USA Diaries - Experiences

Alright, I have to do this. I need to do this. I'll be sharing my experiences in America here. Some day I'll get back here and read what I've written. I don't know how I would feel at that time. I don't know that, but there'd be something I'd know I had written. Whatever I felt having those experiences, will be coming straight from my heart here. My USA Diary.


September 12, 2014

Dear Diary,
I told you a lot in my previous post and guess what, it wasn't even half of what I wanted to say. I wish I could record every moment and save it somewhere just so that I could show it to all the people with whom I want to share my life in America. This might sound a bit abrupt but, here goes..

The convention center, where I was staying at D.C, was beautiful. Well, it was my kind of place. I could spend a lot of time outside with the trees and the grass and the bushes. One thing I like about America is 'the benches,' that's right. You'd see many benches while roaming in America, in the parks, on campus, maybe along a street, just to sit on it and to admire the view. You'd see a small table for two out in the balconies so that friends, couples, mom and son, dad and daughter, could come out and sit on the balcony, in the evening with a cup of coffee and admire the view outside. Doesn't it sound nice? It looked nice too. I admire these people for making it look so beautiful. I really do.

I can spend a great deal of time mediating here, on this bench.

We were around 100 students in D.C, for the Welcome Workshop and when we got there, we were split into 4 teams. Each team had its own name. And each team was given a colour. They gave us shirts which said Global UGRAD Pakistan. Each team got a separate color. One team got purple shirts, the other two got green and blue. I was in Team Washington and we got yellow shirts so yellow was our colour. They arranged some games for us. We won one but lost the rest so basically our team lost. Before starting the game each team had to come up with a chant to support their respective teams, and, well, I happened to make ours. We had only 10 minutes to come up with a chant so it's going to sound a bit stupid but don't laugh, okay? At least I came up with something. Since we were Team Washington, our chant went like this:

We are one

You are done

Wa-shing-ton

Wa-shing-ton!

Err, yeah. Well, oh and we had to do some moves with it too, but anyway, that was our chant.

Hey Diary, I must have told it to you before. D.C. is beautiful! The buildings and architecture, it all looks so wonderful. You would want to keep looking at it. You'd want to stay there. The roads are wider and cleaner. You'd see flowers on the sidewalks. Beautiful lampposts with flower-pots hanging on them. I saw a bicycle there, someone had parked it on the side walk, along the flower fence. Even that was looking beautiful. I don't know if it was beautiful for everyone or not, but to me, yes! it was.

I want to tell you all about what's happening with me and my university, too. I want to tell you things that have happened here. People I have met. I want to to tell you the difference I see here. I'm doing okay. Sometimes, even while just walking toward my dorm or classroom or anywhere, really, I stop and think about the days that sprinted behind me. Everything happened just so quickly that it seemed to me that I was picked up and thrown at this place. I don't even know what's happening sometimes. I talk to people but then I want to stay with my own self.

Well, back in Pakistan I used to see the moon, a lot. I would search the sky for the moon and look at it and admire its beauty. Since the day I came to America, I didn't get to see the moon until about a week ago, which is strange, I know. I was feeling sad and every night I searched the sky for a single sight of moon but I guess the windows of my room give the view of opposite side of sky that holds the moon. But I wanted to see it and the stars too so I asked one of my friends, Michelle, if she could take me somewhere where I could see the whole sky. Complete sky.  All of it, with the moon and the stars. Everything! Well of course there was such place. She's so nice, this girl, she took me to a lake at night. It was 9 PM and we were there all alone. I could occasionally hear a fish jumping out from the water. And a goose flying just above the water. But when I looked up at the sky, it contained the stars! So many of them. And the moon too, it was beautiful. The moon was full and it hid many stars. So the night was not very starry. But still, it had a lot of stars, I could see so many of them. I felt like I was home. The sky was my home. It was the same sky, it had the same moon and it contained the same stars. That was my sky just before my eyes. I laid down and watched the sky and it was so beautiful. I found the brightest star, too. Well, my cousin, Afzaal bhai, he lives in London. Once when he was in Pakistan and his day for departure back to London was coming near, I told him that I'd be going to miss him a lot. We were sitting under the sky and he pointed toward the brightest star. He said that's him so whenever I would miss him, I'd only have to look at the brightest star in the sky and that would be him looking at me. And after that I've told people the same. Well it's not like many people have told me that they'll miss me but when Michelle said that she'd miss me when I'll go back to Pakistan, I told her that she'd just have to look at the brightest star every time she'd miss me because that would be me and I'd probably be looking at the same brightest star from Pakistan. Well, and so it goes for you, dear diary! Will you find the brightest star whenever you'll miss me? That'd be me, looking for you as well.

