"You can steal my thunder, but beware that my lightning can strike anywhere"

As you grow older you come to realize more and more that, sadly, the world has many bad people. The worst being those who seem to be nice on the surface, but have bad intentions underneath. In this reality, you also realize there is little you can do to control another person's actions (unless you're some sort of voodoo expert). It's always been difficult for me to forgive and forget. I usually mull over a situation and sulk about what happened and why. Maybe deep down I’m just a really angry person straining to get out, or just someone who has a hard time letting go. At the moment, either option doesn’t seem very good.

I’m slowly learning that if someone does happen to hurt, disappoint, or just anger me, I’ve got to back away from the situation and turn my head. Simple as that. Why give so much attention to someone (or something) who doesn’t care for you? You could be off doing a million other things that would make you happy.

That’s where the quote comes in. Any time someone steals your thunder… realize that it’s not the end of the world, and that sooner or later things will work out in your favor (it’s all about karma) and that when it’s your turn to be noticed or make your mark, it will be as bright and distinct as lightning.

(No one has done anything to me….just something I thought I’d share :) )

"Hi, you've reached 416-xxx-xxxx...."

I have no explanation for it, but I'm incapable of leaving a message on an answering machine in one try. Maybe it's the availability of that "erase and re-record" option after you've pressed "#" that causes me to fumble my message the first (second, third, sometimes fourth) time around because I know I can start over if I forgot to throw in some information or I just sounded weird.

"Sorry, I'm not here to take you're call at the moment...."

Though when we call someone it's obvious we'd rather speak to that person right away than leave a message, but after that third ring when we know we're likely to hear their voice come up and ask for you to leave a message, I tense up and start racking my brain to come up with some coherent stream of words to be put together in a casual and clear message.

"Please leave me a detailed message..."

I use the basic who, what, where, when, how and why to sort out my thoughts before that tone goes off. Still I'm caught off guard and end up winging the message with a lot of suttering, mumbling and 'um' and 'annndd' and other filler words.

"..at the tone. Beep"

Oh crap, what did I need to say again? Oh right...

"Ahem...Hi! This is Khadeeja, I was calling in regards to... (who did I dial again? Ohh right.) um, I do need to hear back from you a.s.a.p. (shoot, shouldve said 'as soon as possible, sounds better) please call me back at 905 (damn I mean to say 416)..I mean, sorry, 416......Thank you (should I throw in a have a nice day? Why not, maybe they're having a bad one)...Have a good day (nice! I meant to say nice...ah well) #"

And when I do get through that message I have the urge to go back and listen to the jumble of sentences I've left on that poor soul's voice mail. As the playback starts I start editing my message for things I've left out and other things I didn't need to say.

Then comes attempt #2. "Ok," I say to myself, "just get it all in with one shot then just HANG UP...my name, why I'm calling, and my number, it's easy! Aaaaand..Go!"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not exaggerating when I say that about 3 days ago I was leaving a message for a potential hiring manager at work and I had to re-record my message EIGHT times. A few times my voice sounded squeeky. Once I forgot to put in my name. Then a few times I didn't sound confident enough. Then in another I didn't sound friendly enough. Finally I blurted out a message (I had enough rehearsals after all) and hung up quickly before my finger had the chance to choose the option to review my message.

I still haven't heard back from her...maybe one more try would've helped?

You think that's bad? I haven't told you what I go through to set up my own voice mail....

just realized something...it's funny how I don't talk as much person to person, but my blog entries turn out to be soooo long....hmm...

My latest obsession is with CFRB 1010, the AM dial news-talk station. Sure one of the hosts punked me a few years back, but I've moved on and am glued to the radio as soon as I get in the car (all the while paying full attention the road of course). I really didn't have much choice but to switch over from FM all-music radio stations. Between the constant blaring of 50 Cent or some other "rapper" I could barely stand listending to the radio stations on my pre-set stations.

Recently I just found out I could listen to CFRB live on the web (yay) and the host, Spider Jones, was talking about the recent gun violence case in the GTA, and that no one really speaks up about it. We all will express some sort of concern and shake our head to hear such news, but until the root of this problem isn't addressed, an effective change will not happen.

The same can be applied to the recent bombings in London. Many people know that because the bombers were Muslim that violence of any sort is not supported or tolerated by Islam. But since that is the case, why are events like these still a threat. So much so that even in Toronto, where I thought there was enough tolerance and acceptance that discrimination wasn't a huge threat to Muslims, City officials still felt the need to increase security around the TTC.

We (Muslims) all say that it's not our fault that these bombings took place, since we do not believe in hurting others period. This is undoubtedly true. However, what I wonder is, if it is true that we all believe this, and that we are learning from the same book, how are our teachings being distorted in this way? What exactly is going on in the minds of the people that they would twist our religion in such a way that it not only hurt non-Muslims, but Muslims alike. What was the expected gain? More hate on Muslims? Or just an attention-getting scheme?

One of the CFRB hosts was talking about the London bombings a day or so after the first set happened - he said the Muslims were in denial about what was happening in their own community and that we need to understand why this was happening. At the moment I was upset so called in and spoke to him (live on the radio...yikes...) about it. I sounded like a complete idiot because I had no idea what I was going to say going into it, but I tried to make the point that Muslims shouldn't be hated on because of a few people who take the name of Islam while committing such horrible acts. Of course he pretty much tore apart my already weak argument (I thought I was going to cry because he didn't hang up on me...just sat there making point after point). Although, he was nice because he said I did sound like someone who was showing concern and would make positive changes in this problem etc., but I was still upset about him saying that Muslims were in denial.

A few weeks later today I wonder if it is true. Are we in denial? We seem to get away with saying that we're not a part of that extremist group and we denounce their acts, end of story. But seems like that it's not end of the story if threats of more bombings go on. Islam isn't about separating the good Muslims from the bad ones. It's about helping those who go off course and don't understand our religion as they should.

I don't know what the way to go about this would be. Do we get an imam (religious leader) to go around lecturing on the importance of peace? Or have one on one discussions to understand who exactly perceives violence to be a way out.

Either of those may not be very effective, because it seems we don't find out who these extremists are until it's too late. A co-worker of mine and I got into an argument over this. According him it was my responsibility to track people like this down because someone like me would be able to find an extremist before somoene like him could (the whole six degrees of separation deal). I didn't think it was soley my responsibility, but of everyone's - Muslim and non-Muslim.

The problem, however, does seem to be that we are not accepting the fact that there are Muslims out there who do think that violence of this sort (or any) is acceptable if done in the name of Islam. The problem worsens when we try to find ways to correct this notion with non-Muslims as well as Muslims.

One way out seems to have more leaders. An amazing thing would be to have someone like Malcolm X come along and be the voice for all. But since people like him only come around once, we need people to use his and others' principles and acts as mentors. Though this will not stop the war in Iraq, or hate from and against Muslims, it seems like the only positive step we will be able to take our voice heard over all the other commotion...

Ok the CFRB commercials are over.....back to listening ;)