It seems that between social media and the real world, every act, behavior, and mannerism has come under scrutiny for being performative. Every person is placed under the microscope and examined for signs that their appearance doesn’t match what’s underneath. We have increasingly become focused and intentional about both signaling and reading signals. What we wear, what we drink, what we post/consume on social media, and who we surround ourselves with are all factors that signal something about our identities.

The girlies wearing Alo and drinking matcha are trying to signal their health and wellness. The men wearing Patagonia vests and walking around Midtown are trying to signal their elite finance bro status. People who sit in a cafe with their nose in a book are trying to signal their intellectualism. And the list goes on.

It’s no mystery that the way we present ourselves says something about who we are. That has always been true. But along the way, people have gone from passively observing to hypervigilant, all while the gap between who we really are and who we present ourselves to be continued to grow.

And the word performative was born.

The Etymology of the Word

The word performative dates back to the 1950s. This was when the word came to exist to describe the act of doing something as opposed to the thing that has been done; a breakthrough attributed to the British philosopher J.L. Austin. In the 1990s, Judith Butler used it to describe the idea that gender is a performance. In doing so, she made an essential shift from relating the word to language to relating it to identity.

Then, in 2020, the phrase “performative activism” was coined to describe brands, politicians, and institutions that engaged in activist movements to gain points with their relevant stakeholders. This is where the word reemerged most similar to how we know it now.

This leads us up to today. In 2025, Merriam-Webster cited “performative” as one of the top searched words of the year. Well into 2026, the word remains as relevant as ever and even paved the way for other terms like “larping” (adopting a hyper-specific aesthetic) to enter the modern vocabulary sphere.

Breaking Down the Performance

We’ve already established that we’re all performing something; whether or not that performance is authentic is another question. But the better question remains: why does it bother people when someone is performative? Based on my primary research, I’ve developed a scientific breakdown of this discomfort.

For every person performing, there is a gap between who they are and how they present themselves. The smaller the gap, the more authentic they are. The bigger the gap, the more performative they are. This leaves every observer with the task of deciphering the size of the performer’s gap.

If someone exhibits signs of being performative but fails to prove their authenticity, they are cast with the label by a particular group of people. These people are searching for authenticity, in themselves and in others. They want to believe that they are not being fooled by the people they encounter. Put simply, they want to know the people they’ve pursued relationships with, and they want to know them in their truest form. So when someone presents themselves as someone that they’re not, it almost becomes a trap to lure in a certain demographic, but fail to live up to it on a deeper level.

Furthermore, performing as a certain demographic but failing to be authentic to it dilutes the authenticity and misrepresents every person that rightfully belongs to that demographic. For example, reading has increasingly become a status symbol. In today’s day and age, being able to foster enough discipline to stay off your phone long enough to engage with a piece of literature is considered a luxury. This has created space for people to carry around books in hopes of displaying this status symbol. But the more people carry books without actually reading them, the less meaning this symbol will hold, leading us straight into the practice of “performative intellectualism”.

On the other hand, if someone is exhibiting signs of being performative and successfully proves their authenticity, some people will still label them as performative. These people are not searching for authenticity; they are battling it. Watching someone else show up and live their truth makes them deeply uncomfortable because they can’t do so themselves. Their own inauthenticity prevents them from allowing others to be genuine. For example, men who shame other men for drinking matcha are not actually uncomfortable with the act itself but with the fact that other men feel comfortable doing it shamelessly.

Ultimately, performing has become a battle with authenticity, both internally and externally.

Can you still fake it till you make it?

Since everyone has become the performance police, getting caught being someone you’re not has become riskier than ever. But it’s important to note the significance of pretending in transcending one’s current identity.

Phrases like “fake it till you make it” and “practice makes perfect” are definitely overdone, but they both hold the sentiment of showing up as something before you necessarily embody it. Many disciplines have outlined this as a key driver of growth. People make decisions based on who they tell themselves they are. Someone tells themselves that they are fit, so they go to the gym to make this claim believable. The identity presumes the decision. This means that saying who we are comes before being who we are. It’s not a lack of authenticity; it’s an affirmative exercise. Because not everyone who’s performing is trying to fool someone. Some people are just trying to grow into a better version of themselves.

Fear of perception is stopping so many people from stepping outside of their comfort zone and even stripping the comfort that already exists within it. People don’t know how to act anymore. They don’t do what they want in fear of being perceived and labeled, nor do they try new things for the same reason. This forces them into a state of paralysis where everything feels like a lose-lose situation. Even authenticity stops holding the weight I previously described it to hold.

A message to the audience

Ultimately, we are all perpetuating the performance culture by both performing and sitting in the audience. We pay attention to how we present ourselves and pay attention to how others show up. And we also pay attention to the fact that others are paying attention to us, creating an endless loop of hypervigilance and hyperawareness. But the truth is, if every person redirected their attention to themselves, focused on their own authenticity, and used their ability to perform to accelerate their own growth, there wouldn’t be such a thing as a performance culture. After all, there can only be a stage and a performance if someone is watching.

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In the audience sits my future self, who will surely have something to say about how I’m choosing to spend this time. In the audience sit my family, who are eager for me to wrap things up and get back home. In the audience sit my friends, who want to soak up the little bliss remaining of their ignorance. In the audience sits the city, as it demands my utmost presence and attention while I still have that to give.

The stares are paralyzing, propelling me inward, where only my thoughts have mobility. Checklists, reservations, seat selection, extra baggage. Everything must fall into place.

I’ve devised a comprehensive and perfectly logical system for packing up my room. Everything falls into one of three categories:
1. To be packed
2. To be donated
3. To be thrown away

Every item in my room can be neatly labeled and placed into its respective pile. But what about the things that don’t fall into any of these categories? What about everything outside the four walls of my room?

The places I can’t pack into my suitcase to take back home. The memories I can’t donate to someone who might need them more than I do. The people I can’t throw away but have to leave behind.

As much as I try to make this closure organized and sequential, the traces of the life I built fail to fit neatly into a box. But all I wish is to seal this box shut and mail it to the farthest corner of the world, where I’ll send off my past to settle. A box that someone will one day open and find a vibrant life from which its owner was ripped away.

Because how else do you leave a life that will never leave you?

To leave means to go away from a place, person, or situation, or to allow something to remain behind. But no matter where I go, I will carry New York forward. Not the way you carry a burden, but the way you carry your name. Effortless and certain.