Michelle is a photographer. I asked her to take a picture of the moon for me. Sadly, the lens was not powerful enough to capture the stars. But the moon looked so pretty.

I'm taking a course called Learning Strategies. Of all the courses I'm taking, I like it the most. Our instructor Mrs. Goetz, gives us assignments twice a week. So for my first week of this course, I had to turn in a paper writing about one thing that represented me. I got my graded assignment back the next week and while she was handing me my assignment, she smiled at me and then looked at the paper and then back at me again. She said she enjoyed reading my paper a lot and that it made her smile. She told me it was very special, whatever I had written in it. It made me so happy knowing that she thought whatever I had written was very special.

Oh, and I got to know about my result too. I've cleared my 3rd semester back in my home university. Wow, I'm growing up. Time is moving by fast. Well, time is strange; sometimes it seems to have stopped completely and sometimes it doesn't even give me time to think. Why does time do this? Do you feel the same?

I had a presentation on Wednesday for my Business Communication class. The instructor asked the students to pick a day for their presentations from three days. We could either present on Wednesday (that was just after one day), Monday or next Wednesday. When he asked us to list our names for 'the day when we want to present', everybody wanted to go for either Monday or next Wednesday. I wanted to do it on Monday mainly because I wanted to get an idea about how presentations differ in America from what we do in Pakistan. Well, almost everybody chose Monday and next Wednesday so I just picked the coming Wednesday. I had a rubric to follow. I knew what the professor was expecting from us so I signed up for Wednesday instead. Intrestingly, I was not nervous at all for my very first presentation in America and surprisingly, it turned out quite well. Everybody liked it. Each one of my classmates had to rate my presentation individually along with their comments. At the end of the class all of them handed out their rate sheet to me. The most interesting part was to see the different versions of my name on those sheets. They can't spell it, they can't pronounce it but they try. Which, I believe is quite nice of them.

Yashi, Yusia, Yusera,Yushira, Everything BUT Yusra.

Yesterday, I had to give a presentation on Pakistan. I went to a middle school and there was a class waiting for me to present my country in front of them. I had to go there right after my class so I woke up in the morning and dressed up in my traditional dress. Even though it was quite cold but I wore khussay when I could have worn boots because it was raining as well. Well, it wasn't raining very hard but it was misty. But anyway, since I was representing Pakistan so I had to look like a Pakistani from head to toe. Before I entered the class in which I had to present, the teacher in whose class I was presenting, came out and looked at me and exclaimed, "Oh my! Look at her. Look at that dress." Well, Americans here, they get quite fascinated by your dresses. She liked it a lot. I entered the classroom and the middle schoolers, they went all, "Whoaaa! That's a pretty dress there." Well, it was just a normal dress, really but they liked it quite a lot. I hung the flag and map of Pakistan on the hooks of one of the whiteboards and after that I started my presentation. Before presenting Pakistan to them, I asked the students what's the one word that comes to their mind when they hear the word Pakistan. One of them replied, "sand" and another one replied, "goats". It brought a smile to my face. I showed them on the map the parts of Pakistan that were "sandy" and that "goats" are not the only thing that one can see in Pakistan. I told them about the food, and the dresses and our cultures and traditions. With their chins, resting in the cup of their hands, they were listening to me. I felt like  a grandmother telling a story to her grandchildren infront of a cozy fire place. I told them some of the words in Urdu and they tried to speak those words. I had brought some Pakistani snacks for them and they ate them while listening to my presentation. I showed them how girls cover their heads when they go out, with my dupatta and the teacher of that class suddenly stood up from her seat and asked me if she could take my picture. She said she wanted to write about me and my presentation in a paper so she had to take my picture to put with her writing. I loved answering their questions about Pakistan and my culture. I loved doing that. While I was about to leave, one of the girls stopped me and asked me to wait for her because she wanted to bring her phone for taking a picture with me. They were all so fascinated by the culture and my dress and my language. It was an amazing experience. I liked doing that. Specially for the cute little middle schoolers who have a plethora of questions to ask and who are always curious about things.

