Today I was telling Faaria I was having an identity crisis, and she told me I’d always been having one. Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps I have always been restless and searching- a condition I could only interpret as unhappiness due to my apparent lack of emotional intelligence.

Non the less, recent events in my life have left me feeling empty and distrustful of too many things. When you’re younger, everything seems so clear cut. The world is black and white and you think you know exactly who you are, where you stand, how you’ll end up.
But as you grow older, the boundaries between things start blurring into each other. What was once pretty straight forward no longer proves to do exactly what it says on the tin. Names are divorced from their meanings and the once truths of life show their illusive faces.

The tings which have weighed most heavily upon me have been those associated with ideals and faith. When you are no longer sure of how you see things, you are no longer sure of who you are. After all, are we not defined by how we interpret the world around us?

This evening at the V&A museum, I got to catch the end of a lecture on Andalusian Spain and the Abrahamic faiths which lived in harmony within that unique culture. The Lecturer closed her speech with a poem from Ibn Al-Arabi that dawned over me like a consolation.

All these names, all these forms, these objects which we feel the need to sort through, understand and interpret to define ourselves…they only serve to complicate things. They become barriers, which we adopt out of convenience. When man’s mind comes upon a brick wall, that brick wall becomes his security and closure. He can now justify his lack of initiative to go beyond, to keep up the search until some great end. How are our modern day metaphysical barriers any different from the idols of Quraysh? Have we not turned our faiths into ritual, and name, and form and appearance? And what dark matter is really behind all those things?

I am too complicated, too intricate to trust myself with a name or persona, out of fear that I may turn that into something which will one day hold me back. And in that light, what have we left to ourselves but to be good?

Love is a funny thing. It seems that after a single disappointment, man will recoil and lose his faith in all things. And yet, even with our hearts breaking, we can still believe in love.
I leave you with the poem which inspired this.

A white-blazed gazelle
Is an amazing sight,
Red-dye signaling,
eyelids hinting,
Pasture between breastbones
And innards.
Marvel,
A garden among the flames!
My heart can take on
Any form:
Gazelles in a meadow,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Kaaba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of a Torah,
The scrolls of the Qur'an.
I profess the religion of love;
Wherever its caravan turns
Along the way, that is the belief,
The faith I keep.

Ibn Al-Arabi - Translation by Iberian Medievalist, María Rosa Menocal:2004