Wanderlust.

Assalam Aleykum Warahmatullahy Wabarakatuh

Hello my people!

For the past two weeks or so I’ve been quite vigilant in trying to make sure that I have a post up every Wednesday and Sunday. To the ones who noticed and reckoned that there was no Wednesday or Sunday post for that matter because this will probably be going up on Monday, I sincerely apologize. I simply was not in the right state of mind nor mood.  To the ones who didn’t notice, never mind.

As I’ve expressed on my blog before, It’s much easier to make posts surrounding products or items that live in the actual world and not in my constantly wondering head; because then I don’t have to go into the depths of my intricate mind and rack my brains out in order for me to carefully pick out jumbled up thoughts, and somehow manage to arrange them into a written piece and hence give them a meaningful life. Basically, posts that aren’t labeled ‘thoughts’ I personally find to be much easier to handle. Although they entail their own level of 'handwork' such as taking great pictures and having the perfect setting, they don’t necessarily force one to painfully look at themselves and converse with their inner troubles.

So...Wanderlust;  a strong innate desire to travel and explore the world. It comes from the German words ‘Wandern’ which means to hike and ‘Lust’ which means desire. When directly translated, it means the enjoyment that comes from hiking or roaming about or wandering; atleast according to Wikipedia. Wanderlust seems to be a state of mind that has captured many of the moon children of our current generation. And as much as I strive to stand out and not be a groupie, I am unfortunately part of this crowd of people who simply want to explore, discover and experience the wild adventures that life has to offer.

I find it quite intriguing how diverse our world is, how we can have so much diversity in food and style and language and dressing. How we can say hello and thank you in a million different languages and how one thing in this culture means something completely different in another culture. In the holy Qur’an, Allah The Exalted tells us that He created us from a single pair of male and female and made us into diverse tribes and nations so that we may learn from one another. And isn’t it fascinating how much there is to learn about each other? I mean in Kenya alone we have 42 different tribes, 43 if you include Nubians, all with completely different languages, traditions and customs. Instead of looking at our differences as aspects of life that divide us, we should realize that our differences are actually where our individual beauty lies and what unites us as humanity, because if we were all the same, we would not learn anything from each other because there’s nothing to learn from in the first place.

However, just as history has proven, human being’s acceptance of ‘different’ has not always been that smooth. Often times the reception has been accompanied by fear and anxiety. Which as I write this post seems completely absurd to me and yet I am living proof of it. In a few weeks in shaa Allah, I will be traveling to Rwanda for an internship, God willing if everything goes well. I will be there for a period of six weeks and it will be my first time traveling alone, to a different country, by myself. As much I am excited for this amazing opportunity, I am also completely terrified for the simple reason that this is different and not what I am used to. My brain keeps coming up with all these situations that could possibly go wrong and then because my brain is so fascinating, it comes up with solutions to problems that it created in the first place! Oh brain how awesome you are!

In all honesty, the fear I am experiencing is making this experience, which is not yet even guaranteed, seem quite daunting and scary, because I’m leaving my comfort zone and heading into uncharted waters. I feel like we are so accustomed to always having someone to hold our hands throughout life, and when we lose that hand we are paralyzed in our tracks. A simple example spending time alone; because how many of us feel completely confident going to the movies by ourselves? Or going for an event by ourselves or eating lunch by ourselves? That being said, we need to start being comfortable with the idea of being alone, because being alone is not being lonely. *Note to self.

Unfortunately, the idea of allowing fear to convince us into cowering away from our dreams and ambitions is something that is quite prevalent, especially in this day and age. Not only because of the immense pressure to be successful , but also because it has unfortunately become so easy for us to focus solely on what could go horribly and forget that you know what? Things could go absolutely great too.

Being a graduate who I would say was suddenly thrust into the world of adulthood, and basically expected to know exactly what to do and when to do it, you kind of quickly learn that fears will always be there. Today it could be one thing and the next day something completely different.Basically, there will always some type of fear that is relevant to where we are in life. A few months ago it was what grade a certain lecturer is going to give me, whereas today, it’s something different.

I remember reading in one comic whose name has completely slipped my mind, that the essence of conquering your fears is not waging a war against them, but learning to coexist with them. It’s about facing that fear and admitting that while the fear is a possibility it is not a reality. Atleast not yet, and until it is, I we need to open the door that is our mind, say hello to our fears, welcome them in for some tea with a smile, and sit down to watch our favourite shows together.

Being afraid isn’t wrong, it’s human; but letting fear control us, that just sheer cowardice. And who wants to be a coward? Certainly not me, and I hope you don’t either.