I think some people spend their whole lives mistaking their tenderness for something they need to outgrow.

I have spent years learning the different seasons that pass through me, how there always seems to be a storm within me.

I have been told to outgrow my seasons and tenderness. But I would rather feel everything than nothing at all. Even when it feels heavy and consuming. Because when I feel, I know I am still here.

Even when this tenderness consumes my mind and swallows me whole, with a heaviness that pushes down on me, I don’t want to lose it. Because beneath this weight is meaning. Meaning in the way I ache. Meaning in the way I care.

Meaning in how every flower reminds me why the rain was necessary. How every season reminds me that nothing blooms all at once.

For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to stories. Fiction or nonfiction, history or memoir, I have always searched for words that linger long after the story is finished. My shelves have slowly filled with novels, and I have spent countless evenings watching films that left me with different perceptions of the world. In many ways, I am made up of the stories I have loved.

But if I trace that love back to its beginning, it does not start in a library or the shelves in my room. It begins with the Qur’an.

The very first word revealed to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was اقْرَأْ (Iqra): Read.

Reading is much more than moving our eyes across words. Reading is a way to seek knowledge, a divine call to seek and understand words that give meaning to the most important stories. It is why humans have always been drawn to stories, because we tell them to reveal something about ourselves. We ask them to understand why. They teach us about love, grief, forgiveness, and all the things we can never seem to fully understand.

And it was through this love of stories that I found myself returning to Surah Yusuf, a story that Allah ﷻ describes as Ahsan al Qasas, the best of stories.

As a writer, I always think, what makes a story beautiful? Is it the way it is written, the emotions it holds? But after returning to Surah Yusuf, I realized it contained everything we search for in a great story.

A journey beginning with a dream, but a dream that did not directly lead him to fulfillment. Before the stars bowed before him, before he stood in a position of honor, he was placed on a path of darkness and hardship. The source of his greatest pain came from his own brothers, those who were meant to protect him. They left him in a well, abandoning him in a moment of betrayal that reflects a pain so deeply human: the wounds caused not by distant strangers, but by those closest to us. Yet the well he was thrown into was not the end of his story. It was only the beginning of a story written by Allah ﷻ.

Yet Yusuf’s journey did not become easier after the well. His beauty and character, qualities that should have been blessings, became the source of further trials. He was falsely accused and imprisoned, yet even in confinement, his heart remained unchanged. His patience remained. His faith remained.

And then there was Ya’qub عليه السلام, whose grief reminds us that patience does not mean the absence of sorrow. He wept, he longed, and he carried the pain of losing his son, yet his hope in Allah never disappeared. A story that began with separation eventually led to reunion, and when Yusuf finally stood before those who had wronged him, he chose forgiveness over revenge. He had every reason to seek justice for the pain he endured, yet he offered mercy instead.

I often find myself in confusion as to why I am where I am, why my kindness is taken for granted, why I walk a path with no clear sight of where it leads. But none of these are endings. Every hardship teaches me how to remain with more patience, more trust, and more faith. Because I remember stories like this. I remember Yusuf, a story that began with a dream yet traveled through darkness before reaching its fulfillment. I remember that the places that feel like endings may only be beginnings written by Allah. For indeed, “with hardship comes ease.” (94:5 6)

And perhaps this is why I read. I read because words have the power to carry us beyond ourselves, allowing us to enter lives we have never lived and understand hearts we have never known. What a privilege it is to sit with words, from the verses of the Qur’an to the novels stacked upon my shelves that expand my understanding of the world.

Stories that have taught me love, loss, patience, and hope. Stories that do not simply tell us what happened, but change the way we see ourselves and the world around us.

This is the beauty of stories.

I think about those who plant trees knowing they may never sit beneath their shade.

I met an older woman who planted olive trees in her home. She watered them, cared for them, and gave pieces of herself to something that held no guarantee. She did not know how tall they would grow, who would one day rest beneath their branches, or how many seasons they would survive. She only knew that they deserved to be cared for. And eventually, she had to leave, for her home was displaced.

