Badawiya: Blogging catharsis

To that woman.

They say that when you stop blogging you are probably in a better emotional state. The need to blog is gone. The time to do it is gone, the need for people to hear about it.. is gone. Simply because, you are happier. * whether you want to believe it or not*

I know some of you are raising your eyebrows thinking " that's not right! some of us blog for fun you know!!!" I say, "honey, the point is you are not socially adept enough (friends, family, colleagues, community, people who genuinely have the brains and humanosocio conscience to listen and care) to actually share these happy times, insights or fun with.. (ok before I get into a literal debate) I am talking about personal ( as in, in person)l encounters.

Some how, the potential of people reading soothes us. I am guilty too.. but then again unlike the rest of the world my social life is restricted in spite of me, and blogging truly is the only way to communicate around here. "That woman" knows more than I do that when we were in Saudi leading controlled, routinized, socially and morally restricted lives we were blogging like the blogosphere was our universe, and it was. I even walled paper my blog with space and stars.

the intensity of our blogging, the focus, the heart and passion, all these were a result of not having outlets to diffuse and disperse our thoughts and reflections. And boy! do we have lots of those over there!

I noticed this theory of blogging catharsis to be true when I had this "blind love" phase. Because I couldn't share my love, joy, problems, hopes and fears with friends and family ( for reasons pertaining as to why it was blind love) I could not stop blogging. Wiriting and writing, screaming to the universe, bearing my soul, webpages and webpages, every word weighed a thousand sighs and every line i swear when i go back and read them.. shock me at how poetic, painful and beautiful the writer expresses the symphonies of her life.

I can hardly recognize that it was me.

Think about it. Who blogs about happy stuff? we all blog about problems, issues, criticism, blah blah .. we don't seem to need to share how happy we are with the ( unknown) universe as much as we hurry to spend a night with a frap writing eulogies about an unrequested love or the lonely night of an aimless journey.

* I bet if you made a survey about how many blogs are happier, good luck! Why then would people pay people to write about the nice things?! ehh think about it!

A wise man once said that there were only 7 stories in this world from which every other story is a mere derivative of.

Try it. Think of any story in your life, in the movies, in the books you've read. Anything that is out of these seven basics?

* Note: Being a spiritual mystic ( nothing to do with being 07 believe me) I am not surprised, since there are 7 days of creation, 7 skies, 7 seas, 7 days of the week, seven ayahs for soorat alfatiha.

Anyway here are the 7 stories that rule the world:

1. 'Tragedy'. Hero with a fatal flaw meets tragic end. Macbeth or
Madame Bovary.
2. 'Comedy'. Not necessary laugh-out-loud, but always with a happy ending, typically of romantic fulfilment, as in Jane Austen.
3. 'Overcoming the Monster'. As in Frankenstein or 'Jaws'. Its psychological appeal is obvious and eternal.--- thinking here exorcist?
4. 'Voyage and Return'. Booker argues that stories as diverse as Alice
in Wonderland and H G Wells' The Time Machine and Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner follow the same archetypal structure of personal development through leaving, then returning home.
5. 'Quest'. Whether the quest is for a holy grail, a whale, or a kidnapped child it is the plot that links a lot of the most popular fiction. The quest plot links Lords of the Rings with Moby Dick and a thousand others in between.
6. 'Rags to Riches'. The riches in question can be literal or metaphoric. See Cinderella, David Copperfield, Pygmalion. --- pretty woman? ;)
7. 'Rebirth'. The 'rebirth' plot - where a central character suddenly finds a new reason for living - can be seen in A Christmas Carol, It's a Wonderful Life, Crime and Punishment and Peer Gynt., Badawiya's life? hehe

Oh well... from trying to show "That woman" that she she is fine, to the revelation of "blogging catharsis to the seven stories of the world.. I leave you with this quote:

"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it."

To "That Woman", to me, to you and all of us Saudis, we are the chosen ones. Chosen to be of THE generation that will bear witness to the greatest story in the history of Arabia, if not the story writers. Not everyone can see changes happen before their eyes... not everyone can actually write a chapter of it like we can, what was it like 10 years ago? what is it like now? can you believe it? stop and think... some people just eat, shit, lead boring lives, die.. no purpose, no faith, no joy no dreams no nothing.

We are destined to live a number of lives, each story with a lifetime in it.. and I wouldn't have it otherwise.