Change a life?

I have alluded to my need to help people before but I try not to talk too much about it. I do this simply because I don't want any praise of any sort from people for what I do to help people. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) once said "Give with the right, so the left doesn't know." (And if it's not correct like that then please correct me). I had been thinking about this for the past few days and it was a matter of fate that today at the majalis the maulana talked about the very same thing. Often times you see people donating, or doing any act simply for the sake of gaining praise from others. He went on to say that if you do end up doing these good deeds simply for the attention from other people, you will be seeking you're reward from them on the day of judgment.

I've kinda lost track of my thought so I'll be adding another part to this later... lol

With all that said, I am writing this entry to hopefully get more people to help others rather than seek praise(to be blunt, I could care less what anyone thinks). In any case, I watched the movie Slumdog Millionare and it went about describing a boy’s journey from living on the streets begging to becoming a millionaire. It was based in India where this went through anything and everything and the sad thing is that I know so many children face the same sort of trials and tribulations unnecessarily. While our children in America worry about getting a Wii, these children have to worry about making sure they have food to eat. I always thought I was going to work abroad for a few months and then come back home and work and then go back... But as of late I've become firmer in this idea of going abroad and helping children specifically. I have several things in mind that I want to tackle but they all stem from setting up a basis- an orphanage where these children will have proper schooling, clothing and most importantly food. With all the children that I hope to shelter, if ONE, only ONE goes on to college and that child goes on to put another positive effect on another child then I will have been successful. I'm not asking for anyone to go to the extreme of leaving the country and opening a orphanage. I wrote this entry to hopefully inspire someone to do something positive.
With that said, I would like to ask all of you all to come out to the protests in DC for the Palestinian crisis going on right now.

“A time of crisis is not just a time of anxiety and worry. It gives a chance, an opportunity, to choose well or to choose badly.”

Choose.

Hotel le Bon.

This is going to be a quick entry about my day at the Bon.

For those of you that don't know but for some reason care, I worked at Bon Secour's a small inner city hospital in West Baltimore. To give you an idea of the surrounding area, at my training, I heard 22ish gunshots. Anyways I worked phlebotomy in the ER for about a year, drawing blood, setting up IV's and some other stuff just to help out when things got wild. I loved the experience but then new management came in and apparently phlebotomists are not legally allowed to set up IV's. In the ER the vast majority of the patients need to have IV's in order to administer meds and repeat blood tests so me sitting there doing only straight sticks was kind of worthless and long story short they eliminated that position all together. I then started working as an accessioning clerk in the lab, basically prepping all of the specimens to go through with their lab tests, very boring in comparison with the ER. Now that I completed my first semester of nursing school I can work as a ER tech doing everything I was doing as a phlebotomist + a lot more (BALLING).

Anyway, I was working in a clinic that is a part of Bon Secour where I worked over the summer filling in for the resident phlebotomist there. I was just getting used to drawing blood again and getting used to the system since the most amount of work in that office was dealing with insurances rather then actually collecting the specimens. On my break I walked over to the ER and met with one of the ER supervisors and she told me that they were hoping I was going to be done soon so I could join back up *SCORE*. We then walked around the ER for a second and I saw a bunch of the old staff as well as a lot of new staff. It was nice seeing everyone and they actually did some upgrades as well. I'm really excited to be back in the ER, hopefully by January I'll be setting up IV's telling people that its my first day again. When I got back from my break I continued drawing blood... definitely had some rust but it wasn't too bad, I didn't miss anyone except for a lady that was simply unstickable. While I was in the middle of drawing blood I heard on of the people working the office proceed to flip on this doctor. It was kind of out of the blue and I was completely caught off guard especially since I had just stuck the needle into my patients arm (lemme know if that made your arm twitch ;-) ). Apparently this doctor talked down to all the women in the office, granted the only men in the office was me and another doctor. I think its pretty whack how people can just talk down to another person regardless of who they are, where their from and so on. But I made sure not to pass any judgments on this doctor and it turned out to be essential. I had to draw his blood later in the day and I knew that if I did it out of anger then there would be no point in drawing his blood anyway since the whole point of me working in health care is to help people. Funny thing is that the doctor was mad scared... more scared than the 8 year old I stuck earlier in the day. As I was leaving for the day, I had to drop off specimens in the actual hospital's lab. When I saw the lady working in accessioning (she had trained me before) I told her I had brought her a present. Her response was "why couldn't you have just brought your self with out the blood"... most awkward moment ever... even more so because she’s about 50.
End of story.

