Scarf Update:
It's still on. It has come to mean several things to me.
1. A symbol that I am Muslim.
2. A rejection of secular society's insidious demands on a woman to trivialize her life into perfect beauty and exhibitionism.
3. A simple religious commandment.
4. A symbol that I want to be seen and treated as pious person among my family and fellow Muslims.
Some days it's 1 and 2. Some days 3. Some days 1-4. Some days just 4. Some days--- not a one--and I just go through the motions.
But it's still worth believing in it.
I think everyone has a religion--a belief system that makes life worth living--or not.There are those of us who have an organized one. And there are others whose religion is...
...politics
...music
...artistic expression
...nationalism
...racism
...love
...beauty
...new york city
...nature
...poetry
...history
...family
...human potential
and
...the study-hard, work-hard, to earn wealth and/or fame religion...
everyone has a belief system that makes life worth living or not.
There's that famous song by the band, R.E.M. called, "Losing My Religion." One interpretation of the song is it was inspired by a waitress who seemed to be glum and just going through the motions of her job. "She's losing her religion," they thought...and they wrote a song about it...
"Life. It's bigger. It's bigger than you. And you are not me. The lengths that I will go to. The distance in your eyes. Oh, no, I've said too much. I haven't said enough."
And there is this poem, a part of which I will end with..."Song of Myself," by Walt Whitman:
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute
longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his
supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
