Bad News at 7

Picture: http://florinsuciu.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html

I came back from a beautiful island in Thailand called Koh Tao and have been bombarded with bad news... news of death, destruction and utter chaos. All I see on the news are images of death. I hear of death from people... I read of death...  I watch people being shot at as if they are dolls in the street screaming for their rights in the Arab World... I hear of people's souls being robbed of their existence... I read of people suffering from illnesses that their loved ones cannot carve and take away...

I long to hear about a birth... a birth of a child, animal... a birth of a new era.... a new ideology.. a new Art form... a new ANYTHING...

Why has death become our companion? Why has destruction become a source of entertainment? Every channel I come across on TV has images of riots, revolutions, murders... even series and movies... people are so interested in how a murder is solved... present company included... me that is... one of my favorite books to read are Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's Poirot besides Jane Austen's Classic books... Why is it that nowadays we have different CSI's and they are so popular? Even I am taken by them... 

I remember when my husband and I were in Toronto for the summer in 2008 and I was watching this daily documentary on cases gone cold, how the authorities re-opened them and caught the criminal... My husband, a Canadian, never understood why I found it fascinating... He never understood why I was taken by the idea of death, murders and rapes... I wasn't really... I just looked at them as a sign of hope... hope that the real criminals would be caught and made to pay for their horrendous crimes.... he still did not understand it...

Come to think of it though... I agree with him... Why was I taken by it, when all these documentaries were about was death and crime? I mean shouldn't I be watching more movies about life and people's achievements?

I know no one can escape death... I know that no one can escape such an end... an end to life... and end to the road... 

There is always another way of looking at death...

I like how my friend Birdie  words it as "The last stage of living" on her blog http://bigfouroh.blogspot.com/ when talking about her dear brave mother's struggle with cancer... I love that idea... We celebrate life and see it in stages... We do not look at it as an end... but kind of like a play on Life's Theater... a play that touches people's lives and will be remembered forever as it is told to the generations to come...

My parents and grandparents always told me stories about when they were young in Baghdad, Ramleh, Jaffa, Jerusalem and Beirut. I will never forget these stories and they will remain with me until my children are old enough for me to pass them on to them. Souls are never lost... they are never forgotten... they never fade... they live within us... and so from now on, I will change my views on death... and will try not to call it death any more... 

A life is never lost... it never fades... 

Every single person who has fallen around the world must have had lives worth talking about... The lives of those who were washed away by the terrible Tsunami in Japan, will always be remembered by the survivors who are struggling and fighting to live... The lives of those who were shaken in earth shattering quakes around the world will forever be remembered by their loved ones... The lives of those who stood up to dictators and asked for their rights in the Arab World will always be remembered by the rest for their courage and patriotism.... and the lives of those who fought for peace will forever be remembered as the beacons of hope and change. 

May we all celebrate our life and the lives of others as we celebrate achievements, happy moments, love, graduation, weddings, births, etc. !