A Year in Review

It has been twenty years spanning two decades, two centuries and two different millennia. This is my life's journey till now, and today is the last day of 2012. Looking back at this year brings back fond memories and bitter ones. Making new friends, going abroad and  the end and start of a new scholastic year have been just a few of the adventures I had.

Switzerland was a magnificent place to visit, especially because I had to opportunity to go to CERN, a dream of mine. To experience the beauty of the Alps and to be able to say you have visited the largest experiment on Earth is beyond extraordinary. Not to mention all those people I had the fortune to get to know. It is rather strange now, to think, that a simple choice to travel with the science society at my university to this place, heralded me into a path that lead to some very great experiences and encounters.

Another place I visited for a youth exchange was Turkey, a trip that changed my ideas about middle-eastern culture. I lived in a small town with a very welcoming family. Their warmth and kindness was unparalleled, as was with all other Turkish people I met. I had never felt so welcome in another country before. It was not the place itself, or the environment, but the people; their generosity and their warm-hearts stayed with me. I learnt so much from this trip, and left so many untold stories behind me. Empty pages to be filled the next time I visit, may it be soon. 

A great part of this year had to be the Science Student's Society at University which I became part of. It was not a little bit as I expected it to be; the work it involves, the fulfilment it gives and the strengthening of character it brought upon me. Joining this society made me learn important skills but most importantly new people. I had the chance to meet a lot of new characters, and most importantly, new ideas and ways of thinking. May the remaining time in this society help me corrode my stubbornness and build new connections. 

It is hard not to mention all the old friends and all the new ones. I cannot mention everyone because that is not the point. Every person I know contributed to building who I am, in every little detail. Be it work, school, recreation, there is nothing worth doing without being in the presence of other people. There is no category of friends but there is a contribution assigned to each one. Some helped in bad times, others made good times possible, and I am grateful for each and every one of you. You are all special to me in your own way and I'm sure you recognise your own contribution in my life.

I will leave you with a quote I wrote a few years back:

"It is in the eyes of those who I know that I see the story of my life, for they are part of who I am and who I shall become"

May the upcoming year be an even greater journey!

Death and Life

We are made like this. We are made to fear.

This is the day of the apocalypse - 21/12/2012.

If tomorrow you wake up and I am not with you, do not cry for me. My death is not a loss and you will gain nothing from crying. Rather, think of all the good memories I have left behind. Think of all the struggles I surmounted, of all the tears I have shed. Think of all the smiles and laughter and of all the people I came to know. Their is nothing to gain from crying a lost soul. I find that rather selfish, for what are you crying for, except for your own loss of not having the benefit of living with that person anymore? I hope I was not a burden in your life, but if I was then my apologies. If I made you happy, then there is no sense in crying to the lack of that happiness that I will not be able to provide. For if I die, I will not suffer but I don't want you to suffer still. To you, who shall cry, I do not owe you anything to cry for.

We are made like this. We are made to die. Be it tomorrow or today, or in fifty years, our end in inevitable. However, it is the journey we take to the end that defines us. I find it rather beautiful to not believe in heaven or hell, because that makes our only life more precious. We have to live in this reality; a miracle of nature - the chance we have been given to live is beyond any other thought of an afterlife. We are very lucky indeed, to even exist in the first place, so whatever actions we take, must be in respect to this slight possibility which has befallen us.

It is in our nature to look for the end of days, be it our own or for the human race. We humans are like this, we care for each other, and we fear our own death and the death of those close to us. The notion of losing someone is harsher then the realization of being with someone. The very basic habits of life are most often neglected. A smile, a handshake, a hug. These are the little things that have value far greater then the fear of death. When we realize this, our lives will be more complete, and death will be insignificant.

So if tomorrow I shall die, do not cry me. Be thankful I have been in your life, for the good or the worse, as I have been thankful in my own.

A Few Words

Writing has never been easy. I don't think it will ever be. I try to describe what I feel day by day in words that possibly could never describe the exact emotions that churn inside me. This is the truth about human life. We try to share how we feel so that, in so doing, can understand what we probably are struggling to get a hold of. Words are just a shadow of the truth. And the truth is far from a clear see-through glass. It is more like an ocean with tides and storms and currents. The ebb and flow of life and emotions is like the waves that crush on a desolate shore, carving the rocks as if struggling to climb onto land, but never succeeding.

We are rational animals meant to suffer the natural evolution of our body and mind. It is hard to understand how our own thoughts can conjure emotions of sadness and happiness. These do not occur in other animals. It is only fear and pleasure that exists outside the human world, but we managed to transform these two purest of natural forms into something abstract, something humans strive to achieve or avoid, only to succumb to their power.

