Pause and Sloooooow down
#6
Dear reader,
I miss you. I miss rambling and sharing my ramble with you. I Have been absent for a year and unable to publish my newsletter. But it’s ok, I have now moved to Substack platform instead of Linkedin and am excited to reimmerse myself in my monthly writings.
How are you doing? We live in this absurd time of genocide in Palestine and in the craziness in other parts of the world. I am personally not doing well, I feel guilty and useless and hypocrite. I have been speechless for months. I crawled myself in a bubble of intense work and projects to get distracted. The world seems so cruel and scary and it makes me question the core existence of our lives. Sometimes I wonder how activists do to have this magnificent force to keep on going to debates, demonstrations, manifestations. When talking to my friend Damir about it, he thinks that there is mostly a trauma behind the drive of an activist. It is like what Gabor Maté describes about people who had traumatic childhood tend to become overachiever because they need to prove to the world they matter.
I feel I don’t have the courage to look at the devastating amount of posts, reels and news on Instagram. And I can’t help but ask myself what would I do if I were a Palestinian living in Gaza, would I be resilient like Palestinians there? Or would I passively wait to die? How do humans handle such horrific disasters? Are we romanticizing Palestinians' resilience? I learned that some Palestinians do commit suicide, and I’m not surprised of course. Nothing makes sense anymore to me. Yet, life goes on, I keep laughing, meeting friends, watching movies while feeling heavy in the inside. Wondering how this genocide would be written in history. Would it be written as another holocaust or erased as the other genocides that happened in America or Cambodia or Bosnia & Herzegovina or Australia.
My friend Ylva, who worked for the UN, spent one year in Congo on an assignment. I remember how touched she got when Congo came up in our conversation one day. I remember how she explained the life span is so short there because people get killed all the time, that she doesn’t know how they can deal with that. Since the 7th of October, thousands and hundreds are being killed on a daily basis in this ethnic cleansing. How do people live when they know their loved ones will eventually die in the next hour, in the next few days. History is repeating itself; insane people in power keep on killing and torturing other people to claim lands and territories and keep expanding their fascist kingdoms. I want to believe “power to the people”, but I am unable to see this truth. Unfortunately, I became quite pessimistic.
Palestine is so dear to me since I first learned about its history when I was at university in Egypt. As a student, I was volunteering for Playgrounds for Palestine NGO, founded by Susan Abulhawa, aiming to construct outdoor playgrounds for children in different cities of Palestine. I was doing graphic design assignments from my little desk in Cairo, with a very bad internet connection, hoping that one day I would visit Palestine, and meet Jaqueline who is one of the core members of PfP. My wish is still intact after all those years; visiting a liberated Palestine.
Collective change
In October, I listened to an episode of Jay Shetty's podcast where he had Joe Dispensa as a guest. They talked about how the thoughts in one’s mind can be very powerful and how his experiments on a group of individuals proved that change is possible and that electromagnetic fields can actually change when the behaviours of the collective change, and he took the example of folks of birds. I found that very interesting, especially that I have been observing folks of birds flying above Stockholm every now and then. What fascinates me is how they move always in groups. They stick together, they don’t want someone to be the black duck. Then listening to the words of Dispensa, I was thinking if we humans could behave the same.
You are too sensitive
The first time I learned the term Highly Sensitive Person was from my friend, Bia, two years ago. Recently, my therapist told me to read about HSP, because what I am describing to her falls into that diagnosis. It is good to know that it’s a thing, so that I don’t feel like I’m abnormal or that I should change my personality. With time and practice, I am learning to befriend my sensitivity and see it as a trait that I should take care of instead of being ashamed of. Why I am talking about that now is because I want to clarify that for a HSP, normal things are usually unbearable, like violence, noise, bright lights. For me, I can get anxious in other abstract forms like if I witness a racist situation, a lie, an overwhelming experience, an ugly place, a cluttered house. And so, I try to accept that I need to take breaks from the overwhelming news and the terrible dehumanization of our brothers and sisters. Resting for a whole day, shaking the stress by dancing, or listening to my body when it says no.
You are too slow
During my five long years in the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo, and for years after graduating, I was named “Botta Slowly” to describe how slow I was in everything. I was slow in talking, understanding, processing, doing, making decisions, etc. For years, I was told over and over by my friends and family that I am slow. This made me believe that there is definitely something wrong with me. I was so ashamed by my slowness. Alongside my sensitivity (like I mentioned earlier), my slowness reinforced the illusion that I am incapable and unworthy. For very long years.
But now that I am healing and discovering who I truly am, I am learning why some people like to project their insecurities to others who they consider weaker. And I am learning that being sensitive and slow doesn’t mean you are not strong. Now I embrace those qualities and even take them as tools to grow, to develop in my own rhythm. Now I understand that I don’t need to be quick to be smart. That I have my own journey, which may look slow for all the others around me, but for me it is just the perfect pace. And so I am learning to accept and to be kind to myself and to forgive everyone that hurted me because they didn’t know better.
My new mantra:
Slow is the fastest way to reach what you want.
No new habits for the New Year
Usually, people like to put January in the frame of “new beginnings”, and I feel that this approach puts too much pressure on ourselves. Too many unnecessary expectations. I refuse this attitude and I refuse to frame new habits within a new year, because I believe that we can start anything at any time and we can also end something at any given time. We should be the masters of our own lives, not dependent on the yearly calendar.
However, having said that, I also actually tend to reflect back on the year and how it went. Not to evaluate myself but to see the big picture. 2024 was wonderful for me with all the ups and downs. The changes I unexpectedly found myself in, the decisions I made, the lessons I learned. It is helpful for me when I write them down. I feel like I own my life and that I hold my own compass. I didn’t want this post to be about what I did in 2024, and rather chose to talk about some topics that have been on my mind. I might talk more about my art practice in the upcoming months.
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Together we can support one another. Let's be vulnerable
Share your thoughts with your friends, family, mentors or with me.
🧚
Art & Love & Free Palestine 🍉
Rana
Afterword:
I have been obsessed with podcasts in the last 4 years. Sometimes I listen to podcasts in Swedish to practice the language. Sometimes I find interesting podcasts in French and Arabic, which also connects me to different regions of the world. But most of the time, I listen to English podcasts.
I have especially developed an interest in podcasts that are related to the creative industry, mostly interviews with creatives that share their processes and lessons from their creative journey. It has not only helped me learn about how others work but also made me feel less alone in my artistic practice. I would like to share some with you, the ones that I found most insightful regarding the creative process. There might be something for you. And please feel free to recommend your favourite creative podcasts!
This Way Up - host: Rebecca Rowntree
Spark & Fire - host: June Cohen
Song Exploder - host: Hrishikesh Hirway
Creative Processing - host: Joseph Gordon-Lewitt
Generation XX - host Siham Jibril (in French)
Tal till Nationen - host Nasim Aghili (in Swedish)
My dear Rana, I am so pleased you are finding your voice! And what a voice it is. You write beautifully on the shame, hypocrisy and impotence so many of us feel as we continue with our every day lives, while others die in the streets, under rubble, from starvation and disease and broken hearts and on and on and on… I have wondered some of the same questions you ask. I thank the universe and all the birds in it, for your slow, thoughtful, gentle, creative, sensitive soul. It reminds me not to rush through this cruel and beautiful and very short life.