I want to tell you all about Chicago as well. But I might do that in my next post. I really hope you liked sharing my experiences with you. I'll get back to you soon.

Thank you for listening.

With love,

Yusra

Somewhere Amidst..

A smile that hid sadness underneath it. She smiled that smile. A smile quite similar to a rose amid a sandy plain. A smile that lifted her heart and saved it from drowning but upon coming to the surface, the shore was still far from being seen. A smile that watered her eyes. A smile that wanted to turn into a laugh but couldn't. A smile that was difficult for even her brains to interpret. The senses got confused between becoming happy or sad.
That was the kind of smile she smiled just now.

Chaos

I'm screaming, but they can't hear me. Are my screams out of your hearing range? Can't you hear the noise that is surrounding my existence? What is wrong with the world? Why can't they see me? Is it because I'm wearing a mask? Don't ask me to take it off. You won't stand the sight of what lies beneath it. You'll see the bruises, contusions, marks and scars. By wrapping myself with the fake covering I'm only hiding the scars. Why does it mute my screams, then? There's so much noise in my head, why is it inaudible to the people around me? There's a mess of tangled thoughts inside my brains, how can it not be felt? If I can see what lies under their blank faces, why can't they see it for me then? Is it how it's supposed to be? I never wanted myself to get mired in my own existence. Where are the flowers, the butterflies, the stars and the moon? Where is the bitter sweet smell of caffeine and the smell and texture of the old book's pages? Why has chaos taken over the silence? Nobody is listening to me, everyone just walks away. They walk away leaving me in shambles. They walk away leaving me here to assemble my shattered self, all by myself. How can I gather myself together, if they are not willing to help me pick up my torn pieces? Even if I assemble myself together, bit by bet, I would need someone to put my last broken piece back together for me. I've been doing it, on and off. I complete this jigsaw puzzle of my broken pieces everyday but that last piece that just stays there waiting for someone to come and place it in its abode. Would anyone ever complete this puzzle? Does nobody want to see how does the full picture look like? Is this mess too much to be fixed? Would I be waiting on myself to get completed, forever?

Na Hota Mein Tou Kya Hota

I never thought I would hear that. But I did. It hurt my feelings but that’s okay. Believe me it is. I guess that’s what they say about expectations. They do get killed. But I don’t blame anyone. It’s just that no matter how hard I try, there does always come up something that stands in front of me and tells me that I fail at living life. So the blame is on me. I want to run away, far away. I want to leave it all behind and disappear into the wilderness. I wish nobody could see me. I wish nobody could talk to me. I wish I never existed. I wish I could just get up one day and get lost in the woods. I wish I could do that. If I were living my life for myself only, I would’ve done that by now. But I don’t live one life. I’m living a lot more. I don’t live for myself.  I can’t help wondering about my existence. I can’t help wondering how I manage to mess everything up. One thing that I really wanted to achieve in life was to be that person who brings happiness in others’ lives. I try so hard, oh lord knows I try my best to do so. But I fail! I fail every time.

Na  tha  kuch  tou  khuda  tha,  kuch  na  hota  tou  khuda  hota
Daboya  mujh  ko  honay  ne, na  hota  mein  tou  kya  hota

And when you don’t know where to go, and all the directions are lost, I wish you could see that one direction that always shines upon you. I wish you get the vision. I wish the best for you. Don't worry, I think about people in my mind like the person I knew they were. I think about the best version of them that they had shown to me. I’d try to forget what I saw. I’d try to forget that you said that. I’d try to convince myself that you never meant to say that. I’d keep praying like I always did for you. I’d just try to forget all that. It’s just that I was hurt but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is people’s happiness and I wish that they get that. I don’t know what else to ask for. And I’d never stop asking for it because I know He never stops giving. I just can’t get over the fact that.. well, never mind.

 Life, it happens!

Muddat  hui  mar  gaya  Ghalib  magar  phir  bhi  yaad  ata  hai
Wo  har  ik  baat  pe  kehna, kay  youn  hota  tou  kya  hota

Disclaimer: The verses are taken from Ghalib's poem and are property and copyright of the owner.

USA Diaries

Aug 17, 2014

Dear Diary,

Whoa.
Whoa again!

