Lesson #2

Never give up hope. When all hope is lost, we are at our most vulnerable and often times our thoughts become dangerous trying to steer us away from good and right into the depth of bad. Have something to live for. What I like to have each day or week is something to look forward to. Whether that be seeing a friend for dinner, getting to soak in the bath for a while, buying a small gift for myself, or spending time with family. The little things are absolutely the big things. Small moments make the best memories. Never, ever, lose hope.

Lesson #3

Lean on people that you love and trust. When we are vulnerable, don’t be so quick to share your vulnerabilities with just anyone and even on social media platforms. Take the time to figure out who you can talk to fully and process your thoughts and emotions. Not everyone will have your best interest at heart, and often times they will share what you have discussed in confidence and twist what you have said. Be careful. But don’t close yourself off completely. Finding your person in life is equally as important as finding yourself.

Lesson #4

Existentialism is a very real concept. The older we get, the more we may question life and all of its intricacies. We might begin to find flaws and faults everywhere around us, including society and the constructs humanity has devised. It is exceptionally easy to dive in and get lost in the existential rabbit hole. However, don’t let yourself keep falling into it. Remember, we have this one life, and time is precious. Don’t forget to look forward to your life and future. Yes, the rat race is real and unfair. Yes, things like racism exist. Man made errors exist. Becoming stressed due to financial reasons is real. However, don’t let these weights push you down and decide it all doesn’t matter. Take some time to find out what matters to YOU. Who matters to you.

Lesson #5

Things happen. Accidents happen. Bad things happen. Good things happen also. But, in essence, we do not have control over the future and what it holds. The only thing we are in control of are ourselves and the moments we are in as we live them. But don’t let that scare you! This type of experience holds true for us all. There will be bad days but there will also be good days. Keep going for the good and process the bad and move forward.

If there’s anything I’ve learned is that I will continue to learn. That’s what life is all about. Life-long learning through living.

I guess it’s official, I’m back. Until next time.

We are all born with a finite amount of time and in that journey we learn, discover, and grow into habits day by day. Many of us have the illusion that we are here on this earth forever. Some of us have accepted the fate of death will happen someday. Only a small portion of us realize that death is not only inevitable but should be a driving concept to live our lives in the best way we can.

But how do we really live until we die? Do all of us even have the capacity to do so? The answer to the second question is: No. Not all of us have the luxury to fulfill our dreams and desires, whether it be because of war, tragedy, or lacking resources for basic necessities of life. However, some may argue that adversity can drive people to build resilience and thus they are able to achieve even more than expected. An example would be any refugee from any part of the world. A more specific example would be Syrian refugee youths. Although they lived through the Syrian government’s war on them (i.e., innocent civilians) and had to migrate to new places and countries to start anew with little to no help, many young Syrian refugees didn’t let those barriers of trauma prevent them from things like education and the pursuit of happiness.

To answer the first question, I believe we can’t really live unless we set our minds to what our purpose is in this world and ways to achieve fulfillment, regardless of the circumstances that try to tell us that we can’t achieve it. A sense of purpose can be anything and is extremely subjective and personal to each individual. My purpose may be different than yours. A purpose doesn’t have to be profound, it can be anything and can be changed throughout our lifetime. For example, my purpose is to graduate with my  PsyD Clinical Psychology degree and to use it to the fullest while educating people about mental health. This may change later on but this is my purpose I am working towards right now at this very moment. Yours might be something entirely different, in fact, it probably is.

And then there comes this question: “How can we live if our life is cut short abruptly with no indication of that happening?” I think about this in terms of something that has been affecting this country which is mass shootings. How can people get a chance to live if that is taken away from them without warning? How are young people and children supposed to live if they are in fear of getting shot and killed? The answer to this question is not clear to me yet, and I don’t know if it ever will be. Unfortunately, this life is beyond unfair and many people won’t survive it past adolescence.

We don’t know when “our time will come” and how we will exit this world. We are mortal. We are flawed. We are human. And yet, we need to live this life in spite of all the unfairness with one certain mindset: That we will leave this earth better than we found it for the future generations and to make it a mission to fulfill our needs, hopes, dreams, and desires to be happy as much as we can. Some of us will struggle with a terminal illness, addiction, trauma, mental illness, loss and grief, war, poverty, homelessness, and many other challenges. I do hope that in the face of these challenges people can help one another and themselves to truly live before we die.

Life and death are illusions. We are in a constant state of transformation.

-Alejandro González Iñárritu

Change. Change inevitably happens, for the good or for the bad, but what matters is how we adapt. Almost my entire life I have lived in the suburbs near Chicago. I’ve endured loss, a mental health illness, and the terrible but beautiful winters. I’ve put up with people and myself. And now, I’m embarking on a big change: moving away. I will be moving to… dun dun dun… the sunshine state of Florida. I am determined to not repeat the same mistakes, behaviors, and habits that got me into messes. I want to work diligently on self-reflection and change for the b e t t e r.