The home that held her memories became a place she could no longer return to. The walls that held her laughter and prayers belonged to a past she could no longer step into. Yet the olive trees remained.

She never got to sit beneath the shade of the trees she planted. She never saw the branches stretch toward the sky or the roots grow deeper into the earth.

At first, I wondered if planting them had been meaningless. What was the purpose of pouring love into something you would never enjoy?

But perhaps I had misunderstood the purpose of planting. Perhaps the purpose was never only to sit beneath the shade, but to nurture something with love even when the harvest was not promised.

I think that is what Sabr taught me, that not everything I nurture is meant to return to me in the form I expect. Some things are planted for futures I will never see, for people I will never meet. Sabr and patience were never about waiting for the fruit to appear. It is trusting that the seed mattered even while it was buried beneath the soil.

We are all planting trees.

Every prayer whispered when no one hears. Every act of kindness that goes unnoticed. All the things we do hoping they will bloom.

But perhaps faith is knowing that not every beautiful thing is meant to be witnessed by the hands that created it.

Before I learned how to explain myself, I found myself through countless stories and lines from poems stacked upon my bookshelf. I recognized myself through films long before I recognized myself in a mirror. Art is not only found in museums, concert halls, or books. It is everywhere. It shapes the way we feel, the way we see, and even the love we learn to give.

Whether it was the first time I watched Dead Poets Society, the first time I learned about the devotion poured into Vincent van Gogh’s paintings, or the beautiful words of Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf, each left behind a small piece of themselves that became a part of me.

I spend so much of my life believing I discovered myself alone, forgetting that along the way, a poet taught me to embrace my emotions. A painter taught me to notice light, to linger in the stillness of nature, and to find beauty in the ordinary. A filmmaker taught me how to sit with silence, how a lingering glance or an unfinished sentence can say more than pages of dialogue ever could.

Perhaps that is what art has always been. Not simply something we consume, but something that reshapes us. We leave a theater carrying a different understanding of love. We close a novel with language for a feeling we could never name. We stand before a painting and realize the world has been beautiful all along, if only we had known where to look.

Because who would I be without the art that has quietly shaped the way I move through the world?

Beauty is far from the eyes of our standards. It lies in the art we fail to see all around. It is in the warm sun glistening upon the soft waves of the distant ocean. It lives in the leaves that sway with grace on their branches, moving as if they were never meant to be still.

It lies in the way passion fills humans, the way the messy and unfinished strokes of a painting hold meaning, the way the words poured into poems hold vulnerability, the way our eyes piece together the creativity we pour from within ourselves.

Beauty does not lie in a reflection, it lies in the ability to notice the art in simply being. The art of the sunlight softly touching my skin, the art of the soft breeze blowing through strands of my hair, reminding me to feel. It exists in the love poured into others, the way eyes glow when met by the ones we love.

Perhaps beauty was never a measurement, but something to witness. Something that exists within the small and quiet moments that are, in truth, much larger than they seem. In stories carried by strangers and laughter shared between friends, in dreams created from imagination. A world already filled with an enormous amount of art long before it reaches a canvas, and beauty that exists long before it reaches a mirror. It lives in the simple act of being able to see it

.

Sunlight beamed through the kitchen window, a warm embrace resting on my face as I stared down at the deep red color staining my fingers. The air held a scent of citrus and tart. Moving my hands in a constant motion, I stood patiently and continued peeling, listening to the seeds fall into the glass ceramic bowl. A soft sound that felt loud and impossible to ignore.  

My body was warm under the rays of light. I stood still in place. A fruit with many layers, layers that stained my hands and left a mess. I was not ready to wash the stains. I was not ready to erase what was left of what I loved. 

A mess that was worth having.  