There’s so much to tell you, there is so much to write, I can’t believe I haven’t started writing it all down already. It’s August 17, 2014, Sunday, as I’m writing it. Exactly 10 days since this journey has begun.  A crazy journey! Wait, should I call it crazy? I’m not sure. But I’ve been overwhelmed with stuff and I’m so glad to be finally able to write it all down. The sound of keyboard is music to my ears at the moment. It’s giving me so much satisfaction to finally record my thoughts before they get rusty.

August 7, 2014. The day I left my home to enter into a new world of things I had never experienced, to meet people I would never have thought of meeting with, to go to places that I would have never gone to, otherwise. What a day it was! The day before that, I was carrying a bundle of mixed emotions with me. I didn’t know how I was feeling. I was happy and sad both at the same time. I think I still am. But I don’t really know what to say about it. I remember that day I was filled up with emotions. I was going through things that people wouldn’t understand. Of course, they would not. Because I never gave them the chance to understand that. I was filled with emotions and I was feeling emotionless both at the same time. And as I’m writing it today, I feel like I still feel the same way. I don’t know. A couple hours before I had to leave for the airport, I was lying down with my mother in the room with lights turned out. It helped me to cry without getting caught but who was I kidding? Of course they caught me crying. I have never been this far away from home. I have never lived in a dorm with a stranger. I have never stayed away from home for this long. Maybe the thought of what I was about to experience was scaring me. And there were other things too that made me cry. I tried to control myself but it was hard, trust me it was. So an hour later when I finally got up from my bed, everybody could see my puffy, red eyes. What else I could do? I have always been that little kid in the house that gets too much attention and it was hard for me to say goodbye to my family; my mother and father, and my sisters. I remember when the day for my departure was coming nearer, one of my siblings started giving me kisses on my cheek, out of nowhere. Sometimes I would get a hug from another sibling whenever it would hit her that I was about to leave in a few days. They were all so happy and proud of me. They still are. But the fact that I wasn’t going to live with them was something difficult for them and for me to accept.

On my way to the airport, at about 3 AM, on isolated, well lit, beautiful golden roads, sitting in the car, I cried again. I realized something that day. I knew I wouldn’t really cry this much once I’d get to my destination. I understood that what makes us cry is saying goodbye. It’s so hard to say goodbye. It is just so brutally hard to do that, it demands your eyes to show how much painful it is to do so. But it was an episode of the journey that I had embarked on. I’m the kind of person who gets very excited over small things. It’s another story that the excitement doesn’t really show on my face because I’m not very showy over such things. So when I say that I had experienced my first airplane ride that day, I’m pretty excited about telling that. I was pretty excited experiencing the pre-sitting-on-a-plane experience and the post-sitting-on-a-plane experience. What happened to be a stab to my excitement was getting a middle seat instead of the window seat. I wanted to see outside and enjoy the view but the luck wasn’t on my side. I reached at the Dubai airport in a couple of hours. Dubai airport is huge, all fancy and glamorous. I had to spend 13 hours there and I was tired and not sure what to do. So I took a tour of the airport and then mostly I spent my time in the ladies’ prayer room. I saw a lot of ladies coming from different countries in that room, praying and then going away. There’s one worth mentioning thing that happened to me at Dubai. I was in the prayer room, making dua after my prayer when a girl entered there, picked out the Qur’an from her bag and started reciting. She had a very good voice. After I was done making the dua, I crouched on my knees and started folding my prayer mat, when I heard her saying, “No, no, no, no.. please sit back down again and make dua for me.” I was startled at first and looked at her with a question marked face. Then she said again, “I was seeing you make dua and I felt like you make dua right from your heart. I want you to make dua for me as well.” I smiled and asked what does she want me to ask from Allah for her and she replied, “Everything good in dunya (this world) and everything good in akhirat (the hereafter).” And I did so. After I was done doing that, she hugged me. We started talking about Islam and Allah and the conversation with her was so soothing. I really liked meeting a person like her.