List of things I want to change or be better in:

1. Being too reactive. I often times get very defensive and/or dramatic when things don’t go my way or if I am criticized and perceive the criticism to be an attack on me.
2. Alternatively, I want to change being too nice. I don’t want people to take advantage of me, my time, and my life. I have a habit of bending to others and “going along with it” instead of putting my foot down when I need to.
3. I want to change my habit of falling off the planet and going MIA. Sometimes, I don’t see people and become depressed and cope by isolation. This is obviously a life-long learning process for me, but in FL I need all the support I can get since I’ll be away from all family and friends and need to reach out to people when I need to.
4. Stop changing my hair! I need to settle on a color, cut, and that’s it! My hair is getting damaged! LOL.

I mean, that’s a basic list but hey it’s something to work off of. I want to become more balanced, not less “emotional”, but to be more aware of how I am feeling and why that is and respond accordingly. It’s very hard, especially with a mood disorder predisposition and illness, to “just do that” and be normal, but as my undergraduate instructor said:

“There’s no such thing as normal, except the option on a washing machine.”

Basically, we are all crazy in some way. We have abnormalities in some shape or form. We all have a story, a struggle, and a unique life to live.

Anyways, change can be beautifully awesome or beautifully tragic. I’m hoping moving to FL will be beautiful. I know it will be difficult since I am family-oriented and my whole life is in Chicago. I know I will make mistakes, get upset, get angry, sad, and lonely in the beginning and maybe throughout but I want to learn the art of balance and serenity.

What do you want to change? How have things changed before, and how did you react then versus how you would react now?

All in all, let’s change ourselves to change the world to become peaceful and a world we will feel proud living in.

 

 

 

 

 

We’re all connected somehow. For some reason we think we’re separate from one another. Every person you meet, intentionally or not, has some purpose in your journey in life. If we continue to live in disconnect, we will never understand one another and our humanness.

Yes, we are human. Sometimes, it’s difficult to fathom that we’re all actually human. Thinking back throughout history and in our world today, there have been brutal dictators, relentless murderers, and power-hungry politicians/monarchies. Are those people human? Or, do they succumb from the inner human self of greed, jealousy, and selfishness? We all have a choice: to be a good human or to be a destructive human. We are all imperfect, that’s a given. We are not immune to darkness and evil. However, we are capable of rising above.

And then, there are the abusers. There are people who use their power to dominate over others, whether it be through physical, sexual, psychological, or emotional abuse to those who are vulnerable. Are they human? Or, have they suffered some sort of torment of their own in which they chose to become abusive as a means to “rise above”?

What can we do, as a greater society, to remove the disconnect and to understand that we are all human? How do we empathize with those who have committed such grave atrocities to the world and others? What are our options? Do we have any?

Big questions cannot be answered without a larger dialogue between us all. It starts with you and I. Who am I? Who are you? What do we in common? What is love, and how do I love? What is empathy, and how can I learn to use it in the most difficult of situations and circumstances?

It pains me that the world continues on the path of darkness. It seems, from personal observation, that we focus on power, money, and opportunity at all any expense. What will this world be after 20 years? Will it continue to suffer? It seems it will without the remedy of forgiveness, hope, and empathy.

I am human. You are human. We have billions of humans on this earth. Let’s live as humans with more light than darkness, and more love than hate, more forgiveness than spite, more growth than decline.

As Margaret Mead has said:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

This world is rough… tough

You always gotta bluff

Even when enough is enough

You can’t deny it, twist it, sugar coat it

Or even hide it: Our world is on the drug of hate

It needs to be detoxed… re-booted… re-invented

With goodness.

They always say “Life isn’t fair”

“You can’t always have your way”

“Bad things happen to good people”

You know why all those things are that way?

Because we made it so

We forgot how to play fair

Everybody is defensive, their forehead says “BEWARE”

Because if you talk politics, religion, or controversial things

You can end up with a sudden bang bang bang of words or bullets

Just because you’re different.

Difference is marked in our biology.

No one is the same.

And difference is great

But humans see it as devastatingly dangerous

One YouTube video that sheds light on the truth never becomes famous

Nothing has to be this complicated

Because simple is “overrated”

Wars are everywhere, even in our hearts.

We can’t decide who we love and who we hate

Because we judge off of Fox News’s reports to date

Seriously?

Have we gotten better, since the 20th century?

All we’ve done is create technology

To mainstream racist and sexist people that will never give an apology.

I want to live in a different world.

Do we have to wait a hundred years for things to change?

If you want to survive in this rough and tough world

You have to bite your tongue.

