It seems that the GAM campaign on Jordanian beggars is still active and in fact escalating.

A week ago, Al Ra’e newspaper published a picture of a big house in Amman which it claimed to belong to a group of beggars that were able to build this house from the money they collected from people in the streets.

The article found it’s way in a TV reportage as well on the Jordanian TV channel and AL Arabieh News channel as well.

It seems that the government isn’t backing off stalking those people anytime soon, and they are trying to win people’s hearts so that to stop giving beggars money in the street.

But, I can’t see such measures as a real solution to such problem. Begging has been existing throughout history everywhere in human societies. In simple logic, people in need of food would beg rather than starve to death.

An alternative solution, which would be more effective is to legalize begging. The same way some other countries legalized prostitution.

It can easily done by providing a place with rooms for beggars. Like a small market where each beggar can pay a small amount of fee for the government to appoint officers to take care of the place. Each beggar can reserve a room with a window where people can come and give money.

Beggars who can prove to have less financial status than others would have more priority of filling those rooms. If there are enough room, some other people who are doing well financially and still like to beg can rent them as well.

The government can also help in advertising the place. Social groups and donation organization can organize group visits for people to give money. Schools and private associations can help as well.

It can all be organized for ease the way people like to give. It would benefit all of us and create a better culture of give/take in our society.

I would certainly like to take my children to such place in order to teach them the virtue of giving.

Wish some official think outside the box!
or even listen and try!

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.

Buddha

Thank you Hayat for the gratitude tag. Actually gratitude is a very important virtue. It doesn’t only help the other person to feel good about what he has done for you but it also makes you feel good about what you have recieved and appreciate it.

While there are many things in my life that I am thankful for. I find the unconditional love of my lover, family and friends to be the most worthy to be thankful for. Life had its way to grant me the chance to test that love. In hardship I explored their heart, I sensed their love, and appreciated their support. Sometimes it needs a crisis to be able to evaluate the truth of the people’s feelings around you. I was lucky to go through it. It didn’t just stregthen my faith in people but also added to my self confidence of my view of life and people. It helped me connect with people in different levels and brought out a hidden talent of communicating with others that I benefit from now throught this blog.

I do always ask more from life, but I never want anything more at the expense of what I have today.

And I pass this to
Hala, kinzi, No Angel, Jamal, Marie

I feel numb, dizzy and blurred.
But I feel also calmness, surrenderess and love.

A combination of a flu, computer screen, and lack of work effect.

Having to come to work because IT IS JUST a flu –> need to go to a Dr
Not being able to stay home because I HAVE to get a medical report
while I am not courageous enough to do so because of a PREVIOUS BAD experience
especially that my flu isn’t that bad this time

It doesn’t help not having much work to do at this time
to keep me in silence watching my computer screen
and surrender to my current situation

Cursing the doctor who managed to strangle me in such situation
because now, I have to think TWICE before seeking a Dr. demanding for a sick vacation because of a flu

It happened 2 years ago
I had a bad flu
and decided to dismiss work that day
but because the shitty work requests a medical report
I had to consult a Dr.
and so, at 11:00 AM, I called a Dr. clinic from the list I had in my insurance booklet to set an appointment
The secretary answered, and said that the Dr. is busy till 5:00 PM
so we scheduled an appointment at 5:00 PM

I spent the day in bed recovering, and fighting my flu
I then had to push myself to go to the Dr. clinic for the damn medical report

After she did her examination
and obviously realized it is a flu!
and prescribed me some medication
It was the time where I had to request the medical report
and a day off (the one I already took)
and it was also the time where she BURST in anger!
She was a smartass to realize that I have only seeked her for the zeft medical report
and thus, she felt insulted offended

YOU THINK I AM A WRITER?! (Kattabeh) She shouted on my face!
WHY DIDNT YOU GO TO WORK?! YOU DONT FEEL BAD ENOUGH TO STAY AT HOME.
NEXT TIME YOU COME TO MY CLINIC EARLY IN THE MORNING
and I am the one WHO DECIDE whether you should take a sick leave or not!

I was feeling bad Dr. that is why I stayed at home
Isn’t having some rest a requirement for Flu treatement?

Anyway I stayed silent wondering whether I should burst back on her
and save some of my pride
and whether it is worth to dismiss the medical report or not
for feeling good of hitting her back
(I think now that it worthed it)

At that moment
I didn’t act
Maybe I just didn’t want to make a scene
or wanted the damn zeft too bad
I stayed silent and said politely
You don’t have to write it if you don’t want to
Bite my pride as she wrote it in disgust while saying
“You most probably won’t come to my clinic again”
I stayed silent
as if I did a crime!
Telling myself
YOU ARE DAMN RIGHT!
I DONT want to see your ugly face EVER again!

She traumatized me till today
Where I have to suffer so that not to offend another Dr.! :S
and wait here infront of my computer
till the hours pass
and time comes to go back home
to my bed
and lovely pillow

Countries all over the world are progressing forward in granting their citizens more freedom of speech, while you, our beloved Prime Minister, are taking us back in time with your sponatneous laws that only helps in restricting our progress of trying to follow up the level of democracy other countries around the world achieved.

You haven’t even been loyal to your oath of following the Kings guidance in taking care of this country. The king has made it clear on various occaisons that the sky is the limit to the freedom of speech in Jordan, and yet, you can’t see the message. Instead of giving more freedom to our printed publications which suffer from major problems in creativity due to your publications law, you decide to extend your backward law to cover online outlets!

My dear Prime Minister, what has been acceptable decades ago, is NOT acceptable now. We have in Jordan very high literacy ratio. People are much more knowledgable than before. We value our right of freedom of speech as much as we value our right to have water and food.