Sharing a few words to describe the feeling of wanting to share is paradoxical. It has no sense in itself, except the comfort it gives to me while writing them. For a few brief minutes, while my fingers type tirelessly on this keyboard, my mind sways away from these daily struggles, from these torments I build in my own mind. I run away from all the dreams, from the achievements I strive to conquer. I run away from the sadness and the happiness all of this brings, and shift into the realm of the narrator.

It is quite a different feeling to write, then to live. I do not think that the first man wrote to communicate with his kin in order to achieve a common goal. The first man to write was no altruist. He was a selfish man, and he wanted to get rid of his suffering. He wanted to express the conjured thoughts of his mind into something physical or otherwise tangible.

This is the reason for which I write.

Futile Struggles

Written some time during Summer 2011

Sometimes tears drain dry
And shed down into a sea
Of sadness where the heart      
Sinks, endlessly

Sometimes we laugh or smile
A false mask that hides our fears
A curtain that blocks the puppet-
Master, controlling ourselves

And sometimes you might feel
Stabbed, and for a moment
Comprehend pain Mary might
Have felt at her child’s death

Your stomach burns with acid
Not much more than does your
Brain, for life’s a short journey
Full of holes and snares

But you fall and climb back up
Your fingers sore grasping
For thorns and jagged rocks
For the peak is always in sight
But never in reach

And then it dawns upon the lonely
Soul that the sun sets
To be reborn. Darkness only
Exists because of the light. And so

He lets loose, down into the void

And he falls and falls and forever falls
But it doesn’t matter
His eyes are still fixed at
The lighthouse on top 

That only now shines bright
At his pale face

A Thunderstorm

A storm is brewing outside. The thunder, a show of lights, covers our archipelago. There is electricity in the air, you can feel it, and smell it. Something is about to happen tonight, and you know it. There is a haunting silence in the streets, and no one dares to talk about the spectacle of flashing racers up ahead. You are very naive and passive, might as well continue with your routine. Anyway, it was a long day at work, didn't have much time to rest and have a break. You'd rather go back home, with no care in the world, and sit on the sofa, have a hot drink and turn on the TV set.

Well, it is at this moment you realize it's beginning. Your TV set explodes as your turn it on. A lightning strike has finally decided to emerge from the clouds, and it has hit your home. The silent dancing of the brightly vivid skies breaks down into a chorus of fierce rains. The air ripples with the sound of lightning. The wrath of a thousand storms is unleashed, and you sit there, on the sofa, looking rather astonished at the sparks coming out of the hole in the middle of your TV set.

You jump up and run across the corridor. There is no light showing you the way, the power supply to your home has been cut off, burnt, by a single lightning bolt. That is the force with which a thousand other bolts hit the island that day. It is the force with which nature makes us cower. Revere it, even, so that we feel vulnerable when our technology is dwarfed by the power of the Earth. You find a way to the kitchen, and manage to grab a torch. You turn it on, and point it at the window, ominously standing in front of you, the only barrier between your shivering body, inside, and the crackling storm drenching into your backyard.

Another flash of light expands through the blackness of the room into a hundred hues of white. The echo of its rage follows, and it shudders you. Your knees fail, and you stumble. Slowly, the room turns black again, and you slip into unconsciousness.

Light pours into your eyes, burning them slightly, as you exert force to open them. You manage to crawl up onto your feet, and look around. Your room is well lit again. It is morning, and the storm has passed. Across the corridor you walk, and out through the door. A breeze of fresh air blows into you, scented with the calmness that pervades your surroundings.

It is the calamity of the storm, now a  composure of nature. A subtle quietness and a silence, ensuing the symphony of Life.

Half Full or Half Empty?

There is a cup half filled on the table, and I ask my mother; 'Is the cup half full, or half empty?'

This is a question most of us have come across, and usually the most logical answer would be to say that it is half full. The diligent observer and thinker would then argue that it depends on your viewpoint. This individual would say that an optimist considers the cup half full, while the pessimist sees it as half empty, even though, the significance of the contents of the cup are really not important, and so this argument is quite irrelevant in my opinion.

Later on you ask this question to a keener observer, a scientist. The scientist replies, to your astonishment, that the cup is mostly empty, around 90% to be more precise, and you remain puzzled. What does he mean by the cup being mostly empty, when it is clearly filled by half? You ask the scientist to explain, and he replies, rather proud of being aware of such details.