The truth of goodness has been buried

And one day, the world will uncover it

Because the truth never stays hidden

And then it’ll be good-riddance

To the world we live in, the one where hate, money, and power triumphs over all.

You want to make a change? Who are you going to call?

Can one person really shape the world anymore, in a way that’s purposeful?

I hope so.

Without a change, who are you? Who am I? Except people who live

Breathe, and sleep in a corrupt world.

I pray to survive, and I pray to make that difference,

And I pray for the world to change

From hate, to love.

From bad, to good.

From war, to peace.

From poverty, to wealth.

For inequality, to equality.

Amen.

Are you with me?

 

 

 

 

It’s 4:11 am and I am still awake. I have been thinking about almost everything you can think of. Sometimes, at this hour, I begin to feel the world’s weight of sadness and terror upon my restless shoulders. Once that happens, I feel stressed and wonder “Is this really the world we live in?”

From young children in war torn traumatic life-and-death experiences, to world hunger, to racist/sexist charged assaults and physical attacks towards innocent people, police brutality in America, from mother-nature’s deadly forces of natural disasters to man-made disasters, to the refugee crisis, climate change, stigma in mental health disorders, and above all the excruciating tension that is everywhere around the globe due to hatred and fear (purposefully instigated with the help of the media)… Yeah, I keep thinking about these issues.

The worst part of it all is that I feel very helpless and useless. I mean, what can I do? I’m not a “special” person who can rally change in the world. I haven’t even done so in my community. I never knew just how painful it is to feel helpless. I also never knew that growing up, becoming an adult with abstract thinking and solid intellectual functioning, would cause me to be so scared and overwhelmed because: I think and think and think about all of this almost all the time. I wish there was a cure for the world’s atrocities and tragedies. I wish there was someway I could ease the world’s pain… even though some people (the powerful people) feel Earth and humanity is Ay-Okay.

Side-note: I haven’t written on this blog for quite some time… 

With all of this free time now, I’ve gotten lazy but overthink. What a terribly dangerous combination … sitting and watching Netflix while being a constant world worrier. I wish someone could worry with me or better yet help me come up with solutions to help humanity heal. We may never be able to rid the world of hatred, sickness, or war… but we have a duty to heal those who have been affected by such things.

I remember when I was very young I had a fear of becoming an “adult”, not because of the pending responsibilities, or that there would be less “fun” and more “work”, or because things get tough but because i m a g i n a t i o n seems to drift away and disappear when we’re a grown up. When that’s gone, it’s very challenging to be able to think outside the box. The world needs out of the box thinkers, especially now more than ever!

And now, I’m reminiscing about my own life, forgetting about the horrendous world we live in. I remember when I was about 7 we had moved back to the Chicago suburbs and I had a playground set. I would go to the swings and go up and down, back and forth, over and over not going too high or too low. I would look up at the sky, feel the warmth of the sun’s rays upon my face, and I felt so free, safe, and at ease. I never felt that way after, not like that. And then, I’d carefully slow down and get off the swings and hope the one day, some day, I wouldn’t have to be an only child anymore. And years later, I now have 3 siblings. Funny how life works.

But this post really shouldn’t be about me, but the point of that story I guess is to illustrate that I doubt many of us or the new generations have felt that ease, that peace, that I did at 7. We’re always in a state of GO and STOP, do this NOW, beware of DANGER, stay SAFE, and be careful. When I was younger, I was taught “Do not talk to strangers”. However, these days, seems like it’s not only strangers that are out to get you or hurt you, it could be almost anybody or anything. How scary is that? Or at least, that’s the way the media likes to play it. That your friendly Muslim neighbor isn’t actually friendly, they actually don’t like you they’re dangerous. Seriously?

I’m taking a deep breath to ease the worry, the anxiety, the scary stuff… what can I say, I think too much before I sleep, I mean, it’s 4:32 and my mind is still racing.

ON THAT NOTE… I’d like to write one last thing: If you know how to imagine a world of love, you have an obligation to make it so.

Good night to all,

Dana

And here I am, in a room with a stranger

All I could sense was: Danger, danger!

One strange sentence…

One strange word…

And I’ll be in the “crazy” herd.

 

Oh, who am I, but a human

With feelings, thoughts, and hope…

And yet, they say

That I cannot cope.

 

And so it began, the Doc pulls

The ink blots, one by one,

Upon my eyes, I saw the strangeness…

Oh, this won’t be fun.

 

The ink became a soldier,

shooting its black stain upon my hands.

I stare at the man, he eyes my eyes.

I glance at my black fingertips.

 

What do you see?

Said the Ph.D.

I see: a rainbow flushed world,

Entering the bland room in craziness

 

Am I crazy? The Black soldier says:

Don’t fight this war.

The doctor eyes my head,

Envisioning my thoughts; what for?