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When I got to the cafe, I told my friend I had a fun activity for us. When I pulled out the supplies and placed them on the table, she was ecstatic. She started flipping through the pages, eager to choose which illustration she would color. Her excitement was pure and childlike. Thirty minutes later, I got a FaceTime call from my mom, and when I flipped the camera to show her what we were up to, she exclaimed, “Why didn’t you take me to color when I was in New York?!” in true FOMO fashion.

A few days later, I woke up to the following text:

Soon, I was getting requests from all my friends to bring along my colors to every outing.

All this enthusiasm took me by surprise. But it was a major indicator of how much we were all craving something more… something different… something we can’t quite put our fingers on.

Sitting down and coloring with a friend is a nostalgic activity, and in a world where we are constantly trying to heal or connect with our inner child, it presents a simple yet effective method to do so. But more importantly, it’s an activity where our hands are occupied while our minds are free. Most of the time, we try to fill any and every second of our days with something to consume in fear of being left alone with our thoughts. We’ve strapped our brains to a seat and keep force-feeding them content, but the brain needs room to breathe too. This breathing room is exactly where it’s supposed to process emotions, consolidate information, and generate ideas. Without it, we are wired to a dangerous dopamine loop, lose our critical thinking skills, and lose access to our creativity.

From a dopamine perspective, what makes this type of activity different is that it provides a slow release. In a panel talk led by Jonathan Haidt, NYU Stern Professor and NYT bestselling author of ‘The Anxious Generation’, he explained the difference between slow dopamine and fast dopamine. Fast dopamine comes from activities that provide instant gratification, while slow dopamine comes from activities that require consistent effort before providing a reward. Scrolling, texting, and online games all provide fast dopamine, and our brains have learned to search for quick hits, which is why our attention spans have become so fried. But sitting down and participating in prolonged activities that are ultimately rewarding, like coloring, offers dopamine in a healthier and more sustainable dose for your mind and body.

On top of what we consume on our own, content has also become a key component in how and what we communicate.

Lately, every time I receive a WhatsApp notification from my dad, it’s a link to an Instagram reel. At first, I would joke to my mom and my friends that he’s too chronically online, but then I started to observe a pattern in what he was sharing.

On our family group, he shares the reels he finds most relatable to our dynamic as a family. But to each family member, he sends reels that contain a message that’s unique to them.

To my mom, he shares parenting tips.
To my sister, he sends college admissions tips.
To me, he shares all the latest happenings in the city, from the Cyclospora outbreak to where to watch the World Cup final.

That’s when I started to realize that what he consumed was less about him and more about us. His algorithm was better at keeping him up to date with NYC news than mine was, despite me living here and him living thousands of miles away. And in an effort to reach us in the way we would be most receptive, my dad became “chronically online”.

That’s when I started to wonder: how much of that is true for the rest of us? How many of us are online because we feel like that’s the best way to reach our loved ones? How many of us have long-distance relationships that are being held together by the string of a late-night doom-scroll? And most dangerous of all, how many of us find it easier to communicate our thoughts and feelings through other people’s words (content)?

Somehow it’s become easier to understand and be understood by a reel/TikTok/YouTube short (you name it!) that ranges from 30-60 seconds in length. No one is interested in actually having a conversation. Because why would I put myself through the trouble of fully developing my thoughts and proceeding to articulate them when someone else can do it for me? And why would I put myself through the trouble of listening to someone’s entire train of thought when I can get the gist of it in a fraction of the time?

Our love, laughs, concern, and pain are all neatly packaged into bite-sized exchanges. But I’m petitioning to bring back sitting down and sharing a paced, multi-course meal.

Walk me through your earliest memory of when you started to hate tomatoes instead of sending me a #tomatohater reel.

Tell me every excruciating detail of how you spent your day yesterday instead of sending me your day in my life TikTok.

Take me to your favorite spot by the water instead of sending me a reel of someone else who went there.

It may be easier to reach for what you know will provide instant gratification to both yourself and others, but that’s the whole point. Efforts to connect become all the more meaningful when they require real effort and raw emotion. Disconnecting has truly become a lost art in a world of constant digital connection. In the early days of the internet, people used to escape the world through the internet. Now, people escape the internet through the world. It really makes you wonder which is the subject and which is the object; a subject/object Freaky Friday.

So given the choice to share a reel or share real life, choose real life. And given the choice between instant gratification and slower rewards, choose to slow down.

Life will already pass you by without even noticing, so don’t let an algorithm accelerate it for you.

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I say as if, but it does.

Within the 2 minutes and 21 seconds of symphonies before she even starts bringing Nizar Qabbani’s Words (كلمات) to life, my own words, start to pour out of me like water sprouts out of a newly dug well.

Most of the time I listen to the song and hear nothing of what she says. It takes an immediate positioning to the rear end of my attention, while my mind pushes forward all that I’ve been struggling to articulate.

Every time she goes back to singing, كلماتٍ ليست  كالكلمات، I’m submerged deeper into what I’ve written, deeper into my own thought, deeper into its conversion to words, and at the same time refuged from sinking in my own water and instead I sink in Majida’s.

Today, I surrendered to her waters. Today, I actually stopped to listen, and I found that more than anything the song is about the power of words to deceive. And before deception, to move, not in the physical sense of the word, but in the sense of changing emotional state. And after movement, deception, both, or neither, their curse of leaving you with nothing else.

She describes being transcended into the clouds, a mobility that is a product of mere words, but they are not merely words. They are words not like other words.

And how fitting is that? Because even though I never stopped to listen to the narrative of the lyrics beyond the one verse, I used it as a tool to empower my words and their ability to move others.

Because every word that manifests itself as an emotion is a word not like other words.

When the song ends, I’m left with my own words. Perfectly fashioned to the ending of the song:

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We walked into a cafe on Hudson Street, and as soon as we opened the door, a dog ran up to Kinda and started jumping to put his paws on her lap. She played with him for a while, then stood up to go order her coffee. His owner was sitting at the table right next to the door, and that’s when he tugged at his leash so he would leave Kinda alone. A gesture of habit, it seemed, making it clear that he would have otherwise played with her for as long as she would have entertained him.

We sat down at a nearby table and kept our eyes on him. Not because we’d taken a particular interest in him, but because it was almost like he had demanded that attention. Every time someone walked in, he ran up to them to greet them with the same excitement he showed us. Jumping up to say hi, running around in circles, or even licking their leg. Welcoming his affection, they would kneel to pet him and play with him for a while.

Naturally, this dog became the main topic of our conversation, as we continued to observe this pattern every time someone walked in.

“He’s getting so much love”, said Kinda, in awe of how he’d managed to captivate every person that walked in.

“It’s because he wants to be loved”, I responded.