Everything in the universe is made up of atoms, little tiny particles that can form a solid, let's say a chair, when they are moving very slowly or a gas, like the one we breathe in, when they are moving fast. Atoms can also have an intermediate phase, a liquid, to form something like water. Well, it doesn't stop there. For you see, an atom is made up of tinier denizens. There is the pessimistic, negatively charged electron, the optimistic, positively charged proton, and the neutral passive neutron. These are the three particles that make up each atom in everything around us, from the shirt you are wearing, to the skin it is covering, to the moon in the night sky.

There is more to the story, however, and it comes to a big surprise to know that an atom, is mostly empty space. You see, an atom is always made up of protons and neutrons clustered up together as a group in the middle and an electron, or electrons, running around them in circles. Let's say you are standing in the middle of an Olympic stadium. You are the proton, a happy guy talking to neutrons in the middle of the pitch. Then there are the energetic little electrons zipping by, running around the course track. The size of the atom, or its radius, is defined by how far the electron is, from the group in the middle of the stadium. That means, that everything which is made up of atoms, which is, ironically, everything, is defined, or made up of electrons running around, and at a large distance away from, the middle of atoms. The space in between the electron and you, the proton in the middle, is empty space.

This empty space, is nothing like the air we can wave our hands through. Air is made up of gaseous atoms,  spaced apart from each other, moving fast between your fingers. The space in between the electron and the proton, on the other hand, is really empty. This empty space, amounts to around 90% of the total volume of atoms. This means, that the tip of a pencil, made out of carbon atoms, is 90% empty space, and this applies to every thing around us. So, you ask, how come we do not fall through our chair, into the Earth and through all this empty space which is in every thing.

Well, you have to consider that every thing is made up of atoms, and as such, has electrons, buzzing around it. Electrons are pessimists, negatively charged dudes that don't like talking very much to each other. When the atoms at the tip of my finger, and the electrons they are made up of, are pressed to a wall, my finger does not pass straight through the wall, because it meets other pessimistic electrons on the atoms of the wall, who repel my finger electrons. Similarly, the electrons on my bum repel those on the chair, and I can safely 'hover' on the chair, and never fall through it. So much for flying, we do it all the time. About those superhero fans that prefer their characters to pass through walls...well, I'm sorry for them.

And so we can come to the conclusion of our story. When my mother replied with 'Half Full', to the question imposed about the mythical dilemma of the cup, she wasn't wrong, but she wasn't exactly right. To the scientist, or those people who have wondered and had the time to ponder and learn the marvellous mysteries of our universe, the answer is, it is mostly empty. And what would be the coolest answer to give in a bar as a pick up line? You decide.

Edit 14/10/12 - Typos

The Cottage

There on a hill, half covered in white, I see a cottage. Black fumes dance in the cold wind as they ascend up through a moss-covered chimney. The sound of crackling timber pierces through the silent sleep of this forgotten place. No being is in sight, no bird flapping its wings, nothing is around, except for an evergrowing sense of belonging.

This pile of wood, built wholeheartedly with passion and devotion, in a barren landscape, surrounded by a blanket of mountains, emanates warmth. It pleads to be discovered, observed. It whispers to me to enter, to learn its secrets. Yet, somehow, I already know what I will find. Its as if I have already been here. As if this was my home, or is it still?

I tremble as I turn the door knob. Its cold and it burns, but the heat from the other side rests on the wood, inviting me inside. I accept and walk in, with a smile on my face like that of a fragile newborn cradled in sheets of attention. One bed, a chair and a lit fireplace, is all there is to see. So simple, so mundane, yet so eloquent.

This place, I remember. I lived here, grew inside these four walls which I, myself had built. I had tucked away the adjectives, the colours, the music, impregnated an idea into a fragile setting. I gave warmth to the only recluse I constructed, made a beacon out of it, a refuge to escape to, when in need of reflection. This is where I belong, yet I doubt.

What if  willows and oaks, butterflies and chirping robins, a river and a carpet of jaded grass beheld my decaying household? Is it wrong to dream of such a place, where it is not the home that gives comfort but what lies outside of it? Maybe it is time to burn the cottage on the hill, and build another one, in a garden, not in ice.

And the door shall never close and lock the heat inside, for the warmth shall come from all the flapping of the wings and the whistling of the wind and the gurgling of the water flowing downstream. For a symphony shall be played, and all listeners invited, and for them to paint on the walls with colours of their choice they are encouraged. 

For the cottage, which is my soul, shall be rebuilt with adjectives and colours and a new dogma written on the front door; 'From the ashes we are born and to it we will return. So do not doubt, but rejoice and  find pleasure in the simple things in life, for what is more beautiful than to live and feel all that which we are part of'.

