Reverence for Palestine.

In the light of recent events, the ethnic cleansing in Palestine and Zionism in brutal action, I felt a deep ache in my heart that spoke of awakening. It spoke of awareness, of compassion and proactivity. It spoke in the language of wanting to contribute to human causes and stir affection and loyalty towards things we should prioritise for the human's collective spirit to rise.

I was never interested in politics and nor am I now. However, there is a keen interest to support fellow humans, especially humans I am supposed to be connected to with close kinship and ties. The land of Palestine is a land that I, as an Arab and Muslim woman, have a right to be close to. The Middle East in ideal terms should be connected, without borders. The land of Palestine is sacred and beautiful, like my own land. However, we have let go of our right to feel this closeness and gave ourselves away to the wide scope of globalised interactions. We forgot how life would have been different if there was a deeper unity between us, that rekindles our spirits to roam our lands with pride, love and reverence. Imagine how different it would have been if we treated Arabian lands as our own.

But I see now that we treat our own national identity with very little reverence. Yes, there are reasons that might stop us from feeling tied, our rights are violated ruthlessly by our leadership. Yet, we are not reacting responsibly to that. We are giving ourselves away, myself included. I have spent years of my life despising the land I was nurtured in for reasons so tangible and understandable. But now I understand that most of those reasons come from the intentions of many generations that have decided to leniently and unconsciously not care about important things. External power was made urgent, and many values had been let go in the process. I would be a part of this cycle if I blame the physical manifestations of years of wrong intentions without healing the root cause. This healing could come from within me.

There is not much we can do about so many things, but there is a choice to react to things differently than before. There is a choice to be reverent, and to truly love every human experience there is to love. To love and be one with our fellow Palestinians, to feel their sorrow of having to be cleansed off their own country. Not only Palestine, but this also goes deeper and closer to touch our relationship with Egypt. We need to revere the needs of our country, stand in solidarity with them, and even examine the notion that being related to this country is a gift, and that we essentially have a place here. Today, I choose to react with love for my country and the people whom I live with so that my soul can transcend and help the collective.

I also have roots in Poland, a country that suffered tremendously in the world war. Millions of Jews were burned to death, and so I come from a land where this suffering lingers and has embedded itself in architecture, history and art. The very street I walk or ride my bicycle on had an underground concentration camp. This, too, teaches me that human suffering is universal and that it cannot be divided into the suffering of Jews, Christians and Muslims, or in any divisible way. Human suffering cannot be separated when you have a whole heart. The key here is to truly look beyond the physical manifestations of suffering and see where it has come from.

Much of the suffering we are going through in the Arabian world has come from our unconsciousness. It has come from our unconscious intentions to keep doing the same things like polluting our land, distributing wealth unjustly, relocating investments to unworthy organisations and fragmenting attention away from what is rich and beautiful. We do not know what we are doing, but with every uprising such as what is happening in Palestine right now, it reminds us. It's a calling. It awakens our hearts. Truly, a reaction that includes pain and sorrow only comes from the sorrow within you that is being activated. For sure, it is real. Now, what can we do about it?

I myself know I don't have much power. But I have my own role in my life, and I can choose to spread this awareness responsibly. I can choose to revere my land, to dedicate more of my love to the ones I serve here, the children I deal with, and to spread awareness on how they could rekindle the love for their own place in the world. I spend my time now sharing whatever I can, and that is well enough because it is done with an enormously powerful intention. I am blessed to have witnessed this in my lifetime.

I hope this is a turning point for many of us. I thank God for giving us chances to choose love and reverence.