Life (10 Year Version)

I graduated from college 10 years ago. Exactly 10 years ago today, I started my first job, first corporate job, and career in tech. I look back and realize I was so naive. I didn't know the difference between health insurance and car insurance. Hilarious for someone who now works at an HRIS focussed SaaS company. This piece isn't about my career however. 

I have been reflecting a lot on these past 10 years recently. I was a young, dumb kid. I am still young and dumb but slightly less so, less of a kid and more of a baby adult. I was joking with my friends that every time I see kids under the age of 10 now, it's usually with a parent my age. It freaks me out because I expect them to look my parents age. 

I have lived a lot of life in these last 10 years. I came to terms with my own grief. I learned that I am much weaker because of that grief than my peers who haven't experienced it. I am overcoming the deficiencies caused in my growth because of that grief. And more importantly, I am making peace with the fact that the world will sympathize but will never give me grace for said shortcomings. It's one of the most confusing things about grief (and trauma). It may have been imposed upon you but you are still accountable for your healing.

I am less judgmental now. I used to love the Anis Mojgani poem, Shake the Dust, because it reminded me that we all live our own heavens and hells. I knew this logically but I did not know this fundamentally. At twenty-two, my friends and I were still pretending that we were fine. We were fine because we did the thing. We took the honors classes, got into good schools, and graduated with honors in Practical Majors. Twenty-two is the age I was scoffing at Chris McCandless for abandoning the practical path in search of the Wild. I thought I wasn't judging but I judged more than ever, and it's because those judgments were projections of myself. I didn't have the guts to be brave so I criticized others for their valor. 

I understand Mojgani better now. Of what he meant when he said, this is for the bigots, for the sexists, for the killers. For the big house jail-sentenced cats becoming redeemers and for the springtime that always seems to know to show up after every single winter. I know life better now. How instantaneously it changes colors, like weather. A phone call to inform you of a Stage 4 diagnosis. A hospital visit that turns into a triple bypass. Someone had to drop out of school because they had to take care of their sick family member. Someone else got pregnant too early. And another person you know is on round eight of their IVF cycles. That one kid from high school is a convicted felon now, and the other one is working in Hollywood. Job layoffs, economy, war, E files, it seems to never end. People you encounter are going through their lives trying to survive this system built to destroy us. 

This is the last ten years alone. It has shown life, forced me to weather storms I didn't think I was capable of. Prioritized what matters, how to ignore what doesn't, and to live the everyday not the big moments. Your worst moments don't define you, and your best moments are just that - your best. The multitudes we contain are often a reflection of those around us. 

I am constantly evolving. The absolutes I knew were false. The Big Things weren't so big, and the little things were colossal. Being thirty-two is knowing that being present is the only thing I truly have. Bygones are bygones, what is to come will come. None of that matters. This current moment is the most important thing. 

I would tell my twenty-two year old self, you have some of the skills and some of the experiences. You're going to learn so much. It's terrifyingly exhilarating. 

I would thank my twenty-five year old self for starting weight training. 

I would congratulate my twenty-seven year old self for going to therapy. 

And I would hope that my forty-two year old self is wiser and kinder. 

Cause I Knew Everything When I Was Young

'Cause I knew everything when I was young

Taylor Swift sings in her song Cardigan from the album folklore. I remember my 12th grade English teacher taught us how to read poetry. She brought in chocolate creamsicles and asked us to describe how it tasted in class. Creamy, chocolatey, cold, and so on. Then we read a poem about a vendor selling ice cream. We broke it down line by line. What's the poem about, she asked? None of us could have guessed it was about a funeral in Mexico. I think that was the first time my worldview shattered. I thought I knew everything. I thought I didn't like Poetry. I did.

Whether it was Faiz writing mujhse pehli si muhabbat mere mehboob na maang or Agha Shahid Ali reminding us, Each ray of sunshine is seven minutes old...so when I look at the sky, I see the past, I unlearned everything I knew with each poem. That phase of life is interesting. You have spent the first eighteen odd years of your life learning. And you know that you have a lot more to learn. But for the first time in your life, you think you know everything. You think that everything you learn from here on out will be a subset of all the bullet points you already know. You believe so deeply in your own knowledge that the thought of being unaware is alien to you. So you tend to make a lot of statements that are absolutes and live with a profound faith in those statements. 