Self-Thoughts

One day I was walking by and saw a flower. It was bright red, with a yellow wasp pollinating it. At that moment, a question struck me; why red and why yellow? How come we can only perceive only three main colours, and if we could ‘see’ all the spectrum of waves, why would it only be limited to such? Shouldn't there be an infinite number of different colours which we cannot understand? Then I realized it’s not just colours. There are various limitations in our universe, as if set, as if put inside the universe by a god. The dissociation constant of water, quantum states, charges…all of these can be deduced, and always give the same results, but why? 

Surely, the universe did not ‘decide’ what to choose. Well, the answer is, it did not, but it was forced to. What we perceive (our universe), has such a state, and we can only calculate as such, and if we ask why there aren’t variables, maybe there are, but it’s not this specific universe. Some may stipulate that such constant factors in our universe can only be as such because the universe would not be able to exist otherwise. But that, to me, is a narrow-minded answer. 

If there are an infinite number of universes in existence, then there surely must be an infinitesimal number of observable universes with different constants, different colours which we, as humans, cannot comprehend…and maybe, something even more…something beyond senses – not colours, not tastes, not touch and not smells. We, as humans living in this universe, are limited to what we have been evolved to observe, but there should (there is) an infinite number of possibilities out there. The thought of such a possibility and the limitation of it in our universe is evidence of such.

9/11

9/11.
It is a date very well known to westerners. A day of grief, of anger, of feeling vulnerable. It is a day many people still recall clearly, with all TV news broadcast streaming the event on that day. It is a day on which lives were lost, families broken, tears shed. But what effect would such a day have on a little boy, living hundreds of kilometers away, soon 10,  have in his budding life?

It is said that all human beings are connected. We are subjected to a universal sense of brotherhood. Our lives all affect one another. We share happiness and sadness daily, be it with friends or family. The act of sharing emotions echos through society from one person to another, such that a warm smile in the morning can brighten your day, so can a cold shoulder make you feel neglected, thus affecting your attitude towards others you will thereafter meet. This interconnectivity of human emotion extends farther than anyone, even me, could have fathomed. I now truly believe, that due to our technological advancement, and globalization, human emotions are shared on a global scale, such that the Earth's population is one big family. 

When man landed on the moon in 1969, a global sense of unity was felt. Man had ventured out into space, and it didn't matter what race or what country did it first, the point was 'Man' did, and their was an uproar of joy and content in our achievement. Similarly, when we are part of a global catastrophe, like a tsunami or an earthquake, we feel sad for each other, help each other, do whatever it takes to preserve human life. The act of terrorism on 9/11 was perceived by humans as a threat to their safety and existence. And even though it did not directly affect every person on the planet, anyone who came to know of the event felt pain for all the lost souls resulting from an evil act of few people. However, it affected me, a ten year old boy, very differently, from most of the people I talk to.

I am writing this account to preserve the memory of 9/11 in the cloud - for maybe a day may come when I'm right about certain things or else I could explain what happened.

It is very easy to assign what I felt to a random chance or coincidence, but this is the truth:

On the morning of 9/11, my family was preparing to leave a hotel in which we were spending that particular weekend. I do not recall the exact time of the event, but as we were moving things out into the car, my father and sisters already in the car ready to leave, and my mother four steps infront of me, walking towards our vehicle, I felt a sharp sting in my heart. It was as if my heart caved in on itself. I felt a sense of emptiness, as if a vacuum was created inside my chest. This only lasted very briefly, maybe less then a second, but it had never happened to me, and I called out to my mother. Then, for no apparent logical reason (I have been pondering this ever since), I told my mum; "I think something has happened. Something bad. And it could be outside of Malta". Obviously, when mentioning something bad, I wasn't referring to the pain I felt in my heart, she didn't even know about that. I was referring to an event, bad in nature, such as an earthquake or a tsunami. This, however, turned out to be the terrorist attacks of 9/11 2001.

I only got to know of the attacks later that day when we went to our grandma's after our weekend break. We were all very sad and left in shock and the live footage of the rescuers and the dust clouds, and at the footage of the planes heading straight into the buildings. Myself, on the other hand, did not take note of the strange thing I had told my mum earlier. I only got to really ponder what happened years later, and each time a documentary crops up or an anniversary of the tragedy, I feel very emotional, sad, and depressed. For I KNEW something happened on that day, but I still could have done nothing. So the questions remained: 'Why did I feel the way I did?', 'Could I have felt a churning emotion on the global scale?' 'If we still cannot do anything in regards to something like this, why are we possibly subjected to a global awareness?'

And so my quest to find out the truth continues...