Jordan has been a role model in the middle east with its democratic process. We have always been aware that we haven’t yet achieved the level of Switzerland or Sweden, but we have always consoled ourselves that we are at least moving forward. We have always enjoyed a partial freedom, and always worked on expanding it. You just can’t be the one to set us back.

It is sad that you have let it reached to this point. King Abdullah has came up twice this year in public declaring his annoyance of the way you and your team are dealing with issues. First it was the fuel prices problem, and then it happened againt for other grocery products price problem. I wonder if you are willing to test his patience and made him appear for a third time to set you straight of his vision of Jordan. I believe that “the sky is the limit” should be blunt enough for you. If not, God help you…

We won’t let anyone eat from our achievments so far.

We’ ll keep on progressing no matter what kind of obstacles you or any other try to place in our way.

In the post “Break your Glass and Fly” that I built it on an idea and example in Paulo Coelho’s novel “By the river Piedra I sat down and wept”, I discussed what it means for someone to break his glass and how much someone’s struggle helps him see the world from different perspective and pushed him to grow.

This is how I summerized the scene:

In Paulo Coelho’s novel “By the river Piedra I sat down and wept”, there is a scene where the couple were dining in a restuarant. They were lovers in their childhood and they just met again in the story. In the period of time where they were seperated, the guy moved around the world in search for knowledge and wisdom, and thus he takes the role of a teacher, leading the young woman to realize new aspects of life.

While they were dining, he suddenly asked her to drop the glass of water on the table to the ground and break it. She didn’t understand what he is up to at first and refused to do it. Why would she do that? What an insane idea? and What would be the consequences of such more?

The conversation go on and on. Finally, she did it. The waiter came and cleaned up the mess without any real bad consequences. The only thing she learnt is to be more daring.

An online friend of mine who always surprises me of her excellent logic and her ways of looking upon things pointed out a side of this scene that I don’t think Paulo Coelho meant to address in his example and thus I failed to consider as well.

She said:

As for the content of that post, I liked the message, except for one thing, daring to do stuff when other people has to pay for the consequences is not my idea of being free, but more my idea of being selfish.

I mean if she decided to take her own glass and broke it, and then it was she who would clean it up – it’s one thing. But it’s not her glass, and she is not the one who cleaned her mess, and it’s one thing if that happens in an accident I can understand that, and it is the waiter’s job to clean the mess in that case, but to make him go through that cleaning (although I agree it’s not that hard of a job) seems kind of abusive for me, if it’s for no other reason than to supply your own need to feel daring. So that bothers me a little that the point that I agree with is based on that example, but I guess that is how it is in the book.

This is a very important point that my friend have raised. The question is:

How much breaking of our glass affect others?

While Paulo Coelho’s example meant to point out that it is just glass. Any single act of ours does have effect on others. Some people try always to restrict themselves from inflicting from causing others any extra hectic based on their actions and thus put themselves to hold extra unnecessary suffering that would have been avoided if some others helped taking some of the burden which wouldn’t make them suffer.

It is a question of how much selfishness can be considered acceptable and how much a person can put his needs first without causing much harm to people around him.

I ususally try to measure the amount of resulted suffering and bend on taking the most of it if it is inflicted by my own action, but if my behaviour meant to inflict a major change in my life that is essential to my growth while causing someone a bit more work like in the example of the waiter cleaning up the mess of the glass, then be it!

I would clean up the mess of other people’s glass if it is a major incident in their lives.

It is a matter cooperation. We can help each other, give and take, for the benefit of us all.

And here you go, Paulo Coelho published a post of mine at his own blog

http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2007/09/18/break-your-glass-and-fly/#comment-5162

Isn’t that amazing?

🙂

While I am glad to hear that the police have caught the parents of the baby that was found in a trash can and subjected them to prosecution, and while I find it is fair to prosecuting them for endangering this little baby’s life, it came to my surprise to know that they are also prosecuting them for forcination.

I haven’t realized before that we have a law against forcination. I know that Islam and Christianinty forbade it, but I didn’t know that the Jordanian law punish people for having sex outside marriage boundaries. I used to know that sex between any consenual adults is not punishable by Jordanian law if it happened in private premises, now it seems that I was wrong. Does anyone have better information on this matter?

Does that mean that any two adults that are married and had sex would risk going to jail? What if I never decided to get married? Do I have to suppress my sexual needs? Is marriage our only relief of our sexual urges? Knowing the expenses of weddings and having one’s own home and family, I think that our youngsters are doomed to miss their best potential sex they can have!

Going back to the case of the two poor parents, who are a victim of their sexual urges and society constraints. What defines sex in the eyes of law? Is it intercourse? How would they prove that those couple had sex? Is it the fruit of their sex, the new born baby? Can they claim that they had an artificial insemination and that they never had sex? Or is it also punishable outside marriage boundaries as well?

Don’t we love memories?

We always tend to remember old days with a bit of longing saying how happy we were back then, while in fact we might have been in a less happy state than we already are now.

It can be explained by knowing that our mind tend to suppress painful situation and thus keeping most of our memories *nice*

How beautiful was our childhood? How beautiful were school days? College days? Old house? Old Neighbourhoud? …etc

Just bringing up memories gives us a sense of happiness

And so

I developed a trick

To feel my present moment as if it is a memory

It is so easy. Just try to project yourself to be in the future while remembering what is happening now. You’ll suddenly feel more love to your present.

There is a magic in living our past. When you can do that at your present moment, you can feel yourself disattached of the river of time of your life span and feel your spirit observing your life unfolding.

Try applying this on this post, as if your are remembering reading this as a distanced memory, and tell me what you think. Does it work for you?