The dog was able to ask exactly what he wanted of people just through his behavior, specifically that initial interaction. It was clear that he wanted love, but he gave just as much of it as he received.

This says a lot about most things one might ask of the world. Our ability to give has a direct impact on our ability to receive. It’s not enough to know what you want; you have to be willing to give it too.

Those who give,
they have a good time because they are a good time,
they see light because they reflect the light,
they are so loved because they have that love.

For the past year, I’ve been in a perpetual state of grief. Grieving New York, grieving my life here, grieving myself. But in the process, I’ve completely forgotten the fact that my love for this city, this life, this version of me, came from within. It was love that I gave before it ever gave me anything.

In the past couple of years, I’ve ended up in many conversations about New York. They came quite naturally. People either asked me how I found the city or took it upon themselves to share their own experience. Some absolutely love New York, and others completely despise it. It’s not like the city is exclusively lovable or hateable, but the way we feel about places, people, and ourselves is a reflection of what we carry.

Some people look at New York and see piles of trash on the sidewalk, suffocating smells stinking up the streets, and a population moving at a pace one significant figure faster than the maximum speed.

Other people look at New York and see a delicate balance between urban and natural landscapes, the smell of ambition and possibility fragrancing the air, and a population eager to create a meaningful life out of whatever they have access to.

In the difference lies the point. We are capable of seeing a vast range of things wherever we look. And while what we look at might be the same, what we see is almost always different.

That’s when I realized, everything I ask of life is for me to ask of myself. When places shift, people change, and circumstances impose themselves, I am the constant within them and what I have to offer is what life will offer me.

This whole time, I’ve been afraid that when I leave New York, I’ll stop seeing the world the same way I do when I’m here. And that life will stop meeting me with the same generosity it has here. But the truth is, while what I look at will change, what I see doesn’t have to. And where life meets me has nothing to do with where I am and everything to do with who I choose to be.

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Maternal is the way I am attached to my younger siblings,
the way everyone can always tell I’m the oldest daughter,
the way I carry my loved ones in my heart,
the way they occupy a fraction of my thinking at all times,
the way I celebrate their accomplishments more than I celebrate my own,
the way I worry for them more than I worry for myself,
the way I know my first son’s name,
the way I’ve met him in my dreams.

Contrary to my mother’s beliefs, I don’t believe that women become mothers when they carry a fetus to term. I believe that motherhood begins far earlier, if at all. Motherhood is a journey that starts not with the act of carrying a child but with the way a woman carries herself through the world. Like a gene that exists in your DNA but can either be triggered into existence or can continue to slumber indefinitely. Because motherhood isn’t pivotal, it’s visceral. That is also why many women fail miserably to be maternal despite undergoing the processes of carrying and birthing.

A couple of months ago, my dad was taking a late flight. It was routine, nothing out of the ordinary. Usually, he texts at every checkpoint. We all do when we’re flying.

“On the way to the airport.”
“Checked in.”
“Gate.”
“Boarded.”
“Take-off.”
“Landed.”
“Baggage.”
“On the way home.”

We made it to the “take-off” text and wished him a safe flight.

A few hours later, I realized I never received the latter chain of updates. Between my messy Ramadan sleep schedule and the time difference between Jeddah and New York, I lost track of time.

Immediate panic set in.

I texted him, and there was only one check mark next to my message. My anxiety multiplied. I called my mother. She didn’t pick up. Then I tried my sister, both sisters. No one picked up. Then, I placed my last hope in my chronically online brother, but he didn’t pick up either.

No.
One.
Picked.
Up.

I called again, and again, and again. Alternating between them on my “Recent Calls” page like a pianist playing staccato notes, the sound of the line ringing symphonizing my anxiety.

With each unanswered call, the grip my fear had on me dug deeper into my skin. I have no accurate recollection of how long it took to get a hold of someone at home. To me, it felt like a hot and excruciating eternity.

Eventually, my mom picked up one of my FaceTime calls, greeting me with a confused, puffy morning face. Immediately, her confusion settled my anxiety because it meant that my call was something to be confused about; that there was no devastating news waiting for me on her end of the line, warranting my call.

Still, I needed to hear it in words. Before she could utter a greeting, I asked in one quick breath, “Where’s Baba?”

In a very motherly fashion, she responded, “What’s wrong?” because there must be something wrong if I’m summoning my father with such urgency. And there was. His absence. But in that moment, I had no patience to ration with.

I asked again, “Where’s Baba?!”, with more assertion this time.

“He’s sleeping”, she said calmly, still confused.

I could breathe again. I hung up, and with my next exhale came a sob.

Maternal reactions, like fear, can be irrational. And in this moment, my irrationality was a key attribute of my motherhood. It could not be bargained with.

My phone buzzed next to me on the bed, interrupting my cry of relief. I wiped the tears impairing my vision to check who had texted me, regaining a momentary sense of calm. It was my dad, finally responding to the text I sent hours ago.

Immediately, I was brought back to tears. From behind blurry eyes, I sent him a chain of angry text messages.

“Did you arrive?”, I asked; the message that initially landed with one check mark.

“I arrived”, he said; his long-overdue response.

“Why didn’t you send a message?”
“I was really worried”

“I arrived at 3:45 am and my phone was dead”
“Sorry to make you worry”
“I was not thinking straight”

At that moment, I was not a daughter. I was a mother.
At that moment, I was brought back to every instance when I had been a source of anxiety for my mother, to every instance when my mother said,
“You’ll understand one day, when you become a mother.”
At that moment, I understood her, and she understood me.
Because one person understanding the other is enough to render them both understood.

But what makes this anxiety maternal rather than filial?

The answer is simple. It’s my mother.
My worry was a carbon copy of her worry.

The truth is, she is the very person who has made me believe that motherhood exists both within and beyond the mother-child relationship.

Her maternal instincts extend far beyond the four walls of our home. They extend and multiply into her parents’ home each time she mothers her own mother. They extend and multiply into her sisters’ homes each time she calls to check on them. They extend and multiply into our neighbors’ homes each time she bakes and sends over a loaf of sourdough bread. They extend and multiply into the home of every new mother in the family each time she offers to teach them how to bathe their newborn.

My mother was a mother long before I was born,
and her motherhood continues to extend far beyond me.
I am a mother, a daughter;
my mother’s daughter.

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A bench that held me while I cried;
for a reason or another.
Over a friend or my mother.

The truth is,
I don’t remember that version of myself,
until I sit where she sat;
until I walk where she walked;
until I stand where she stood.

New York holds more than just memories,
more than just people.

New York holds every version of myself
that died before I could become me.