I wandered around the airport before boarding for my flight to Washington. That was one long flight. I wanted to sleep and get all cozy but it’s not easy to get cozy when you’re on an airplane, sitting in the middle, yawning every now and then and not getting a chance to enjoy a wink of sleep. But the time passed and I finally set my feet in Washington. The days in Washington were sprinting around. My schedule was tight. I was not getting proper sleep and there was so much to learn before heading off to my destination, Missouri. The place where I was staying had a dining hall. I had to get down to the dining hall at 7 AM because that was the time when the breakfast was served. Breakfast, by the way, was the best meal of the day. The rest of the meals were a dilemma between halal and haram so I’d almost always end up eating an apple or some fries. While I was in Washington I went to see the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian. And I also went to see The White House and The Capitol Building. There’s this street in D.C, where there are a lot of embassies of countries around the world. I liked that. The buildings there were beautiful and there was just so much to see, I wanted to soak in everything but they say, you probably need more than a year if you want to see all of the amazing buildings and attractions they have there. While touring the D.C., it almost made me feel like I was living Dan Brown's book, ‘The Lost Symbol’. I had already read about those buildings in ‘The Lost Symbol’ and now actually getting to see them was quite an amazing experience for a reader like me. Oh, also that day when I was given a little tour of D.C., I finally ate some good food in an Afghani Restaurant after such a long time. I could finally fill up my plate without getting suspicious about the meat being halal or haram. That was the day when I saw ‘naan’ after so many days and had ‘qahwa’ after my meal. I came back to the place where I was staying at around 11 PM. I had 4 hours to get some rest before going to the Dulles Airport to catch my plane for Kansas City. Like I said before, I was overwhelmed! I managed to get some sleep and then came back down again at 3 AM where the shuttles were standing to take me and the rest of the participants to the airport. I spent 6 hours at the Dulles Airport. Yes, it was tiring. Then I finally got on my plane, and was flown to Kansas City. At the Kansas City Airport, representatives from my university were standing holding a placard in their hands. They took us to their cars, and from there we were driven all the way to Warrensburg, which is going to be my town for some time now. I’m getting to know my university now. It’s quite big, the campus. It has several places that one would enjoy going to. The town itself has a country touch to it. While the car was driving on the roads to Warrensburg, I could almost listen to John Denver’s songs ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ and ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ playing in my head.

But now I want to think how I feel about all of it. It had never been this way; there was so much dumped on my mind to think about that I never got the time to think about the things I actually like to think about. It made me sad when I realized that I’m not even getting the time to think but now that when I’m finally getting a chance to write it all down, it’s making me feel somewhat better. I needed time with myself only. I know I won’t be getting it that much but I need to work a way out for myself one way or another.
Dear Diary! I’ve found the people of Warrensburg very nice and helpful. I’ve always liked people and now after meeting the people here, it has added up to the faith that I never lose in humanity.

I like the view from my dorm window, especially at night, when the golden lights get turned on and make the road look like it’s made of gold. Sometimes I want to stand by the window and watch the cars go by. It gets so quite at night, and you can finally find some serenity from the hustle and bustle of the whole day. One night, I was sleeping with my back against the window. I turned to the other side, now facing the window, and my eyes opened up from the sleep. I could’ve shut them back right that very next moment but they caught sight of the outside view. There was a calm breeze blowing outside, and the leaves on the trees were dancing to the rhythm of the breeze. The golden light was turned on like always, and I could see the black sky in the stark contrast to golden-green leaves. I didn’t want to lose that sight so I kept staring outside, lying in my bed, and then the sight itself became a lullaby for me and I don’t know when did I go back to sleep that night. Sometimes, when I wake up in the morning, I almost think that I’m in my own home, and not in a dorm, but when the realization hits me, it brings a tinge of sadness to me. I don’t know, dear Diary! I really don’t. There’s just so much I’m going through that I’m inundated in my emotions.

Thank you for listening to me. 

With love,
Yusra.

