One Sunday Morning

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I woke up today, did my morning rituals and went straight to our balcony. As I opened the door in our veranda, the glorious and magnificent sun welcomed me and hugged my whole being. It was a refreshing and invigorating moment that I fully embraced. I basked in its splendor and the sun’s radiance was truly captivating that for a second I thought I was in my favorite holiday hotel in Ras Al-Khaimah.

I opened my book The Purpose Driven Life. Oh how many times did I read this already and yet here I was reading again the first chapter of the book. The first chapter “It All Starts with God” was just refreshing as it was when I first read the book. The wisdom that comes through it revitalized and energized my whole being. The feeling never gets old and I never got tired of reading it again and again. 

Just yesterday, the book is collecting dust from my bookshelf. Every day when I go into my bookshelf and pick up a book to read, the book never got my attention. It was a silent, nonexistent and absent book. Today, upon glancing on my bookshelf, the book was there waving its hands frantically, its dark brown color glowing brightly amidst the collection of books and finally shouting at me and telling me to pick it up. I obliged with its commanding power and went straight to our balcony.

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I wiped off the dust that covered the book with a piece of white cloth. Then I turned on its pages where traces of cobwebs were scattered as I flip from one page to another. I shake off the cobwebs inside the book and the dirt flew all over my room. The book looks clean, unsoiled, fresh and is readable again. I read the first chapter, resisted going on to the next chapter, and closed the book. I reflect, I paused, and I did some introspection. I took my journal and checked my goals and dreams written on it.

I realized just how busy I am making myself busy instead of living a simple, deliberate and purposeful life. The worries that bug me everyday are nonsensical and at best should be ignore rather than focus on it because it zapped a lot of my energy from doing meaningful things.

As I go out from our house and kissed my wife for good for the rest of the day, I walked through the streets of which I am very familiar for the past two years. There are restaurants, buildings and supermarkets that surround the lane along the way. I noticed that there are birds chirping while moving from one tree to another. The flowers are blooming in their bright yellow color along the pavement. Oh how beautiful the red roses are in the roads. They seem to be inviting me that I should need to take a closer look at them. I did and I just noticed that one of the flowers has eight dazzling white petals. I was mesmerized with the beauty that surrounds these streets.  I stride glancing at every flowers and trees that my eyes can see, while listening to the sounds of the birds chirping endlessly. I felt like they are music to my soul.

In this hectic pace of life where everybody seems to be running on a frenetic tempo circling around a direction that seems to point nowhere except going back to where they started.  Today, I am taking a pause from the daily rigors of life. I am taking a step backward in order to make two steps forward later. I am going back to the basics.

The dust and cobwebs that try to infiltrate my book bring with it the rustiness of my soul, the cobwebs in my mind and the fragile state of my being.

Together with the dust and cobwebs that were removed and eradicated from the book are the unnecessary worries, the crippling uncertainties, and the lingering doubts that filled up my whole being...at least for a day.