Leila Safieddine | Staff Writer

Everything changes

Never have I witnessed anyone care for something as lovingly and wholeheartedly as my grandmother does the olive trees in my hometown Tyr, South of Lebanon. What fascinates me most about them, besides their majestic beauty and glorious sage-colored leafage, is their ability to grow and adapt all year round, enduring unbearable seasonal conditions.

Everything moves, everything revolves

Amidst a liminal phase in my adolescent life, burdened by self-doubt and deafened by a loud mind, I fought a strenuous war against myself. Longing for a sense of deeper meaning and purpose, I found comfort in numbing my internal distress through rejecting change and acquiescing to hardship. While I couldn’t understand what that ineffable void was, I knew I wouldn’t allow it to stand in the way of my journey to personal growth. When I was faced with the reality that complete certainty is but a mere illusion eclipsing the true beauty of our existence, I saw how much paralysis it caused me and how gravely its repercussions imploded. In hindsight, I learned to accept that I am by nature, just like everyone else, subject to inevitable growth. Our failures and faults along with our many successes make us who we are today. It is both our light and darkness that define who we are; the existence of one does not annul the other. With utter clarity, I was brought to the most remarkable, albeit difficult, realization of my voyage to self-discovery: I could either see life’s unavoidable change as a marvelous force that incites profound fulfillment or, I could stay in my comfort zone forever, feeding my fear of the unknown. Faced with this conundrum, I couldn’t help but ponder: if I’m stymied by every adversity, how will my heart and soul ever bloom? Or as my kindred spirit, the Sufi poet Rumi, once wrote: “If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror ever be polished?”

Everything flies and goes away

…And just like that, I understood that whether we choose to see it or not, everything around us is in constant motion and miraculous transformation. Akin to my grandmother’s olive trees, I learned that, in times of despair, we can see the light and feel the magic of growth by simply enduring life’s challenges. What asserts my faith in who I am and who I am yet to become is the fact that even on the bad days, even in the lows, even in the darkness, there is always a light: the light within, the one we birth in our inner world and radiate into the outer one. The brightness I now find, whatever I am faced with, comes and goes. It often hides or even flies away. But that is what makes life ever-so enlivening: it offers reams of unfamiliar beauty if only one chooses to shy away from the darkness and stir into the light.