H U R T

Ending Israel's illegal occupation, settlement expansion on Palestinian land, and oppression against innocent Palestinians are key for peace, justice, and prosperity in the region. I am not surprised by today's events. What else can one expect when Israel continues to deny Palestinians their legitimate right to self-determination and statehood? What else, after daily provocations, attacks by occupation forces and settlers, and raids on Al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy sites of Christianity and Islam?

The world must recognize that durable peace requires: ending occupation of Palestinian land, recognizing the State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, and upholding Palestinians' right to independence and sovereignty.

Intimacy is not something that just happens between two people; it is a way of being alive. At every moment, we are choosing either to reveal ourselves or to protect ourselves, to value ourselves or to diminish ourselves, to tell the truth or to hide. To dive into life or to avoid it. Intimacy is making the choice to be connected to, rather than isolated from, our deepest truth at the moment.

I want to get more comfortable being uncomfortable. I want to get more confident being uncertain. I don’t want to shrink back just because something isn’t easy. I want to push back, and make more room in the area between I can’t and I can.

Somewhere between reality and imagination, when feelings suppress your heart that it can't be kept anymore and thoughts crawl harshly your mind, contradicting and magically floating through it, where passion has reached its atmost peak, and you deeply know your incomparable peace is approaching, where pieces of you are dancing smoothly within your soul and others are being massively shred, that rare moment where you feel irresistibly complete, that spell of sufferance that led you to dominate the world for seconds, that irremarkable moment of creating art.

At times that I feel like I have misplaced the love that I should give myself to somewhere else, I seek for it in between the lyrics of songs, lines of poems, or on pages of books. I look for it, until I find it on someone's creation. There, I realize that, indeed, we may want to be with ourselves, but we cannot deny the truth that we still need other's help to get through life; because when we feel like we have lost all the words for this hopelessness within, we suddenly read the proper sentences that could, perhaps not best, but better describe the void inside on other person's pieces.