I don't like Poetry. I will always be friends with so and so. I cant imagine a world where I will be conflicted in my decision because my moral compass is strong (untested but strong). I will always like Lit Fic and I could never like Sci-Fi. I want to study PreMed. Money doesn't matter when happiness is concerned. There was nothing arbitrary about my sense of self at eighteen. I knew who I was. Until, I didn't. 

No one tells you that when you are young and you think you know everything, it's because you haven't lived through anything. When you are young, you haven't seen your life partner lose their parent. You likely haven't been a caretaker. You haven't heard of a kid you went to school with die of suicide. You haven't been passed over for a promotion because of politics. You haven't had your morality tested. There is so much that you haven't learned because you haven't lived through it. 

My mother passed away when she was 43. My entire life, her death has been about me losing my mother. But recently, her death has become about her. I always heard that she died young. How could she have died young when she was my mother? I am at that age where I say that about people who die at 43 now, they died young. I often think about all of life she never got to experience. Her kids as teenagers, Artemis II, orange man becoming president, her son getting married - so much of life that she never experienced because she died young. I thought I understood grief at 10, and then at 15, and then at 20. I am learning now that this grief just morphs into different beasts each time I learn to slay it in its current form. 

I find myself a lot less judgmental now. There are very few things I believe in but my belief in those things is steadfast. All the absolutes that guided my life are mere suggestions. I am sure I will look back to this piece of writing in ten years and laugh. Or perhaps I will find it endearing the way I look at my writing from 2010. I am unlearning this constant need for perfection. This fear of failure has paralyzed me for so long that I stopped writing entirely. I think less of what people will say and more of what my mother would have wished for. That's a nice way to live life. Think of what all the women in your lineage would have wished for secretly and try to fulfill it all through you. I own a home I bought with my money. The first woman in my entire lineage to do so. I don't take this lightly. I built my peace from the bricks they laid. It's a humbling thought. Centuries of women, whose DNA I carry, all living through me. Like a magical connection that transcends time and space, all connected by the same thread of desire. 

At 32, I don't know much. I know more than I did at 18 but I know way less compared to what I will at 44. I will also know more at 44 than my mother ever did. I keep that thought in the back of my mind a lot. She never got to experience 44. I want to experience it for the both of us. I want to learn more and more, about everything and nothing, but mainly about what I thought I knew at 18 but didn't. 

The Case for Romance Novels

I read my first Romance Novel when I was eighteen. A fresh graduate from high school, the world was my oyster. In this world filled with hope, I stumbled upon an awfully written, extremely misogynistic, Romance Novel. It wasn't quite Romance given that it started as a Twilight fanfic (if you know, you know) but it was all the rage in 2012. I couldn't put it down. It was a fascinating character study where nothing made sense, or was good, but everything happened. A billionaire? Check. A damsel in distress? Check. Skinny, young, inexperienced 22 yr old enthralled by someone more experienced? Check and check. It was awful but it opened up a whole new genre of books for me. 

In 2012, everyone read Romance and pretended not to. This bookish world, pre-Covid and pre-TikTok, was the shameful place readers-who-knew-better resided in. These mindless books you would pick up in between college assignments were the equivalent of brain rot doom-scrolling today. Back in 2012, people wanted to be perceived as intellectuals on the social media stratosphere. Having interests that didn't add any value to your life were deemed as beneath you. As one can imagine, this was not the time for Romance. Romance section at the bookstores saw more cobwebs than a cemetery. You would often find tacky covers with ripped bodices and oiled ethnic looking men in mass market paperback format (RIP to mass-market paperbacks, you will be missed) in this section. I recall blushing walking through this section at my local Barnes & Noble. 

It was in this timeline that I found myself gravitating towards Romance. It wasn't that I thought these books were good, it was just that they created judgment free worlds for me. The world was beginning to care about the right words. We didn't quite have words for Social Justice warriors or Woke or Virtue Signaling in the colloquial language yet. This was a world where what words you used mattered a lot. The over-correction from years of not caring about language was finally happening. Naturally, in a world like this, you cannot admit to reading (and enjoying) anything remotely misogynistic. Traditional roles were ridiculed in the face of Girl Boss feminism and women were in their I-can-do-it-all era. We had effectively solved centuries of patriarchy, or so we thought anyway. 