Every version of myself
that was buried
in the routines I left behind.

Every version of myself
that was memorialized
in the thoughts I outgrew.

I wonder,
how will I stand at the tombstone
of who I used to be
when I no longer live
on the same land she was buried in?

So I mourn the land she was buried in,
I mourn her,
and I am disillusioned by her martyrdom.

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For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to “soak up” this life I know I’ll have to leave soon. I bask in the sun a little longer. I walk to my favorite cafe a little slower. I sip on my matcha a little longer. I turn the pages of my book a little slower. As if a little slower and a little longer will accumulate to a different outcome.

The semester ended with eight members in the group chat. And the deeper we got into summer, the smaller the group chat got. I hold the curse and the privilege of being last to leave, which means I’m going to be here for every goodbye.

For the past month, my mind has been a compilation of flight dates.

“I leave on the 8th.”
“I leave on the 26th.”
“I leave on the 18th.”
“I leave on the 30th.”

And every goodbye forces me out of the bliss of my ignorance. Every goodbye forces me to confront the fact that my time here is finite and the finish line is fast approaching.

Right now, we’re at the smallest size a group chat can be. Three members. There are more of us gone than there are left. That’s not many more people until I’m next. It feels like the first day of class, when everyone has to share a fun fact, except I’m the last to speak and what I prepared to say is the same as what everyone before me has said.

I try to remind myself how I love the city; how comfortable I am in solitude. But nothing seems to be able to soothe this anxiety.

At once, I am anxious for what my life is going to look like, and I am grieving the life I still hold. Maybe that’s the issue. I’m in a constant state of limbo. Never quite able to be where I am and never quite able to be okay with not being here.

My departure, my struggle, my feelings. None possess any originality whatsoever. And yet, that’s what hurts the most. My empathy lends me a temporary view into that experience, and I think of the series of “lasts” that will precede my own flight date.

Last dinner, last matcha, last walk home, last night in my room, last Uber to JFK, last flight home — a one-way ticket.

My stomach churns, and my tear ducts swell up. And I’m forced to bring myself back to the present moment.

A moment in limbo.
Distracted and discontent.

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In the past 22 years of my life,
I have never missed his birthday.

Now my attendance rate has dropped
from 100% to 95%,
a deviation from the constant.

He has missed 1 or 2 of mine over the years.
But the few times he missed a birthday,
it was always for a very “adult” reason.
At least that’s how I perceived it as a child.

Now, as I shift roles from the missed to the misser,
I realize that I am the one at the mercy of a so-called “adult” reason:
completing my master’s degree.

As a child, “adult” was synonymous with “important,”
but the more adult I become,
the more I question what’s truly important.

A master’s degree?
A job?
A dream career?
A beautiful city?

And the more adult I become,
the more I declare what’s truly important.

My father’s birthday.
My mother’s sourdough baking hobby.
My brother’s dream football career.
My sister’s obsession with Michael Jackson.

Today, I sit here and sing “Happy Birthday” over FaceTime,
where the degree of my presence is directly correlated
with the quality of my Wi-Fi connection,
and I begin to understand the duality of the word “miss”.

Because to miss is to fail to arrive at something,
but to miss is also to feel sad at the lack of presence of something.

And yet,
the presence I crave
but can’t have
is the result
of my own
failure to be present.

In Arabic, this duality is split into different words.

To miss
in the form of failure
التفويت

To miss
in the form of yearning
الإشتياق

So I miss,
I miss,
and I am missed.

أفوّت
وأشتاق
.ويشتاق إلي

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I got out of bed, slowly but urgently. I walked to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and started to do my skincare. As I stood in front of the mirror, the moisturizer on my face suddenly felt more moist than usual. That’s when I realized that tears started streaming down my face, confronting my reflection in the mirror, the same one I had just been looking at, but hadn’t really seen.

I put down my moisturizer and walked over to my parents’ room through the connecting door. My dad was roaming around the room aimlessly, almost in anticipation of my approach. Without saying anything, I walked up to him and just before I threw myself into his arms for a hug, he caught a glimpse of my face and knew exactly what was going on.

I began to sob.

It was the end of the trip they’d planned in honor of my graduation, and I was leaving to go back to New York, while they had different arrangements to return to Jeddah.

2 destinations. 2 homes. 1 family.

I quietly walked back into my room, packed the rest of my toiletries, treading softly so as not to wake my siblings up. My mom walked in to grab something from my sister’s suitcase and caught me sniffling my way through the last couple of items that needed to be packed.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Her question was familiar, routine even. It had occurred on every other occasion of my departure when I moved at the rhythm of my anxiety. She knew that rhythm well.

“Yes”, I whispered, still trying not to wake up my siblings.

I zipped up my suitcase, oriented it upright, and rolled it to the next room. As I stood there rummaging through my belongings, my youngest sister walked out behind me and ran into my arms, eyes still shut against the harsh light of the morning sun. She hugged me with her head on my left shoulder, then pulled back to look me in the eyes as she said, “I’m going to miss you”, and then put her head on my right shoulder to continue her embrace, as if making sure to cover all her bases. Then, she quietly let go of me and walked back into the room and got back into bed.

The softness of the interaction took me back to a conversation I had with her earlier in the trip. She had asked me where I lived before moving to New York. At first, I thought she was being silly, but then it hit me that I had moved to New York before she turned 2 years old, and she had no recollection of the time when we lived under the same roof. I told her, “I lived in Jeddah with you.” She nodded quietly to digest the new piece of information. She followed up with, “And when you come back from New York, you’re going to live in Riyadh?” I was stunned by the maturity of her curiosity. She wasn’t asking to object to the choices I’d made; she was asking to understand. She gave no emotional reactions to anything I had said. That’s when I realized, this is what she’s used to. My departure. My absence.

The same soft maturity she exhibited in that conversation appeared again in this goodbye. Unlike previous ones, there were no objections, no tears, and no prying her out of my arms. Yet somehow, this felt more devastating than the latter.

Everything about this goodbye was familiar, and that’s what hurt me the most. Retreating to my dad’s embrace to let go of the burden I was carrying. Attempting to conceal my emotions from my mom. Waking my siblings up to, “Maryam is leaving.”

I’d drawn a life that was traced with the ink of departure. And every time, I ask myself:
Are the places we want to be in worth being without the people we want to be with?

I walk away, my loved ones behind me, without an answer.

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The Class of 2026 minus one.

I spent my morning at my favorite cafe, finishing up my last deliverable over a cup of matcha. Perhaps pretending that this is the end of any other final’s season at the end of any other semester.