The seeds kept falling until the layer was dull and empty. My fingers lingered on the pale structure that was stained with hues of warm pinks and reds. Ones that spread where the stubborn seeds clung. I didn't peel as well as she once did, my hands much smaller and less steady. Her hands held faint wrinkles with warm splashes when she peeled each seed. Hands that held more than the fruit, ones that carried my laughter and tears. I reach for each seed, holding a piece of her back in my hands.

Moving my gaze to the fruit basket beneath the wooden cabinets, I saw no oranges or lemons. It was filled with more of them, some more red than others. Father had always run out of fruits, but never pomegranates. They were all that we had left of her. 

The glass bowl filled to the rim with small vibrant seeds. I made my way to the fridge marked with postcards and pictures and stored the bowl away, stacking it upon the other seed filled bowls. No one touched the pomegranates.

It came to me like a distant dream, one where I was small and filled with joy. Running beneath the warm sun as I stumbled over the colorful blocks and toys scattered across the floor. I felt her presence as she stood tall, humming and peeling. I listened to the sound of the knife cutting the fruit as the old Arab melodies from the record player filled the room. A sound that left reminders of her warm presence that felt like home. The air held that sweet, tart scent mixed with the smell of the Bakhoor sticks that sat on the counter. 

She had peeled the last one, ignoring the oranges and lemons that sat in the basket. They were not the ones she loved. I remember the red stains on her fingers. How she wiped them against the towel while talking about this fruit that symbolized paradise and blessing. Her fingers tracing the shapes of their seeds as if they held all her warmth and love in place. A memory that stuck to me like the red stains on her fingers, one that struggled to fade.

The air felt dull and empty so I took the bowl out of the fridge, hoping it would bring the scent back into the kitchen. I held it in my hands for a moment before placing it on the counter. The floor that once was scattered with memories held nothing but silence, like the record player had forgotten its sound and the air its warmth.

But the fruit basket still glowed. Grief finds shelter in memory. Father made sure it always held pomegranates. Nothing else. 

Hours melted into days that slowly turned into months. I sat in front of the cool breeze from the distant ocean as strands of my hair blew in the light wind. Time was not real here. There was never a rush to finish anything. The tall trees kept standing still as they grew day by day. The vibrant green grass beneath me continued growing in its own time, waiting for the warm sun to shine above.

Days would pass and the waves would continue coming in ripples while the pale pinks and blues of the sky mixed together beautifully. A loud breeze blew through the dark and light greens of the leaves on the branches, a rhythm that felt so slow and patient. It was nothing like the hurried steps of passing strangers walking nearby.

The strangers passing by and I had not yet seen the beauty in stillness, a stillness the world had always held, one I did not realize I should have held onto too. I once lived my days in a constant rush, like everything was held by a ticking clock with no ending.

But nothing is meant to be lived in a rush. If the world grows with stillness then maybe I was never failing for moving slowly. Maybe I had spent too long treating life like something to catch before it disappeared, instead of something to feel while it was here.

For as long as I can remember I lived with the pressure to appear functional while internally collapsing. No matter how many reminders I told myself about how temporary the world is, I still found myself lost within a maze of feelings that felt endless. Although I knew that nothing is eternal, even my very being has its time.

Yet this maze of what felt eternal began fooling me into staying. I never wanted to find a way out. I became attached to what felt familiar, even though this familiarity did nothing but destroy me. It became the closest thing I had to certainty. I knew the shape of my sadness better than I knew the shape of healing. And this maze no longer scared me because I had memorized every dark corner of its trail.

But every lost person finds their way and every maze has its exit. What consumes you is not what defines you. I had spent time that felt endless adapting to a suffering that I convinced myself was my identity rather than a condition. But it was not who I am, nor who you are.

The heaviness in your chest is not proof that life will always feel this way. It is only proof that you are carrying something human. And just as humanity is not eternal, feelings are not eternal. With what time is left to you, there is still so much of the world untouched by sadness. So much life that exists outside of it, even if it does not feel reachable yet.

There is so much within me, a vast amount of creativity that holds all the lives I dream of living. Yet I live none of them. Slowly, I began losing my love for the very thing that once made me feel alive. Because everything I want was lingering behind the doubt that grew around me, constantly consuming my every thought.