Romance Novels, in this world, provided a haven for exploration of thought. A world created by women, for women, curiously meandering through many facets of what women want. No mockery of desire, no outrage because women's rights are being set back, and no shame for wanting to question aspects of what women should want. Romance Novels became the sanctuary for all forms of love. A woman who wants to be a construction manager, or a baseball team owner, or is madly in love with her childhood friend, or has forsaken all forms of love until she meets The One, or never connected with anyone until her, or them - all were welcome. A brown girl who has forsaken marriage until she finds her Darcy at a wedding of a friend of a friends, or one who falls for the tatted guy her demure, simple-minded parents would surely disapprove of existed outside of fleeting desires. A biker romance where a guy would go to war for his woman was no longer a Homeric fantasy. Romance Novels greeted all with open arms. You have a niche trope or sub-trope that you always fall for? There's a Romance Novel about that somewhere. Whether you like spice or sweet, someone has had the same desires. Romance Novels created the most wholesome world women could communicate through. 

The greatest thing to come out of Booktok is the shamelessness that Gen Z influencers created around reading Romance. The popularization of Romance on Booktok has revolutionized how Romance gets written and published. It has created a whole new genre for Romantic Fantasy, Romantasy, because Gen Z unabashedly embraced Romance. The popularity of Bridgerton and Heated Rivalry is a testament to what Romance is capable of at its best. There is a joke on TikTok that women only want men (partners) written by other women. However, there is a degree of truth to that statement. Within Romance, women see an equal footing. It's the only place on earth where a scenario is created and resolved based off of what women want. Whether it's a Second-Act Break Up i.e. the man has to run to the airport to confess his undying love for the FMC (female main character) or it's a resolution without needing any big theatrics (as is the case with Windy City series by Liz Tomforde), all of it reflects what women want. Women, it turns out, are as human in their wants as men. And that in itself is the ultimate case for Romance Novels. In a twisted, long-winded way, a Romance Novel is an attempt by women to be considered human. In its varying themes, interests, tropes, micro-tropes, and desires, women just want to be treated without a generalization. Romance is the only space where women can evaluate other women without the influence of men. Romance nurtures thought without the need to prove, or defy, or resist. I am no less a woman because I prefer a Sports Romance over a Mafia Romance, for example. Romance Novels humanize all women - the readers, the writers, and the characters. Men are no longer the center of this world and that opens up a lot of room for reflection. 

In its lack of attempt to be taken seriously, Romance Novels have created an inquisitive study of womanhood. There is no expectation of effort from the reader, and yet, if one chooses to, they will find plethora to ponder over. Romance Novels embody seamlessly what many works of fiction try so hard to, they remind women that no thought is too shameful to be experienced. And ultimately, in doing so, Romance Novels have freed women from performing for men. 

Copy heart. Copy bracelet.

I recently switched back to an Android phone and found my saved notes from 2015 - 2017 in my drive. These were some random snippets of thoughts and quotes from books I was reading at the time: Gatsby, poetry, notes on Death, recipes, and grocery store lists. I found a list I had written down when I lived at home with my parents to help care for my grandmother. Such an interesting snapshot of time.

At work, I delivered a presentation today on how the software we use captures and compares data month to month. The technical part of me wants to write a piece of code that compares on certain values but isn’t that what writing is at the end of the day.

I have always found writers who write for themselves to be the most enjoyable. I don’t care what the audience wants to read, I care what you want to read as a writer. When you bring in performance, it always cheapens its meaning a little bit. Alyssa Liu winning a gold medal on her terms is the greatest example of this. She performed for herself. And in her joy, we all found a missing piece of ourselves.

In my previous writings, I found a draft of a piece I was writing on Math after graduation. It’s one of the many pieces I never bothered to publish. I am always taken aback with my love for all things Math. It lies dormant because I haven’t studied it in years. However, it always finds itself back in my life. A couple of years ago, I was going through a really tough time. I started tutoring Math to high school dropouts so that they could get their GED. At the time, I needed to think about something other than myself. Math was that grounding force for me. It was numbers and letters. In its familiarity, it reminded me that world could make sense.