But the truth is, as much as I defer my reckoning with this truth, it is in fact not the end of any other semester. It is the end of my last semester in New York. Everything around me is screaming that truth, from my parents being in town to the purple gowns that color the streets of the city. I look at those graduates, dressed up in their gowns, taking pictures in the park and all over campus. I hold my gaze not because I relate to them, but because being embraced by that purple gown is a concept that remains as foreign to me now as it was to me four years ago. I look away and keep walking down the same streets and following my same routines, exercising my right to ignorance.

My parents are in town, in fact, they’ve flown a total of 17 hours to make it here for my graduation. But somehow, my visceral rejection to the end of this chapter set forth a series of sensations in my body that made it very easy for me to skip this occasion. A form of self-preserving self-sabotage.

But this wasn’t the first time this month that I had attempted to self-sabotage my own graduation. The dress that I had picked out months in advance needed to be tailored. And yet, I chose to take it to the tailor 2 days before graduation. (Un)luckily enough, he managed to get it done in time.

A week earlier, I was supposed to go pick up my graduation gown. I waited until the last 3 minutes of the last pick up slot on the last day. (Un)luckily enough, they handed me my cap and gown and congratulated me.

When I realized that everything was working out just in time for me to attend, I realized that it came down to me making the decision not to go, putting my foot down against the circumstances that were so keen on aligning perfectly.

The saying goes, one’s an incident, two’s a coincidence, and three’s a pattern.

And this, clearly was a pattern.

For a while now I’ve wondered what it means to celebrate your own accomplishments?

Is it an outfit you wear and a crowd you stand in?
Is it a cap you throw in the air?
Is it a fancy dinner you have with loved ones?
Is it a bouquet of flowers you receive?
Is it a LinkedIn post that starts with “I’m excited to announce…”?

A few weeks ago, I was sitting at the same cafe I sat in this morning, in the same spot, with the same cup of matcha. There was a girl sitting across from me, reading her book over a warm cup of coffee. A little while later, she got up, hands shaking, fumbling with her belongings, attempting to quickly leave the cafe. At first glance, I thought she had received devastating news. But as she stumbled out of the cafe, her phone to her ear, she exclaimed: “I PASSED!!!”, as she ran off into the distance.

Everyone at that cafe had a smile on their face. Her energy was that contagious. As I smiled to myself, I thought, I hope everyone celebrates their own accomplishments with that much passion.

When I received my “Welcome to the NYU Alumni Community!” email this evening, I wished the same for myself. But I rejected this milestone with every ounce of my being.

So I wonder again, if I can catch the contagion of celebration today like I did that day in the cafe.

Like a disease I wish to contract,
a self-preserving self-sabotage.

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An uneasiness I couldn’t understand.

Not only did I want to understand it,
but I wanted this understanding
to be instantaneous,
like the flip of a switch,
like a light bulb lights up.

But ultimately,
when I finally came to understand
my uneasiness,
it came in the form of
an unraveling.

There are less than two weeks left
until I graduate,
and I am paralyzed
between my desire to speed up time
and my desire to slow it down.

I am eager to be done with my last finals week,
but at the same time nostalgic
about the late night study sessions with my friends.

I am eager to spend my first and last Summer in the city,
but at the same time nostalgic
about my last Spring here.

I am eager to celebrate the end of this chapter,
but at the same time nostalgic
about the story I will leave behind.

My eagerness and nostalgia pull me back and forth,
constantly oscillating,
such that at any given moment
I am either in the past or the future,
never in the present.

It’s ironic, really,
because the central tension that pulls me down
is the pressure I put on myself to be present;
the way gravity is central to plummeting.

While my eagerness pulls me right
and nostalgia pulls me left,
the desire of presence sends me into a downward spiral.

Suddenly,
I exist with my limbs being pulled in every so direction,
never quite landing where I really am.

I wonder,
can one ever really be present
when our presence is the subject of the past or future?

I sit here,
I write,
and my entire presence
is defined
by the past
and the future.

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We tend to believe that being firm in our vision defines our sense of self. But when our self is ever changing, ever improving, ever growing, is it more important to honor our vision or honor our growth?

Not only do we make decisions based on promises we made to our past selves, but we also make decisions based on what we anticipate our future selves would want. Perhaps the latter is a more dangerous pursuit because we have no sure way of knowing what that person would want; a person we have yet to step into, yet to become.

When we map out our lives and think about where we see ourselves in 5 years, we make decisions based on historical data. Where we live, what job we work, who we are surrounded by, and how we feel, are extrapolated based on what we want right now. We envision ourselves in the city we want to live in now. We envision ourselves two promotions into the job we just applied for. We envision ourselves surrounded by the same friends we have right now. We envision ourselves feeling satisfied by all of it because it’s exactly what we want… right now.

But what makes us so confident that 5 years from now, that will be the case?

In financial modeling, one of the major pitfalls of forecasting future financial outcomes is relying too heavily on historical data. The key issue is the assumption that companies, industries, and economies will perform the same way they have in the past. What financial analysts work so hard to do is try to anticipate the shifts that may occur in these landscapes and then reflect them in their forecasts. The better an analyst can anticipate these shifts and how they will manifest, the better their forecast will be.

But the thing about people is that they operate less predictably than a company. When we are able to identify what factors might be affecting an institution, it’s easy to predict how it will react. With people, reactions are not mechanical; they are emotional, psychological, and sometimes existential.

We all seem to think we know ourselves very well and know what we want even better. I won’t deny that because maybe it is true. But what I will deny is the fact that the person you will be 5 years from now will want the same things you want now. Over time, our priorities shift. The things we value change. What’s important now is less important later. What’s less important now is more important later. It is only through stepping into that version of ourselves that we can know what we would want.

When we construct the plans of our lives without leaving room for this shift in self to occur, we end up rewriting our lives over and over and over again because each time we make commitments based on what we think we would want instead of what we actually want now.

Plan, make decisions, and work towards your dreams. But remember that things will change along the way and factor that into the grand scheme of things. I don’t know what I would want in 5 years, and I’m not trying to predict it. You might call it a lack of direction, but I call it an openness to be directed by what life has to offer.

Stop trying to honor a version of you that’s dead.
Stop trying to make decisions on behalf of your future self.
Stop trying to predict what will come later based on what you know now.
Stop trying to lay out the path to a destination you’ve yet to discover.
Start walking, and the path will emerge along the way.

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I pulled out my phone from my jeans’ back pocket and swiped right on my lock screen to open up the camera app. Each time I saw a tree that had bloomed, I’d zoom in on it to capture only its colored branches. I was trying to intentionally exclude the naked trees from the backdrop to prevent disrupting the soft imagery with a raw, vulnerable one.