Doubt settles into our minds without us even noticing. It shows up in every accomplishment, every failure, every milestone. Creating a wall that blocks us from seeing what we have already created and what we are capable of becoming. It makes you think it has killed what was once within you.

As I am writing this, it is here. Telling me that the words poured onto my pages do not matter, that I should not continue writing. It is an echo in a quiet room, one that feels so loud and constant. But it is all simply lies.

Because doubt is not a reflection of reality, it is a reflection of fear. For I began to notice how often I was not actually living, just simply watching myself hesitate. Standing outside my own decisions, like I was not in control of my own life. I mixed that fear with safety and watched it turn smaller and smaller until it became a cage I stopped noticing.

The doubt I wear had tried to kill the creativity within me. But that creativity has always belonged to me, even in the moments where I trusted fear more than what I held. For creativity has never left me, and everything I want was never gone. It was only hidden behind the doubt I chose to believe. But I will no longer mistake it for truth.

The love we look for has always come from within us. For how could you crave something you think you don’t hold, when that love is constantly flowing through you.

From the small moments you always miss. Moments where you read a book you love, listen to a song you like, do the things you desire. Like watching the sunlight shift across your room in the quiet of the afternoon. These are moments where you are falling in love with your life.

And I realized it is not the actions itself, not the books or the music I love, but what I feel about those things. The passion and happiness that comes from within me when I think of the things I love.

The constant desire to keep going and to keep loving despite the feeling of going nowhere or being pushed away. For I know I will always be going somewhere, and that my life will unfold beautifully in its own way.

I was always looking for reasons to feel content, always searching for external desires that did nothing but give me temporary joy. Ones that felt like unexpected waves, pulling me up only to leave me drifting again.

But it was the internal joy, the contentment I gained when I realized I had always been in love with my own life.

What does it mean to have Sabr?

I used to think Sabr simply meant patience. But over time I began to understand that it carries something deeper. It carries a quiet strength, the kind that allows us to remain patient and persevere, trusting that hardship will not last forever.

We live in a world that holds an intense amount of injustice and despair, one that often makes us question what it even is we are meant to stay patient for.

But I learned that carrying sabr is not about accepting injustice. It is about refusing to let injustice turn my heart into something bitter or hopeless.

It is allowing myself the courage to speak the truth and stand for what is right, while protecting the softness of my heart in a world that so often tries to harden it.

It is more than patience. It is resistance. It is the quiet act of pulling back from a world that constantly pushes us toward despair. Because the truth is that this life is temporary, what weighs on us today often feels permanent, but time has a way of reminding us that nothing truly stays.

And in a world where nothing is guaranteed, impatience begins to lose its meaning.

What is meant for us will eventually find us, and what passes us was never ours to hold. Remembering the beauty in this makes waiting feel less like suffering and more like a quiet contentment for the way my life will unfold, and for the peace that slowly comes to those who learn to trust the timing of their lives.

It is a weakness not to have empathy. A weakness our society lives upon. For empathy should be rooted within us, not selective empathy, but empathy for the people. For everyone. It is impossible to have our eyes open and our hearts not broken. Impossible to pick and choose the lives we think matter. For who are we to determine lives, to put them on scales, measuring them from who matters to who least matters.

It is a human right to live, to sit in class with a pencil in our grasp, building ambitions and dreams. And yet, we act as if our own rights make us worthy, while watching the rights of others be stripped away without question. We convince ourselves it is someone else's problem, someone else's life, someone else's suffering. But in doing so, we betray the very humanity we claim to protect.

The true nature of humanity is to feel another's pain as your own. To take the care and love we have for our kids and our families and show it to the rest. To see the suffering of others not as distant news or someone else's problem, but as part of the same world we live in.

We cannot pick and choose who deserves compassion. To do so is to betray everything that makes us human. Empathy is not optional. It is not selective. For we are nothing if our empathy has limits.