I felt similarly invigorated by the Artemis II mission. Math working so beautifully and precisely to take humans further than they have ever been, and returning them safely home was a tribute to The Human Spirit in every way. It lit a fire in me that I haven’t experienced in a long time. The blaze that kept me going through my undergrad degree because I forced myself to find joy in the little things is peaking through under the protection of an experienced mind. I no longer believe in the systems we have created as the absolute truths. My therapist often says, life exists in possibility. In a way, it’s the most mathematical thought. Probability teaches us that there is no perfect 0 or 1. The basis of Math is in the Multiverse Theory. There exists a universe that we define. Once we have defined that universe, what are the conclusions that we can draw from it? This universe is the universal set. So, mathematically speaking, life is in its possibilities. And this is where things become joyful.

Whether it’s the first woman to ever go around the moon or a 4 minute performance an athlete has prepared their entire life for, only to so-called blow it. The possibilities of human capability are endless. Why go to the moon? Why climb the mountains? Why explore the deep ocean? Because it’s there. It’s as simple as that. There are a lot of practical reasons for all of it but at the end of the day, it’s something we believe is possible. And that possibility alone is the defense of its attempt. Given the right resources and the perfect scenario, what can a human being achieve? And if we fail, when can we try again?

As Huxley says in Brave New World,

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.'

'In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.'

'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.'

The Great Attempt at anything is the reason for it all. Humans to stare at in awe, humans to cheer, humans to communicate with, and humans to come back home to - this has always been the North Star. It means something because we care. It exists because we want it to. Not out of hubris but in appreciation of. An homage to the stardust in us responding to the stars further away.

Some thoughts on Representation in Art

 Growing up in Texas as a Pakistani-American is challenging on many fronts. I am not going to bore the reader with tribulations of being Hyphenated, as that discourse is overdone. However, a missing piece within the current conversation is the expectation placed upon the Hyphenated to represent Pakistan (or Homeland). I find it quite silly because the stage is set for the Hyphenated to fail. You can never represent the experience of someone back home. You simply haven’t lived it. And you cannot be the other half of your hyphen only. The battle begins early on and most seem to stumble their way into a sort of peace. If you don’t let yourself get pulled too much in either direction, you manage your way through life pretty okay. Of course, the average person only has their loved ones to disappoint. The complication arises when you extrapolate that balance and attempt it at a global stage. Whether it’s Hasan Minhaj trying to make jokes about brown dads that evolved beyond the Russell Peters caricaturization of brown dad humor or it’s Riz Ahmed’s self-deprecating attempt at satire in Bait, there isn’t enough of an audience with that niche experience to grant them immunity from the monumental task of Homeland Representation.

In the recent years, both Minhaj and Ahmed have challenged the ideas of what it means to be Hyphenated but that critique is largely aimed at the Empire and not at the Homeland. It doesn’t help that anyone making it big in Hollywood uses being Hyphenated as their brand to get anywhere. Simply put, they have asked for the criticism from the Motherland.

It is a disadvantaged brand because in trying to appease everyone, it manages to displease all. There’s a saying in Urdu, dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka na ghaat ka, which represents this brand quite well. It makes me wonder, however, what responsibility the viewer has towards the Art they engage with. There’s a general sense of entitlement with any diasporic Art where it must represent all facets of life in Motherland. This thinking was highlighted in criticism for a show like Never Have I Ever that dared talk about a brown girl falling for a white guy (completely neglecting the fact that most brown men consider it an accomplishment when they sleep with white women, for example, Jemima Khan is still revered in Pakistan despite Imran Khan having been married thrice). Outside of the general misogyny, I find it fascinating that a generation of millennials that grew up smitten by Hillary Duff and Chad Michael Murray had trouble accepting a brown girl wanting to date a white boy. The audience back home seems to want a Pakistani drama in English and aired on Netflix but following the script of Hum TV. The diaspora, who are probably closest to Art like that, find it cringe for attempting to do what great Hollywood TV has done. And anyone outside of the specific Hyphenated cannot help but stereotype, even while trying not to. A Trader Joe’s meal that combines Thai curry sauce, Chinese soup dumplings, and coconut milk finding a moment of stardom on TikTok attempting to be cultural but being hollow in every aspect.

The onus of deriving meaning from Art is as much on the viewer as it is on the creator. The nuanced filtering of what works for the viewer vs not is the path forward. Anyone creating Art for the consumer is always bound to fall into the trap of pretty aesthetics over actual substance. Art is meant to be a portrayal, not a two way conversation. Picasso didn't paint in hopes that people will feel represented. It is the artists’ job to create what is most truthful to them. It is the audience’s job to engage, not to demand.