I try to stop and smell the roses

By Samira Jafar
Exclusive to The Times Kuwait

I went on vacation this week, which feels weird to say given what’s going on in the world. In life, it’s interesting to see how depending on what you’re going through, time can either slow down or speed up. Here, time feels inexplicably fast: one day bleeds into another, a big mess of sand and ice cream and sunsets and sunrises. But back in Kuwait, with bated breath, my anxiety made everything feel slow. I always wanted to know “what was happening,” asking people, hoping they were more confident than I was that everything was going to be okay. My anxiety hasn’t disappeared at all – I still want the safety and happiness of everyone I love and care about, many of whom reside in Kuwait. I also want to see my country thrive.

It’s hard to have hope in hopeless times. It’s hard to not hate yourself for living in privilege when so much of the world is coated in despair. Sometimes I wonder why it’s so much easier to unite people in sadness than it is to unite them in happiness. But I also think that’s true of life. When we go through difficulty, we look for support systems, people who show us that they’ll be there for us through the good and the bad. We also look inside of ourselves for inner peace, a silver lining. We turn to God to answer our prayers and never end a bad thought without hoping that God will decide what is best.

When I speak to people, the state of the world must be acknowledged. It’s not something we can ignore in between pleasantries or turn a blind eye to. I think humanity is lost for good until I greet a stranger and we both sigh. “This world, right?” Moreover, it isn’t something we should just turn a blind eye to. We owe it to people to fight for their right to live, to raise the voices of the voiceless. Collectively, we try our best. We share news, we check in on loved ones, we donate to people in need. But why isn’t it enough? Why is it so hard to push through and persevere? What we ultimately seek is understanding – people who feel the way we do, who want the same things we want. It can be flabbergasting to look at people whose motivations aren’t peace and security, but rather something unfathomable.

In the big picture, it’s hard to hold onto those little moments of grace. Optimism is a skill that gets diluted, like forgetting how to ride a bike when you’ve injured your leg. What’s the point of having dreams and making plans when you don’t know what’s going to happen next? This is a thought I’ve had a lot over the past few weeks, fueled by my anxiety. I stopped and slowed down and read this sentence again. Instead of focusing on the “the point,” this time I focused on “what happens next.”

Because we don’t know what’s going to happen next. Even in times of perfect peace and clarity there are unexpected issues and bouts of turbulence. We make it to the end of a long and worrisome day and then wonder if the next day will be the one that’s bad, just in the hopes of validating our anxiety. But I think we shouldn’t forsake the moments where we do feel joy and safety. We know that in today’s world, these are unfortunately being treated as luxuries.

I think we were given the responsibility of luxury to bring people up and help them and be a source of light in the world. I don’t think the solution is necessarily to ignore and dispel. I think, if anything, that is the source of the problem, because we have ignored people’s suffering for so long that their pain has now become insurmountable and plentiful. We have the power to help, to bring change, and to mobilize. But none of these things will happen if we’re so focused on a future that is currently uncertain. Putting our energy into positivity, in any of its forms, practical or otherwise, breaks the cycle of despair and hopelessness, empowering us to keep fighting for the things that are important.

Furthermore, I think the people who make the world a worse place want us to believe that life is inherently horrible and bad, so that we shrug whenever we see death and destruction or look away when things make us uncomfortable. They want us to expect the worst so that we accept it if or when it happens. But all of these things are not normal, and they should never feel normal.

We need to keep fighting for a beautiful world, and it starts with us seeing the beauty in it, recognizing it, and knowing that being anxious about it will only exhaust our energy in the wrong ways. I deal with anxiety on an almost daily basis, and I know how depleting it is. What I learned is that it doesn’t do what we inherently want it to do.

It doesn’t offer protection. What is the point of being anxious when the “bad thing” ever arrives? If it does, do we really want to waste the preceding time living with that anxiety, or do we want to continue living? Furthermore, how can we use that anxiety to fight for people who have the real bad things happening to them?

This week, I made it a goal of mine to “stop and smell the roses.” I took note of interactions between people – a man helping a young girl who fell off of her scooter, two friends having a heart-to-heart in line at the mall, someone complimenting my shirt.

I looked at the literal roses. I took a picture of a butterfly settling on a flower. It is sad that there is so much pain in a world that is inherently so beautiful. If anything, we should fight to keep the beauty alive and never surrender to the ugliness. By lifting everyone up, including ourselves, we are being the change we want to see in the world.

Samira Jafar is an English instructor at Kuwait University. She is the author of two collections of poetry. You can reach her at @samirawritesstuff on instagram or samirajafar.substack.com