But cherry blossoms are not the only things that we zoom in on, in an attempt to exclude what we don’t want to see out of the frame. Most of the time, we would rather pretend that the harsher, more vulnerable backdrops to our lives don’t exist. We would rather wait for the cherry blossoms to sprout than give our attention to the fruitless trees. But every blooming tree was once fruitless in the dead of winter. Still, we continue to punish the trees that need more water to grow, just because they happen to be standing next to a tree that needs less.

As I continued to walk towards the library, its appearance in the distance combined with this subconscious tendency becoming a conscious one, I was brought back to a night when I’d reflected on a similar sentiment.

Inside the library on a cold December night, I sat bundled up, studying for my finals. With my head buried between the papers, solving for the probability of default on a loan, I would look out the window every couple of problems, like a swimmer coming up for air. In one instance, I looked out the window to find three trees standing:

The first tree had lost all of its leaves, completely naked.
The second tree was colored by orange and brown hues, clearly still transitioning into winter.
The third tree was still completely green, stark against the dull darkness of the night.

The difference between the three trees struck me. In the cold of winter, it feels like all the trees should look the same, bare and bewildered. But trees don’t all respond to the harshness of weather in the same way.

Some trees are more resilient than others.
Some trees mask their pain better than others.
Some trees exhibit their strength better than others.

But all the trees are still standing. Regardless of their color, shape, and height. They stand, and they don’t make comparisons of who’s the strongest, who’s the most resilient, or who’s weathered the storm the best.

They stand because the state of their leaves won’t matter when they all grow back in the spring; what matters is that they’re all still standing.

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How does it feel when it is still?
How does it feel when it moves gently?
How does it feel when it crashes against the shore?
How does it feel when it is rained upon?
How does it feel when the sun sets behind it?
And how does it feel when it rises again?

I spent the first few years of my childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area, then moved back home to Jeddah. Now, I live in New York. Today, I’m in San Juan. A body of water embraces each of these cities, and by extension, embraces their people.

Because of the constant proximity I’ve had to various waters, whether it be an ocean, a sea, a river, or a bay, I’ve always wondered why they are grouped by the term “body” and if our relationship is indeed bodily.

Do these bodies feel as connected to me as I do to them?
Do they feel as grounded in my presence as I do in theirs?
Or is the relationship paradoxical, leaving these bodies distressed by companionship?

How do they feel when they are observed?
How do they feel when they carry a ship?
How do they feel when their inhabitants are harvested?
How do they feel when they drown a person?

I’ve made peace with the fact that I will never find answers to these questions, because the ocean can’t speak to me the way that I speak to it. Or perhaps it is my own shortcoming, and I cannot understand the ocean the way it understands me. Or perhaps, neither one of us can understand the other. Nonetheless, I extract a subtle comfort in its companionship that makes me feel understood.

Maybe I am understood by the water.
Maybe I am understood by the water.

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I can go on and on about why I love rewatching the show and what it’s taught me, but today I picked up on something very specific that I hadn’t before. I kept noticing the subtle foreshadowing of events that manifested from the characters’ conversations. Many of the subtle remarks they made would later become life-altering events in the show. Now, in this case, it might only be the result of meticulously intentional scriptwriting, but we see this happen in real life as well. We talk about something and then suddenly find ourselves living it.

Growing up, my mom would always warn me, “Be careful what you wish for”. She would say this anytime I’d make a self-deprecating joke or anything along those lines. I always thought to myself that it was just a joke or that it wasn’t that serious. For a long time, I didn’t understand it, but the more I grew up, the more I did.

The first step to making something happen is creating space for it to exist within your mind. Once something has made its way into your consciousness, it’s more than halfway into existence. When you speak it, you affirm it, a secondary reinforcement. What this implies is more than just picking your words; it’s picking your thoughts. While many might be skeptical about the power of their own minds, I am all the more sure about the power of mine.

In his book, ‘You Are the Placebo’, Dr. Joe Dispenza outlines that the root of changing your state of being is changing your thoughts.

Your thoughts ripple down to your choices,
which affect your actions and behaviors,
which create your experiences,
which reinforce or alter your state of being.

The same thoughts reinforce the same state of being. New thoughts create a new state of being.

When our thoughts are deeply rooted in such a way that they manifest in our conversations, they are well on their way to manifesting in our realities as well. So, as careful as we are about the things we say, we need to be all the more careful about the things we think.

It’s much safer to think that the outcomes of our lives are random. It’s much safer to think that we are not responsible for the way we are wired. It’s much safer to neglect responsibility for the things we should be taking accountability for. We all know that we are in the driver’s seat of our own lives, but to think that we are also the manufacturers, mechanics, and engineers of our own being is the truth we’d all like to safely reject.

Realizing that you have so much power over your life can be paralyzing. You start to feel like you might be sabotaging your own reality or that you’re not qualified enough to take charge to such an extent. It starts to feel like you’re walking on eggshells inside your own mind. You start to crave a sense of reassurance that everything will work out, the same sense of reassurance you get while watching a TV show and knowing what’s gonna happen next.

We can replicate this feeling when it comes to our own lives if only we believe that everything is going to work out the way it’s supposed to. If only we believe that nothing meant for us will lose its way. If only we believe that we don’t have to know how things will end up to know that they’ll work out in the end. If only we believe that we are capable of guiding ourselves to where we need to go.

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Quiet in the sense that there isn’t a pre-iftar uproar in the kitchen.
Quiet in the sense that there isn’t a clatter of utensils against the plates at Iftar time.
Quiet in the sense that there aren’t any siblings fighting over the last piece of cheese sambusa.
Quiet in the sense that there aren’t any Ramadan TV shows playing in the background.
Quiet in the sense that there aren’t any adan callings on the street.

Ramadan back home moves with a rhythm.

A rhythm born of cultural noise overtakes the religious importance of the month.
Instead of Ramadan being the opportunity it is to better oneself, it becomes a contest of cultural extravagance.

Who can host the most extravagant gathering?
Who can wear the most extravagant thobe?
Who can put up the most extravagant decorations?
Who can cook the most extravagant dish?

Culture has propelled forward the idea that Ramadan is about indulgence, about doing the most, wearing the most, eating the most. In reality, this month is meant to strip us bare of all the things we deem important, helping us to redefine our priorities, in this world and the next, in Dunya and in Akhira.

