On some nights, when I wish to relax after a long day, I create a special moment for myself. I wear my night suit, make myself a hot beverage—tea or coffee—I turn off all the lights except for the small yellow fairy lights and draw the curtains away so that the night’s cool air finds a way through my semi-open window. I turn on the TV and put on a very cosy movie (or sometimes a psycho thriller, because I have two extremes). And that’s it. It’s just me, my coffee, and my two-hour-long movie.
Some days ago, I watched a movie named “Home Alone 2”. I was about to doze off during the movie when the scene between Kevin and the Pigeon Lady came on, and I started to watch it closely.
Kevin: Did you have any kids?
Bird Lady: No. Oh, I wanted them. But the man I loved fell out of love with me. That broke my heart. And whenever the chance to be loved came along again, I ran away from it. I stopped trusting people.
The Bird Lady was a middle-aged woman with beautiful, gentle features hidden under serious, quiet expressions.
Bird Lady: I’m just afraid if I do trust someone, I’ll get my heart broken again.
Kevin: I understand that. I used to have this really nice pair of rollerblades. I was afraid if I wore them, I’d wreck them. So, I kept them in a box. Do you know what happened?
Kevin: I outgrew them. I never wore them once outside. I just wore them in my room a couple of times.
Bird Lady: A person’s heart and a person’s feelings are very different than skates.
Kevin: Well, they’re kind of the same thing. If you aren’t going to use your heart, then what’s the difference if it gets broken? If you just keep it to yourself, maybe it’ll be like my rollerblades. When you do decide to try it, it won’t be any good. You should take a chance. Got nothing to lose.
At that time, that 10-year-old boy said something that made me think of so many things at once.
Love and care, in any form and from any source, can build you, increase you, and make you unstoppable. Your heart begins to open up for a person, and you begin to trust slowly. Your faith in the world forms. However, if this love and care are retracted, it has the ability to reduce the same height it built in you—to ashes.
Your heart suddenly closes; it tightens so much that some days, it’s hard for you to even breathe. You question the world constantly because no one can be trusted now.
But does it stay like this forever? Or more importantly—does it have to stay like this?
Soniya has been working in people’s houses ever since she was a young girl. She was bringing food to the table and a dowry for her younger sisters, taking the place of her father and brothers for her clan. However, she had no future of her own there; when she was looking after others, no one was looking after her.
One day, however, she got married on her own—and from then on, she didn’t look back.
Now she has a house and five children. Daily, I see her telling stories of one of her kids and how much her face lights up whenever she brings them to my home to meet us. She has finally embraced love for herself, and it pours out of her for her children.
My friend’s maternal aunt cannot conceive a child. If you are a physical anomaly in this society, there will be several moments in your life where you have to hold yourself on your own, because people will object to you on account of being different.
The man who so much wanted to marry her, however, knew how to hold her—and hold her very well. Both of them have been happily married for several years, and their love is enough for both of them.
I have alopecia totalis (complete baldness.) I have had this condition for twelve years now. Almost a decade of hiding, feeling different and quietly enduring rejection. I remember when I was in tenth grade, I deeply wanted to go to LGS (Lahore Grammar School) for a 3-day MUN (Model United Nations) competition. It would have been my first time living in a different city.
I went home feeling excited; I was talking to my older sister in the kitchen about anything and everything new that I would experience when suddenly it dawned on me: “I am bald; how can I go?” From here began years of opportunities crushed under the same question: “How can I?” No one was there to tell me, “How can I not?”
In my second year of MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery), one of my long-distance friends used to talk to me about his journey of mental health struggles and how he has always dealt with them—almost alone. He didn’t know his stories of struggle, pressures, growth, and taking chances even when you are afraid were slowly opening my heart to embrace newness in my own life.
I made my first solo trip to the north in the same year. Don’t get me wrong, I was super afraid of how I would manage alone amongst my twenty-year-old, very image-conscious classmates—just like I was—that I brought my wig with me on the trip (very impractical).
However, it turned out to be one of the most memorable trips of my life, and I didn’t even have to use my wig. I never really got to say this to my friend, but he really helped me open up my heart for discomforts.
Our heart is created like a ‘little brain’. It has electromagnetic fields five thousand times greater than the brain’s, and its neurones are way more powerful. So its effect on the entire body—down to all different cells—is huge.
That’s why in the Quran, a sound heart is given a lot of importance. If we close our heart to love, to life, to ourselves and others, it’s like shutting a powerhouse that holds the potential to light up an entire village.
Not all bad experiences mean that the next one will be the same—or worse. Not one or two—or three—persons’ inability to hold your heart means that the next one will be the same. Not every time that you have messed up means that you will keep messing things up again; maybe you are just learning the ropes and getting better. Not your parents’ or siblings’ mistakes mean you will also make them because it runs in your blood—yours will be different and new and customised only for your growth. Not every time’s humiliation means that there is something wrong with you—maybe the crowd you have settled into needs to change. Not many blind eyes mean that there will never be a pair of eyes just looking for you.
There are just so many possibilities—but only if you open your heart for them.
