chasing clouds

A person I so happened to introduce my quirkily abominable literary skills to today told me nobody in the 21^st century has the time to read the amount of cow’s dung I write.

Therefore, after 233 gracefully-omitted words of 'just that', I'm going to heed his advice and cut straight to the chase. Better buckle up if you haven't already.

I haven’t lived very long (white hairs are a God-given gift), but through my very-short-life’s travails, I’ve discovered that most people somehow live under the impression that what makes a dream, a dream is, in fact, the so-called ‘fact’ that it is forever going to be unattainable.

It’s like…like chasing unicorns at the edge of a rainbow, simply to please yourself about the number of flowers whose nauseating aromas you’re intoxicating yourself with along the way...

The way to nowhere.

Before I point out how utterly sick in the stomach that entire analogy made me feel, I’d like to admit- yeah, some days it probably gets you sicker to wake up in the morning and realize you are chasing nothing but a rainbow…

That too a rainbow in Dubai…haha…

But here, right now, annihilating precious minutes of both our miserable existences (what else are you here for?), I’d like to share with you that divine secret about what keeps me going. You see, every day is the same old battle…as if someone put the last scene of LOTR on loop…

You open your eyes, take your first breath, re-establish your identity and whereabouts…then stand in front of the bathroom mirror and ask yourself what the heck you’re doing with your life today…

Some of us please ourselves thinking we’re off to work. Some of us feel content just going to school. Some of us pop our heads out the bathroom door and smell the pancakes mom’s cooking and convince ourselves that’s good enough to pull up the zipper and get going...

I have none of these. And sort of all of these. (I make better pancakes than mom.)

But what gets me going…and what sometimes utterly fails to do that…is the idea that I relish it. I relish it with the bottom of my heart. What I’m doing, where I’m going, what I’ll be wearing and how I’m living…

Somehow, I absolutely convince myself, all over again, that everything I do, down to the most fickle, useless chore, is part of some grander plan…like it’s all leading somewhere.

I look in the mirror, and the face I hated to see just five seconds ago suddenly doesn't seem so despicably unbearable. It’s me, being me, nothing but me, and the me I always wanted and shall always want to be come hell or high water, that makes it all ok.

And that’s my dream. That’s the cloud I chase. Waking up each day to reach that moment, whether at the strike of dawn of chime of midnight, it doesn’t matter…as long as I get there.

Writing this post right now, is part of that plan. Sharing this with you somehow, even though it feels nothing but pointless, embarrassing nonsense, is part of that ‘grand scheme’.

Trying to show you that a dream is not just a mirage…it's part of my dream.

And somehow, in some way that I cannot possibly explain no matter how hard I try, it’s all worth it. Because I’m not just dreaming, I’m doing.

-Bushra Ali

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