Props to the Pops

Today I was at my last day of clinical at Stella Maris, an upscale nursing home out in Timonium. I was sitting at the table with my patient while starting to fill out my clinical evaluation. As I was about to write the date I realized it was my dad’s birthday and all of a sudden I just stopped and everything blurred out for a second. Took me a second to come back to reality and realize what was going on. I finished chatting with my patient about football then I went to the nursing station and had to take a minute to my self. All these old memories started cycling through my head like a movie. One of the memories that clearly stuck out and always does is of me giving my father a hug on Eid and a telling him I'm sorry that I had nothing to give him. But his reply was the most genuine and loving thing saying simply that the hug and love was plenty. Every holiday this memory comes up like a broken record and every holiday or birthday I still have to take a step back and collect my self. I sat there for a couple minutes and just kept my head in my hands and pulled the "I-only-got-4-hours-of-sleep" bull... except I wasn't lying about that [haha]. Throughout these memories I watched a recurring pattern and I remembered what set him apart from any other person. He was the most helpful and caring person I ever encountered- no matter who needed what, he was going to make sure he helped. This however is only half of it - I was oblivious to the degree that he went since he would never talk about it. When he passed away and people came to give their condolences it was as if though they were talking of a different person (not that he was uncaring or unhelpful to us at all). Every person that came said the same thing "You're father did so much for me" or "I never met anyone that was willing to help with anything as much as he was". As I started to come back to reality I realized that this was an obvious message and I remembered why I am in the health care field in the first place. I immediately felt happy and content and went about the rest of the clinical with my father in mind and thought about how much he gained and grew from bringing a smile to people's faces. Even on my way home, passing an elementary school - there was a crosswalk guard standing in the rain... I clearly remember my dad making me wave to the cross guard every morning with a smile just so that he or she may smile.

It’s funny as I’m writing this tears are on the verge of coming out but I’m ridiculously happy.

I'll leave you with a quote that I feel we should all live by.

“Associate with people in such a manner, that they weep for you when you die and long for you if you are alive.” -Imam Ali

Not that I feel that we should base our life on how others feel about us but rather we should base it on treating people with genuine love and respect.

pride?

Hello children, I finally decided to update this thing and I had been meaning to do so for a while now… my alibi had been that I have no time and I still don’t. I have a final tomorrow but I’m at the ‘idontgiveas---‘ point. As of late nothing exciting has been going on in my life besides thanksgiving break… and the amount of food I have consumed over the past 4 days. On Friday Sam, some friends from his church and I played some football which was pretty fun albeit we only had 5 people. I made a sick one-handed catch, I don’t understand how I did it though – probably divine intervention cause I’ve had butterfingers all my life. Then on Saturday I played again –except with some ol’ folk from the Idara- the majority of them being 35ish. Saturday’s game was one of the most fun games I’ve ever played in. On the second play I caught an interception on the left side of the field and I started running toward the right as the blocks were setting up and then as I was about to be nabbed my brother came up from behind and yelled for me to lateral… I hit him up with the ball and blocked a guy. My brother ended up making to the endzone and we got the first score… as I turn around and start walking back I discovered one of the dinosaurs on the ground moaning in pain. I was about to start laughing my butt off because we had joked about someone getting hurt- but then as I approached I realized there was blood all over his shirt and that he was actually hurt but the nose was the least of his problems… long story short- he dislocated his shoulder and he ended up being alright. –still funny as hell.

Now on to the real topic of today’s entry: pride.

I always thought pride was a good thing from way back in the day. Everyone has it at one point or another – taking pride in “being right” or being a part of a specific group. While I think its good to know your roots, I feel we often allow these materialistic traits to define us as beings. We get so caught up in being black/white, shia/sunni,, Indian/Pakistani, etc. that we forget that we are only given these materialistic traits in order to grow as spiritual beings on this earth. The more we take pride in such things the less objective we become, the less growth we will achieve. We become so caught up in day-to-day things to stay inline with our materialistic traits that we lose touch with our true selves.

I have, and I’m sure all 5 of the people reading this blog have had an occasion where they were caught in an argument and KNEW that they were wrong, but still continued to argue simply because they couldn’t be wrong. This is your pride at its best controlling you.

Pride also is the basis of racism; first the oppressors believe they are inherently superior to the oppressed because of their pride in their own history. This pride then leads the oppressors down a series of extreme actions all based on their divine superiority. Allah brought you here, and he will take you away, what makes you possibly think that you can judge His creation?

In the end – who are we to take pride in anything at all, God made us and in the end all of these materialistic things-along with our body will be nothing but dust. You are not you, you are just a spirit.

