Coconut Macaroons for the Healing Soul...

It is really ironic the way things happen sometimes. You realize solutions that are wholly unconnected to the problems at hand. Perhaps that is the wisdom of life. It teaches you not what you think you want, but what it knows you need.

I thought my problem right now was dealing with a failed marriage and an upcoming divorce. But as week passes into week, I have realized that I am learning what really ails most of us. We have lost sight of the simple joys of life, and the very act of living.

I have now spent about 3 years in America. Pursuing a career. Sounds really grand, but deep down I was really just waiting for my real life to begin. My married life. Perhaps it is because in my culture, there is no slot as such for a single career-woman. You are either a kid, a student, a wife or a mother. Everything else is just in-between. Just nothing.

Anyways, the point is that I have realized that I wasn’t really living a life the last three years, as I waited. I was just filling in the days. Escaping life was more like it. My weekdays were crammed to bursting point with projects and work. My weekends were carefully packed with just enough activity to ensure that I never had time to take stock of my life.

The past three months I have spent at my brother’s home recuperating from a near-nervous crackdown have been totally different. At first, I simply wallowed in grief and self-pity until my bones ached with it. Having nothing to do seemed all at once a great relief as well as a slow death. I had no function in life, and was living for the sake of living. Wasting away my days into nothingness. Because there was no greater purpose in my being, no deadline to meet, no bills to pay.

But lately an idea has started to come to me. Perhaps just being is purpose enough for being. Maybe life is its own reward. Have we as a whole generation managed to misplace the simple joys of every day life? Are we all so engrossed in the rat-race that we do not even look at the scenery passing us by? As my mom just asked “What are you writing for?” Well, why write for anything? Why not write simply for the joy of writing.

These days I feel like baking coconut macaroons. I KNOW I can get better cookies for cheaper at Panera. But there seems in me to be a simple, basic need to cook, to feed, to nurture. For just the pure delight of it. I feel like taking baths in the middle of the day. Just to feel the sensation of water gliding down my body. I feel like taking walks. Running. We all talk about freedom and independence and world peace. But how many of us take the time to experience the freedom, elation and peace that comes from going for a run, feeling the wind against one's face?

I take delight in cleaning my room, because I actually look at my room now. I actually look at things, instead of looking past them. I spend hours on the internet surfing for recipes. I went to the library and rented Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" which I have wanted to read for so long, but never had the time.

And I am struck with the greatest irony of all. At the age of 25, with the taste of a failed marriage still fresh in my mouth, after having lost a home even before I could make it mine, I find myself being a home-maker. There is no reason, no purpose, no logic behind my becoming a home-maker at this point. Except that perhaps it is my time to be one.

After waiting so long to be a home-maker, I have finally learned my lesson. There is no need to wait to be a home-maker, because we all carry our homes inside of us. Life has to be lived because it is beautiful. And we must do things simply because we want to. At every moment we must savor our existence, not just exist for the moment.

So what if I am not a wife, or a mother, or a career-woman? I keep fantasizing about being pregnant, and perhaps in a way I am. I am giving birth to myself. I will take joy in the things I can have, and I will neither wait nor pine for what I cannot. In some ways, I feel more alive than ever.

“Qaleelum ma tashkuroon” – a line from the Quran meaning “But only a few are grateful”. Let me be one of those blessed few…