Life Goes On

So. BTS came up with a quarantine-themed song;

Song of 2020, really.

💜

They also have a song called Blue and Grey on the new album, 

which didn't capture my ears from the first listen; but then I looked up the lyrics --

oh my heart.

It's about depression and melancholia, 

and BTS has a knack for making things so beautiful and ach-y.

Suga's lines killed me.

I don't know where it went wrong.

Ever since I was a kid,

I've had a blue question mark in my head.

Maybe that's why I've been living so hard.

Everyone's reflection for this year has been a general negative;

I'm meeting the birds tomorrow (possibly for the first time as a group this year...? yikesy.)

and I've been thinking, maybe we don't have to look at it all so bad.

I'll save my proper end-year reflection for December, but --

despite the general global human mess we're in,

I feel like this year, finally, my internal growth has solidified. 

I feel like there's a solid core now.

It's been purged for me, the blue question mark. 

I've confronted it head on,

and I can actually smile thinking about it all.

 I like this. Especially apt since I've been managing my health recently.

Radical nonpathology is the antithesis to the medical model taken up by conventional psychology and even some proponents of Eastern spirituality. The medical model is rooted in the notion that if somebody has a symptom of some sort, there is a disease down below: there is something wrong with the person that ought to be fixed. A nonpathological model, then, is rooted in the notion that there isn't anything wrong with any of us. Nonpathology sees symptoms, even painful ones, as evidence of our innate drive towards health and well-being. A fever, for example, is just your body "cooking" a virus or bacteria out of you. The symptom of a fever isn't evidence of an inherent problem in your body. It's evidence of your body's innate intelligence, responsiveness, resilience, and robust drive toward health.

~ Don't Tell Me To Relax, by Ralph De La Rosa

How wondrous the affair of the faithful Mu'min, as there is good for him in every matter and this is not the case with anyone but the faithful. When he encounters joy, he gives thanks and thus this is good for him. When sorrow or distress befalls him, he is patient, and this is good for him.

~ Rasulullah s.a.w. (Sahih Muslim)

I was having a class about loving goodness for others, and someone shared this again. It's funny sometimes how words you've seen multiple times only hit you proper later in the future, and not now exactly, not necessarily the present moment when your heart initially twinges at an unseen-yet significance. I just recently reread a quote from Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, and this line really got me today:

...no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.

ohmyheart. There's this funny thing that happens when one strives and struggles; whether one achieves the dream is a separate story. You start to have to rely on something amorphous and intangible and something deep inside you that we often hear referred to as the inner self, the higher self, intuition, and above all God. It's almost like... through the striving for your dreams... you're meant to connect with the bigger divine purpose and reaching eternity, and even the dream you chase falls into its requisite lower but essential place, marking itself as the necessary signpost to the bigger scheme of your life. As you finally marvel at this tapestry, Alhamdulillah... what can you do but simply marvel. Everything, within this marvelous moment, is beautiful and good.