Social Media as a Catalyst

The importance of keeping up appearances has increased dramatically with the rise of social media and the increased popularity of social media influencers. Both the need to document and consume Ramadan-related content serve as a catalyst to these ideas of extravagance, fueling the ego instead of taming it. Extravagance behind closed doors is one thing, but extravagance as a public boasting contest is something else.

When your stage expands beyond just your social circle, the expectation to uphold a certain image exists with more social pressure. Suddenly, we begin to keep up with these unrealistic social expectations, and they continue to overshadow the true priorities of this month.

The Commercialization of Distraction

The buzz of distractions is bred into our commercial consumption during the month. It’s important to understand the business interests that arise as a result of this. The Ramadan TV show and advertising industries are two of the main beneficiaries of the cultural significance of this month.

1. The Ramadan TV Show Industry

The industry is approximated to have a market value of $10B, with its peak relevance spanning over the month of Ramadan. This means that how these shows perform during the month is a primary determinant of their success. Thus, the key stakeholders behind these shows focus on driving viewership as high as possible during the month.

In terms of consumer behavior, people wait for Ramadan from year to year to see what new TV shows are going to air. To meet this expectation, increasingly controversial content is set forth with the intention of grabbing and keeping the attention of viewers throughout the month. A distraction by design. Ultimately, the industry thrives on this season, and specifically on its existence through a cultural premise rather than a religious one.

On a personal level, this might sound harmless when you think about sitting down to watch one TV show, an episode a day, for the entire month. But there are dozens of TV shows produced simultaneously, distilled to distract. According to MBC Group, viewership increases by 80% during Ramadan compared to typical viewing hours. This results in hours of your day being wasted trying to keep up, valuable hours, might I add.

While media giants prioritize their profits at the cost of your religious prosperity, keep in mind that when Ramadan ends, those TV shows are still there, available to watch on demand, but you can’t rewind the Barakah of the month like you can rewind the episodes of a TV series. Their success is contingent on your falling victim to their ploy of distraction, and your prosperity is contingent on actively combating it.

2. Ramadan Advertising

Beyond the TV show industry, Ramadan becomes a universal advertising opportunity. From large conglomerates to small family-owned companies, Ramadan is an experience that companies can utilize as a tool to relate to the consumer. Clothing and retail, consumer-produced goods, home appliances, and telecommunications are only a few sectors. They all employ nostalgia and a sense of unity to create an emotional bond with the viewer, compelling consumers to purchase their product. Thereby turning a month about restrained consumption into a commercial fiasco.

The Pursuit of Fasting

Beyond the economics of the month, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding around the pursuit itself. Fasting is meant to be an act of detachment from worldly comforts. While we fast for half the day, the second half is spent in pure indulgence, stemming from the idea that we have to make up for our underconsumption during the day by overconsuming during the night.

On the flip side, the month also becomes an opportunity for many to prioritize getting in shape. Instead of outlining a set of goals that enhance their relationship with Allah, people find this month to be a golden opportunity to develop and execute strategies towards aesthetic goals. Intentional shifts in routine can drive these benefits, but they should never become the primary objective.

Aside from the spectrum of wellness and indulgence, some of our fasts are completely discounted by the way we try to outsmart the system. Every year, with the start of Ramadan, comes a unanimous social decision to “flip your sleep”. This is a term we use to describe the act of sleeping after sunrise and waking up any time between noon and just before sunset. This system aids the pursuit of maximizing eating hours and minimizing fasting hours, completely missing the objective of Ramadan.

This used to be easier when Ramadan coincided with summer vacation and younger generations didn’t have school or university obligations. But in recent years, as Ramadan moves backwards against the Gregorian calendar, the inability to pursue this schedule has become an increasing frustration for kids and young adults. Having to go on with regular schedules is deemed a worldly inconvenience, despite governmental adjustments to school and working hours.

Ramadan Abroad ~ رمضان في الغربة

One of the most humbling realizations of spending Ramadan abroad is that there are little to no accommodations made to your day-to-day life. If at all, those accommodations would be made by the individual, not by any official institution or society as a whole. If you choose to flip your schedule, it’s an independent and often isolating flip. Restaurants don’t stay open late as they do back home. Stores don’t stay open late as they do back home. Your day doesn’t start later and end earlier as it does back home.

Ramadan exists quietly in your internal spirit rather than loudly in the external atmosphere. But what you miss about being back home is the exact opposite of what you gain by being abroad.

When you experience the Ramadan that is quiet, you begin to distinguish between Ramadan as an element of culture and Ramadan as a pillar of Islam. The key issue here is not in the cultural expression, but in making it the sole premise of this month. People want the Ramadan spirit without participating in what makes the essence of its spirituality. It’s important to recognize that both larger business interests and our collective social behaviors drive us towards this cultural extremity. But Islam was never a religion of extremism. The Prophet Mohammad ﷺ shares a famous wisdom that is called into question here. He says: “خير الأمور أوسطها”, which translates to “In all things, moderation is best.”

What this tells us is that we shouldn’t expel all participation in cultural festivities related to the month, but that we should participate in them with moderation.

Moderation and extravagance cannot coexist.
Moderation and indulgence cannot coexist.
Moderation and extreme flips cannot coexist.

Let this be a reminder for all of us to revise our Ramadan regimes and make sure we are, in fact, participating in moderation. Let it be a reminder as to why this month holds the Islamic significance that it does. Let it be a reminder that we possess agency over how we choose to spend this month, despite commercial efforts to manipulate these choices. Ramadan was a religious responsibility before it was ever a cultural celebration, so let’s honor that.

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You must sit down in a specific seat in the cafe, which is typically occupied. Once you find your way to that seat, you are poured a cup of coffee. But here’s the catch: you have to complete your journey to the past and back before the coffee gets cold. Typically, when you think about time travel, you think of it as a grand quest, an adventure. Not something you sit down with for coffee.

But more than just this time constraint, you cannot change anything about your past. You can only go back and live it again. When I first read this condition, I thought to myself, but then what’s the point?

Now, I sit at the edge of my bed, staring at the calendar on my laptop, sobbing uncontrollably, trying to decide when is a good day to leave New York, for good.

Now, I know what the point is.

I stare at the calendar, but all I can think about is this cafe and how much I wish it existed in my reality. How much I wish I could come back to these days. How much I wish that the finite were infinite.

At this moment in time, I would do anything to have the opportunity to sit in that seat and relive any moment I spent in New York that didn’t feel finite. My days here are numbered, and that feeling echoes quietly in the repetitiveness of my days. I repeat them like rituals, soberingly aware of their expiry date. It’s funny because instead of actually choosing a date, I’m sitting here, procrastinating the inevitable.