Now I strive to be done with my pride everyday but as with many other things in life, it’s a day-to-day struggle that you must work at in small victories.
That’s about all I have to say right now – let me know what you all think!

p.s. I'll leave you with some U2 lovin'

If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel. On your knees boy!
-U2 –mysterious ways

And in your soul
They poked a million holes
But you never let them show
Come on its time to go

And you already know
Yet you already know
How this will end

Now you’ve seen his face
And you know that there’s a place in the sun
For all that you’ve done
For you and your children
No longer shall you need
You always wanted to believe
Just ask and you’ll receive
Beyond your wildest dreams

And you already know
Yet you already know
How this will end



How is your faith?
Just because you already know how it will end do you still live your life to its potential?
Do you still have faith in that ending?
Or do you have faith in that transition?

Find your self SUCKAH.

Normally, a ridiculous amount of things are running through my head on a regular day, but as of late I've been thinking more than I really need to(if you know me well, you know my mind is a nomad). Unnecessary thoughts about the future, about the past, about insignificant stressors. All of these unnecessary thoughts, some how have led me back to a very significant yet very basic reoccurring theme... the only thing that we have is our selves and God. Everything here is so temporary, over the past couple days I was looking at old writings I did. Here’s one I wrote last year about my father and death in general:


"So as I sit here in class I'm thinking about my fathers passing just 3 years ago; I'm not dwelling on the death I'm thinking about how much we really take our parents for granted. Time and time again I hear people say "Why is my mom/dad such a ________", I'm guilty of it my self. After going through this experience and having to deal with this change every day whether I wanted to or not made me realize what makes the relationship of a father and son so different. When my father was alive I never quite understood why he went about as in why he was so strict or why we were so distant. But after analyzing his actions over and over again I have been able to get a better understanding of what type of person he was and in turn what he wanted me to become. As slick as we think we are or as much as we think "I'll never be like my dad/mom" we end up turning into them anyway... i gotta take a quiz now ill finish this later

In the end, the point is to enjoy your parents while you have the chance they are your culture and everything you will or wont become. It's only when you see through their eyes that you can truly know yourself."

I still feel this remains true, however still it is incomplete; the most important thing is to look for ways to grow, it becomes more and more evident everywhere I look. In the poem "Piece of a man" by Amir Sulaiman, he describes a homeless drunk who comes up to Amir on the street and drops some knowledge on him to say the least...

I see a piece of a man,
Blinking slowly,
Talking quickly,
He's alone and lonely.
His eyes hit me and I'm thinking "Does he know me?"
He's past hips,
But something told me,
To listen closely,
I stopped in my tracks as he approached me,
He smelt mostly of cheap scotch,
He had on a gold watch that didn't tick,
I'm thinking "how ridiculous" but he moved even more closely.
He reached in his coat and unfolds these sheets of loose leaf of poems he hadn't finished composing,
As his mouth was open, his eyes were closing and he said in a soft raspy voice:

The reality is, you love fantasy
I prefer the reality of confusion,
To the seduction of illusion,
So I understand that we lie shortly,
We are tiny,
And our time is near.
So what else is there except to be sincere?
My peers appeared to be dead or
Not yet born or,
Perhaps they have not yet been loved by the norm,
And adored by the norm,
And beloved by the norm,
Burned and scorned by the norm.
People are funny, fickle and dying,
Our time is near,
So what else is there except to be sincere?
In a child's first year its in search of its 5th year,
In its child's 10th' year its in search of its 16th year,
In its 5th its year its in search of its 25th year,
And when its dead, its in search of its life.
So why should it not be in search of now?
You don't even have to search for now,
Now is here.
Has now used and abused you?
Maybe now loves you and doesn't want to lose you.
What if something accused you of not being good enough when it just met you?
You hardly know now.
The same way you desire then, now;
You will desire now, then.
So it seems you are searching for what is present.

When he was finished he gently fold the poem in half.
Stuck it in his other dirty palm and asked,
For a couple dollars.
I forked over the cash.
He turned his head, turned his collar as we passed
and returned to a spot a half block up the ave'.
We live in strange days,
you'll find the truth out in many strange ways,
Just keep your soul close, cope and maintain.
Some of us deranged, are really, the best at staying sane...

-Amir Sulaiman


I love the portrait Amir illustrates of the man on the street, really showing you that you may find wisdom at any place that you choose to. Another way that I looked at this poem was inserting a very simple line...

I see a piece of a man,
Blinking slowly,
Talking quickly,
He's alone and lonely.
His eyes hit me and I'm thinking, "Does He know me?"
But rather, do I know Him?

The point of this is that if you know Him (God) then you will inherently find your self. This brings me to my conclusion... I need to find Him.