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”

― Franz Kafka

Our self-expression will never hold certainty, for there is a continuous gap between our thoughts, speech, and writing. I tend to think differently than I speak, to create expectations that rarely match their outcomes. It took me a while to understand that my uncertainty is not a weakness, rather, it is the part of me that feared failure, yet taught me to keep showing up to my own work. For every piece of writing I create, every piece of art I paint, every piece of music I play on my old guitar, it all begins with my uncertainty; uncertainty that I may not know what it is I am creating or achieving.

I had always been passionate about holding as much creativity as possible, yet my doubt always held me back. I remember telling my dad one time that I never believed I would make it as a writer, for I was unsure of whether my words would ever reach anyone, or if my ideas would ever make sense outside of my own head. As my father looked at me, he told me the words I continue to carry to this day: “But how are we ever to be certain when our creations transform before they are even finished?” I had begun to realize how our thoughts constantly shift as we speak, and how our words evolve as we write. I understood that to create anything meaningful, I had to embrace not knowing what would come next.

Although it was scary allowing myself to accept uncertainty, I realized that embracing not knowing was how I learned to trust myself and my creations. That doubt is part of the process of creation, we doubt everything we see, yet we choose to continue anyway.

You have to be willing to try new things to overcome uncertainty.

When I began my journey as a writer, I had always pushed away the thought of trying something I wasn’t sure about. I had never explored different forms of art, for the fear of failure lived inside me. I never wrote in different genres or expanded beyond what I thought I knew. But there came a day when I told myself: how are we to know we will succeed if we never try?

I had become a better writer when I discovered new forms of art. Although I wasn’t good at those things, I still allowed myself to try something new, and that taught me that I was much stronger than the fear inside me. If we never accept uncertainty, we will never know what we are capable of. Trying new things, even when we feel unsure or awkward, allows us to grow and discover our many possibilities. Every attempt, every failure, it’s all part of our journey.

I have lived a life of doubt, watching my figs turn brown and old. Afraid that I may never be who I want to be, for I am unsure who that person is.

But I have learned that you will never know who you are until you step into each one of your figs and choose them, even with the fear of failure, because that fear is still a teacher, one that teaches you more about who you are becoming.

Though I have watched my fig tree burn down, I will be sure to plant a new seed and watch the new figs grow. For they are born from within me, not for me. They are born from my curiosity, from my passions and longing. To ignore them would simply be ignoring the parts of myself, the ones that make me who I am.

The pursuit of our passions is much more important than becoming. For each fig I reach for teaches me something; it teaches me what I love and fear, what I can endure. Even the ones I fail to hold leave something behind, and they make me who I am.

I may never become all the things I once dreamed of, but I would rather live reaching than spend my life wondering.

The birds move through our skies, traveling to destinations they do not need permission to reach. They are brought onto this earth to travel, for movement is an instinct. An instinct that should be granted to humans.

For we are all born on similar soil, divided by oceans that have no differences. We move as life moves, making our way through an earth that we are allowed to stand on.

So why is it a crime for people born elsewhere to exist beyond the invisible lines that are drawn? Why is it a crime for them to seek life where they can? To raise children, children who all love and dream the same. What a brutal injustice, to shatter the dreams of children and wrench them from the parents who brought them into this world.

What kind of world creates lines between humans, humans born into this same earth, trying to exist freely?

This world belongs for us to move freely, without fear. But it has been turned into one filled with violence. Systems are built to punish people for simply existing, for moving across the soil they have every right to exist on. ICE doesn’t enforce laws. It enforces fear. It separates. It treats people as numbers and not human beings with hearts, stories, and families.

A society filled with disappointment, one that turns a blind eye when it is not them who is suffering, but someone else. As if human lives are worth less the moment they don’t belong to us.

And yet, no wall, no system, no fear can erase what is instinctual. To migrate, to seek life where we can, this is a human right, written into our existence just as it is for the birds in our sky. This will always be our right.