There were days when the end didn’t feel so near. There were days when I was closer to the beginning than I was to the end. There were days when I couldn’t even picture a life after New York.

Those days are long gone.

The days I live now buzz with a quiet anxiety. An anxiety that pulsates through my body, urging me to be present, to savor what I have for as long as I have it. And yet, it’s that anxiety itself that renders those moments tasteless rather than savored.

Instead of savoring the present moment, I sit here and wish for that seat and a cup of coffee because I know that the ability to meet New York for a quick cup of coffee would give me all the comfort I need to be able to leave it.

In the face of this desire, I am deeply aware of the privilege that it is to have a chapter in my life that is so difficult to turn the page on. So if I can’t sit down for a cup of coffee with my days in New York, I’ll sit down for a cup of coffee with my privilege, because that’s something I will always carry.

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Carrie Bradshaw was far from perfect. In fact, she was very very very flawed. But those flaws are what make her embody someone who is closer to a real person than a fictional character. People dislike Carrie because she reminds them of their own flaws; their own mistake-ridden existence that they would like to cast behind them when they click on the TV at night. Our discomfort with Carrie’s mistakes is nothing but a mirror of our discomfort with our own mistakes.

I share the frustration that comes with watching Carrie make the same mistake over and over again. I share the resentment towards Mr. Big for taking so long to choose her when she chose him time and time again. I share the confusion at her inability to recognize that she deserves better. But this frustration, resentment, and confusion exists to remind us that there are undeniable consequences to the decisions we make in our life.

Aside from the consequential nature of decision-making, Carrie is a real and raw representation of what it means to know that you deserve better and still be unable to demand that of the world. So many of us were able to see how much Carrie could offer and that’s why we resented her so much for wasting it with someone that clearly didn’t deserve it.

But more than that, Carrie craved the familiarity of being hurt in the same way as opposed to being vulnerable to the possibility of getting hurt in a way she couldn’t anticipate. Carrie was smart and she was able to predict how Big would treat her, no matter how much she hoped he would treat her differently. She had decided that was a safer bet than being vulnerable to a type of pain she didn’t know. As much as that makes us uncomfortable, it was a trade-off that she was willing to make and a trade-off that reminded us of all the pain that was once comfortable that we’ve now cast away.

That was the thing about Carrie, she was never afraid to exist in the truest form of what she felt. She was never afraid of feeling the things she had no right to feel. She was never afraid of being true to the version of herself that she needed to express in that moment and that made a lot of people deeply uncomfortable.

In the face of this ability, Carrie was called a bad friend, disloyal, and ungrateful. The way I see it is that she was flawed, like all of us were, but she was just less intentional about concealing those flaws and more intentional about being authentic to them. When she waltzed into Charlotte’s park avenue apartment, declaring her offense that Charlotte didn’t offer her financial support when she needed it, Carrie was most authentic to what she had felt in that moment. Whether or not that was a fair expectation to have has nothing to do with the quality of her friendship with Charlotte. If anything, her ability to so comfortably express herself is the real testament to their friendship.

More than anything Carrie Bradshaw existed to teach us all a thing or two about reflection. Carrie was never afraid to ask the tough questions and sit with the discomfort of not having the answers. Carrie was also not afraid to sit with the discomfort of being herself and knowing that not everyone will like her. Ultimately, she lived a life that was abundantly flawed with plenty of mistakes. You may feel that she wasted her life, but if she did then Carrie Bradshaw wasted her life so you don’t have to.

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But the flip side of this conversation embodies the resistance that often comes with such attempts:

Arguments that forgiveness is not owed to those who hurt us.
Arguments that justice is needed for forgiveness.
Arguments that forgiveness is not as simple as a single choice.

All are valid arguments, especially when each case carries its own emotional baggage. But the validity of these arguments doesn’t negate the necessity of forgiveness for purification.

Forgiveness is not owed to those who hurt us

A lot of us think we don’t owe forgiveness to the people who hurt us. But the key misconception here is thinking that forgiveness is something for the wrongdoer. Forgiveness is for you.

In most cases, the people who wronged you are going on with their lives, carefree. The day you spend actively rejecting forgiveness and the day you decide to embrace it are all the same to them.

In an exchange between one and another, forgiveness is an offering one makes to themselves.

An offering of peace.
An offering of acceptance.
An offering of purification.

So yes, you don’t owe forgiveness to the people who hurt you, you owe it to yourself.

Forgiveness is not owed to those who hurt us

Justice is needed for forgiveness

A lot of us are waiting for justice before we can to forgive. But the thing about justice and forgiveness is that they are both means of neutralizing conflict. You either seek justice or you forgive. But you don’t seek justice to forgive. You neutralize the conflict once. You choose one.

Now the thing about seeking justice is that it often requires ideal conditions. We don’t just want justice in an objectively fair manner, we want justice to manifest in a way that restores our dignity, heals our wounds, and rebuilds what’s been broken. But such an effect can only come of forgiveness, not justice.

A part of you might feel unconvinced, like you’d rather choose justice over forgiveness. But the thing about the injustices you leave behind in the world is that they are never forgotten. They are put down in the record of records and justice is restored when it matters the most: on the Day of Judgement. Allah makes a divine promise to seek justice on your behalf, and what better justice can you ask for than that of Allah.

“وَعِزَّتِي وجَلَالِي لَأَنْصُرَنَّكِ وَلَوْ بَعْدَ حِينٍ”
(I swear by my glory and honour, I will answer you even if after some time.)

So do yourself justice and forgive the people who deserve your forgiveness the least. Justice is a divine promise, but forgiveness is a humile responsibility.

Justice is needed for forgiveness

Forgiveness is not as simple as a single choice

A lot of us are convinced of the necessity of forgiveness, but are unable to fathom the simplification of the request.

Forgiveness feels heavy.
Forgiveness feels complex.
Forgiveness feels difficult.

But a lot of this stems from the way justice and forgiveness are intertwined within our minds.

In our heads, we imagine a courtroom.
Opposing sides.
Arguments.
Prosecution and defense.
But this is a scene of justice not forgiveness.

Welcoming the idea of cleansing your soul requires you to reimagine forgiveness as a concept. Reconfigure its meanings and open yourself up first to the idea that it might be a choice and not a process, before willing yourself to make that choice.

Forgiveness is not as simple as a single choice

Ultimately, the people we choose to forgive are not owed our forgiveness, justice is not restored when we forgive them, and they probably don’t deserve our forgiveness either. But we choose to forgive them nonetheless because we deserve to participate in the pursuit of purification and we owe it to ourselves too.

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