 

This ink blot sets chains.

They don’t unlock, not just yet.

The man says: What do you see now?

Holding the empty card, but how?

 

The card reflects my un-relaxed brow,

My fixed pupils, my frown.

Silence in this room, no answer.

The card is put down, He thinks: there must be something “wrong” with her.

 

Shaking of the hands signals the final departure,

For I am not a captive, not in that room,

But still held chained in the inpatient grave

May I ever live again? Written on the forehead: “please save”

 

A true experience upon entering an inpatient unit where I was tested with the Rorschach ink blot test. It is not a weakness to have a mental illness, rather, it is something that builds strength to endure the most difficult of challenges in life. I am too polarized, maybe for my own good, but I will forever be charged to do greatness.

 

Peace & Love,

Dana Barakat

I don’t have many favorites, no favorite movie, song, or book. I tend to fall in love with everything I’m passionate about which makes it difficult to call only one thing my “favorite”. But I had a favorite crayon to color with when I was younger. That was the first and only favorite thing I ever had. Tickle Me Pink. That was the crayon I absolutely called my favorite. Everyone else loved “Sky Blue” and “Turquoise”, but Tickle Me Pink was too funny to love. That seems to be the theme of my life, that I tend to love things that no one finds special, and that I am different than the rest. Then, surely enough, everyone wanted to use “Tickle Me Pink” in my first grade class. We even tickled and got tickled, we had some great laughs and our innocence filled the classroom and in entered joy and bliss. So it happened to be that another theme from my life emerged: I was a leader, or someone people looked up to, someone people were willing to learn from. Although I didn’t intend for others to like “Tickle Me Pink” as a favorite crayon to use, they saw it as fun and instead of overlooking it they wanted to try using it. Thing is, I’ve been through times where I never thought I would be a leader, or at least someone people admired. I went through personal disasters, as we all do, but I was open about it all. I always told my story not for pity, not for recognition, not for anything but just talk it through and show others my life that I am human and that I have a story. And then, people started calling me “strong” and that I have persevered in such a way that seemed it wouldn’t be possible to do so. That’s when I realized that the Tickle Me Pink crayon isn’t my only favorite thing, it’s my resiliency. I love that about me and I can finally see it. I used to think “I’m getting through this because that’s what you are supposed to do”, but now I know, and will never forget, that I was able to get through it all because I put my mindset to be a survivor and to survive. And sometimes I wonder, how I get from Tickle Me Pink, the silly Dana that just had to stand out, to Resilient Dana, the one that always stands back up… the answer? Maybe it’s because I finally know who I am and I’ve come to a sense of self-actualization. Or, maybe, it’s because I now understand that if you’re going to have one favorite thing in this entire world, you better damn well make it YOUrself. I am my favorite thing in this universe without being self-absorbed, and I will always remember the 64-crayola crayons set and the one that stood out to me, Tickle Me Pink, which in turn helped me stand out in the world.

There are times where I wonder to myself: Do I like being single? The answer is not a simple yes or no. You see, sometimes it feels great because you can go about being single and ready to mingle. Then, other times, you look around at your friends who are in a relationship, married, or married and having kids and you start to feel… what’s the word… lonely. Then you being to wonder, do I like the single life?

The single life is complicated. Everyone around you asks “So, are you still single?” Or they get suddenly get enthusiastic and say “Hey, I know someone that you should meet!” Or they may even say “You’re so lucky you’re single, being in a relationship sucks.”

To all of those reactions, the single person feels conflicted emotions. What is so destructive about the single life is that singles tend to fantasize about the “perfect one” and get pickier by the day. It makes finding someone you will approve of as perfection near impossible. And then you wonder, again, “Why am I single?” without introspectively thinking that perhaps the expectations are too high, way past the limit.

So what is a single to do? Should the single life change into the “Taken Life”? Singles don’t want to end up getting into desperate relationships either. There seems to be a point where acceptance is key and to just let things happen on its own accord the only way to go. But it’s hard to accept the current state of affairs and not to get obsessive of what could be, or what might be.

As a single, I haven’t quite reached the acceptance stage. I’m currently in the stage of “I’m going to find my ideal guy one day! And that day is going to be sooner than later… I hope.” The scary thing about that is, well, maybe you’ll never find that perfect match, or maybe it’ll take longer than expected. So is it worth the wait? Should singles continuously wait, hope, dream, and fantasize about being in a relationship or just enjoy the moments as they come and go, whether or not it’s with a special someone? Answer to that, again, is complicated.

So, cheers to the single life and all the singles out there! Remember, being single can be awesome, and some days it can make you feel down, but overall, being single gives you the time to find yourself, be yourself, and do what you want to do, whether that be traveling, taking up hobbies and interests you always wanted to do, or just enjoying life… even if it’s the Single Life.