Things to Do

• Every time you feel like you can't take it anymore, talk to Allah. He is the greatest of listeners.
• Do not lose your temper. Don't let the devil ruin you. Don't let the devil win the battle. Every time you lose your temper, you lose against the devil. You've got to win, don't you?
• NEVER disrespect your parents. Make them feel proud of yourself. They don't ask much from you. They just want a bit of your time reserved for them. They just want you to love them like they love you.
• Forgive people every time they make you sad for one reason or another. Every time you forgive people, Allah gets happy from you and rewards you for acquiring Allah's trait of forgiveness.
• Understand. Every person has their own set of problems that they have to go through. Understand that. It's hard but it makes you a better person, trust me.
• All those activities that mark you as a bad person, AVOID them.
• Tell yourself that you are so much better than all those people who let you down.
• Keep those hopes intact that certain people have from you. Don't ever give any person a chance to say that you disappointed them.
• Prioritize life. Invest in life. Give time to life. You have to see how much time you have to invest in life in order to get the maximum profit out of it.
• Pray, without any limitation or boundaries of time or place. Just pray. Allah lives in your heart. He is closer to you than your jugular vein. He can never turn a deaf ear toward you. He just NEVER does that. Not listening is just so unlike Allah.
• Ask Allah for forgiveness. He is forgiving. If you truly, deeply, sincerely ask Him for His forgiveness, He gets so happy and forgives you right away and leaves you without a mark of sin on you.
• Never miss a prayer.
• Stay strong and focused.
• Try to bring positivity in your as well as others' lives. Try to bring happiness for the people around you.
• Follow the sunnah. We're not that pious, I know. But we can at least try to bring just a bit of piety in our lives.
• Read more. It's better to get your brains engaged in a healthy activity.

Al Qamar - القمر

It came, in paucity. A thin curve, the shape of a sickle. You'd think that God sharpened His silver pencil to get the sharpest-edged nib possible and then drew half a circle with it. You'd think that that pencil had a silver gleaming nib that drew that circle sleekly. You'd think that the curve was so flawless that one couldn't draw it without a compass. It was scarce in the beauty of a complete silver circle, but it contained the aura of bliss and blessings. And they watched it. They came out to find that beautiful thin curve. They found it and their hearts started to get filled with the blessings coming down from the sky which contained that curve. So they drank they view and got their hearts filled with the beautiful sight.

They wished each other the blessings that this crescent was about to bring and prayed to collect them all.
They told me they saw the moon of Ramadan.
I smiled.

Ramadan Mubarak!

P.S. القمر is the arabic word for 'The Moon'.

You Dived!

That day when your dream took a dive in the pool of risk. The day when your dream struggled to stay in that pool, to swim through it. The day when the water rippling around your dream looked more like a lasso being thrown at it to strangle it. Do you know what happened that day?

I'll tell you what happened that day.

The sky remained its usual blue colour. The birds continued their flight in search of food. The grass was the same green colour. That one squirrel leaped the same usual way whenever it felt the footsteps of danger. The water remained colourless, tasted the same taste. The sound of bells jingling at that little girl's window whenever a breeze would blow over them sounded the same subtle sound. A butterfly stripped off its cocoon and fluttered off in its vivid colours. A child dropped a stone in water farther than his friend did and laughed heartily at his accomplishment. The water rippled and overlapped, making the same sound, as it would always make. The fire burned in the same colour. The flames danced and died like they always did. The sand flew and rested in a suitable corner. Somewhere a baby cried and his mother's embrace comforted him. A thief looked greedily at a wad of bucks going into a person's pocket. A rose bloomed and flaunted off its beauty. A girl plucked it off and smelled its sweet smell. A sparrow couple continued collecting straws for their nest. A fruit ripened while hanging by its stalk. An ant succeeded in lifting and carrying a crumb of bread to its cave. A guy took a drag on his cigarette and puffed out the smoke cloud, savouring it. Outside his window he saw a cat chasing after its food. A boy cycled around his neighbourhood, singing wrong lyrics to a song, not letting anything get in the way of his happiness. A woman gossiped to feel lighter. A carpenter hurt his finger while hitting a nail in the wood. A snake shed its skin. A singer hit his best note. A writer transformed his thoughts into words by pushing the keys of his typewriter. The sound coming from those keys made him happy like it always would. A painter played with colours and patterns. A drop of ink stained a student's uniform without him knowing about it. A baker looked inside the oven and smiled at his perfectly baked cake. The smell of the baked cake wafted out and dispersed in the town. A minister lied to his people. His people trusted him, like they always did. A horse galloped around the stable. The moon above glowed the same silver glow. The stars sparkled in their usual way. A bride smiled at her groom. A groom smiled at his bride. A leaf fell off the tree and swayed its way to the ground. A child stepped on it while running after a butterfly. The pages of a book left open flipped with the blow of wind. A person died. A person was born. Life went on. Nothing stopped. Nothing stalled. Everything remained the same, that day. The universe remained the same. And you..

You made your dream dive into the pool of risk!