chronicling The warman

I was never into journaling or writing my own thoguhts but I guess there is a time for everything, I think that now more than ever i should start writing down what comes to my mind because with my irregular sleep patterns and hectic life style i guess there is no way else that i could preserve my mind so to speak. also in retrospect looking back on these journals if you will might inspire me to do more work later on. the only other time i wrote a diary like think was when i went to holland, i would stay everynight writing my parents and friends what i did that day with details and anecdotes also what I spent that day which was probably the best enconomic planning I did in my life (and i was in 6th grade), someting which I need to do here to know where my money is going (although it's mostly comics and going to the movie theater).

Anyhoo so I notice allot of people tend to write down their thoughts (I'm looking at you Liana) which kind of inspired me to write down my own thoughts. but I didn't know where to start, till one day when I was browsing facebook and came acroos one of my friends' photography albums, he had loads of pictures of Egypt, and nostalgia hit me like a 2 ton brick on crippled squirrel, anyway so I kept looking at the pictures from pictures of rural areas and poor kids being happy, to the lavish trees and parks to the amazing skyline over the nile, then it moved on to pictures of mosques in old cairo, those age old buildings that where in cairo since the fatimids that built cairo as their capital in 969 BC, which reminded me how cairo is known as the city of a thousand minarets, and it moved me to the topic I would like to discuss, which is relegion and spirituality between back home in Egypt and here in the US.

You see I am a relegious person, but yet I try to be moderate in everything i do, so I'm not overly crazy conservative and go out and smite people, or even go blow myself up in the name of Allah (which is the arabic word for god and not another different god than the one in the bible or the Torah), but that's not the topic at hand, you see ever since I came here I met allot of people that are not relegious and/or spiritual, some even don't believe in god, at first I was like how can this be it is soo illogical, but then interacting with people here I noticed hey they have every right to renounce any form of relegion till the end of time. America the mascot of capitalism, has succeeded in commercialising everything that is holy, I mean holy crap (tm), christmas became christmas inc., halloween no longer represents it's origins but is now a reason for candy sales to rise as well as costumes (which i don't object to), you see it's fun for the festivities to be blown up like that, but this is soooooooooo overly commercialised that the whole point of relegion is diluted in just something to make you feel guilty for having fun, and then you have those extremists who want to slash it all and be overly relegious and make you feel so bad about yourself for not accepting a certain person as your lord and savior, hell even when you mention relegion here people directly think christianity, now if this isn't monopoly, we all might as well not collect 500 dollars when we pass by go. so here's the wrap up, anything that represents relegion has been commercialised and the whole meaning of relegion is transformed into extremist christians yelling about christ's , and the logo for relegion became the church so when politicians talk about sperating relegious ideals for the state they say seperate church from state ignoring any other option of relegion, and then the awareness about any other relegion is zero to none, hell my roomate thought i don't eat beef because I'm muslim (we don't eat pork, hindus don't eat beef) and then compared me to mormons WTF. so really I don't blame people here for completely forget about it and have fun with their lives, by all means have fun.

But still the mystery remained, why haven't I reached this conclusion back home, why haven't I met people that resent relegion back home as much as here, how come relegious holiday have this spiritual energy floating in the air that just feels you to the brim with spirituality even if you weren't really spiritual or very relegious or pios. what makes people back home be tolerant and knowledgable baout other relegions why is it judeo-christian tradition in america and back home christians and jews and muslims know that those three are the same relegion with minor differences depending on the time and region where they rose.

Then it hit me it's the region, the culture, the tradition, growing up in egypt surrounded by these ancient mosques side by side by even more ancient churches, growing up in the land where moses was born and jesus escaped too, to one of these holy lands of old where the biblical stories happened, it's like when you watch lord of the rings in new zealand and then you see these mountains where gandalf rode shadowfax or the desert where they placed helms deep, you tend to like the movie even more right ? ofcourse I'm not comparing lord of the rings to relegious stories (although Tolkien was borderline refrencing it, but maybe a little more subtle than C.S. lewis) but then growing up near these spiritual holy lands, probably makes you beleive more that "hey, that shit might have gone down for reals", for jews in america the red sea might just be a legendary place, while for people in israel or in egypt the red sea is where they go diving every summer. I climbed mount sinai where the ten commandments went down, and the list goes on. I mean people in the US think someone made up every relegion, where back home everyone knows (even if they don't beleive it) that it came from a higher power. and I'm rambling on, but hey i finally understood how I became pios and remain moderate enough for people not to notice that when they meet me for the first time, if they know i am I get this weird look like "ugh he's gonna try and convert me now" but no that's not what I'm about, not at all. but I'm just surprised on how the great spiritual feeling I get back home turns into that ugly commercial monster that pushes people away from the core and yet succeeds in taking all your money, it certainly would make you hate it to death, so now i just feel sorry for the people living here because seriously even while not believing in relegion, that whole feeling of spirituality is like no other it is just unexplainable, but I urge everyone to seek out of this commercialised hell hole and look for their inner spiritual feelings, it is truly worth it.