Life Has Taught Me

... These are sound steps in life, set down by a singular woman's pen, which we are delighted to see return, after a long absence, to contribute to the editing of this magazine ...

Life is the great school and the inexhaustible fountain of knowledge. It delivers its varied lessons to all creatures: some profit from them and take heed, and some pay no mind and give no care — and perhaps the second group receives a larger share of ease and contentment... Yet we were created to suffer much and be happy little, and it is well known that the intelligent man suffers by his mind, for the wider his knowledge spreads and the more his learning grows, the more numerous his thoughts become and the greater his worries and problems. If a person takes lessons from life, acts upon them, and takes heed from what befalls others, he will have spared himself long toil and gained a benefit that helps him face life itself and solve its various problems.

Life has taught me, ever since I began trying to understand this strange life, important things which I came to believe in after experience, and which I have come to reckon with and keep before my eyes. Among these things is that we were created to taste, in turn, ease and contentment, misery and hardship — and the scale of hardship most often tips heavier in a person's life. This is nothing strange, for the constitution of nature proceeds on this very pattern: our days are half night and half day, half darkness and half light, and the serenity of the days is often clouded, so that they lose their light and their contentment. So the person who wants peace of mind and soul must not expect prosperity and contentment on every day of his life, but must stand ready for emergencies and surprises, however varied and different their forms. If the scale of contentment tips in his favor, he receives it then with thanks and acceptance; and if the scale of misery tips against him, he receives it likewise with thanks and acceptance — and thereby he will have spared himself much hardship.

Life has taught me that victory and success in it seldom come to a person spontaneously, by way of chance; rather, the attainment of one's aim in individual endeavors, and success for groups, is most often the child of continuous diligence and long effort. How many a scholar has spent long years of his life — decades, even — studying, analyzing, and keeping vigil through the nights, until he arrived at a new invention or the discovery of a modern medicine. There is no better proof of what I say than the example of the weak drop of water, which can bore through a great rock and crumble it to pieces if it keeps falling upon it for a long time, drop after drop...

Life has taught me that there is absolutely no use in complaint and grumbling when facing difficulties and falling into all manner of crises — and how many there are in every person's life! Grumbling avails nothing at all in such a case; rather, it adds distress to a person's distress and grief to his grief. Likewise, complaining to people does more harm than good: it may lighten the soul a little, but at times it brings humiliation and gloating and many troubles afterward... The best way we can follow to overcome the difficulties we meet is to accept them with contentment, patience, and breadth of heart, and to consider them a natural matter in our lives, for no human being can escape tasting them. And the worry that clouds our serenity may weigh lighter upon us if we measure it against the kinds of worries that befall others.

Life has taught me that a person's safety lies in guarding the tongue. How often do disputes among people, and enmities among nations, arise from an unbalanced phrase or a hurtful word! If a person watches his tongue, he will have averted many problems he could well do without. How often a gentle word makes peace between two estranged hearts or two distant individuals — indeed, how many a soft, gentle phrase has turned a fierce, harsh creature into a meek lamb. I am certain that every person, with a little attention, can watch his tongue and train it to utter what pleases others and softens their sharpness, instead of uttering what wounds their dignity and pains them.

Life has taught me that the mother alone bears the first responsibility for the upbringing of her child, be it boy or girl. She can make of it a merciful, good human being, just as she can make of it a selfish, wicked creature — for the child is a pure white page in the mother's arms, and she is the first to inscribe upon it the lines of that child's inclinations, feelings, and morals. If the mother raises her child well — restraining it and turning it away from every vice, whatever its kind, and encouraging it to perform every virtue, however small its import, from its tenderest years — then she will have understood the importance of the role she plays and the gravity of the mission she carries out. And this requires exceeding care for the child and constant watchfulness over it. So I warn

mothers against neglecting their little ones' affairs, if they wish to be counted among the virtuous mothers, and not among the criminal mothers who hand over the reins of upbringing and guidance to servant girls and to alleys and streets!! The examples of what I say are very many, especially in the environment we live in, for we rub shoulders with one another a great deal.

And life has taught me that happiness lies not in the possession of money, villages, and jewels, nor in the spread of fame, the pleasure of ruling, and the winning of high ranks and lofty decorations; but happiness — all of happiness — lies in the possession of good health and a good name. What use are palaces and mansions if they are not joined with health and well-being?? How marvelous a thing is man — how weak he is when he falls ill, and how mighty his arrogance when he is cured!! To my mind, the loss of money and prestige is easy for a person to bear beside the loss of health and an honorable reputation, for these are the measure of a person's happiness — indeed, the one and only secret of that happiness.

Life has taught me that money goes back the way it came: if its owner gathered it from usury or from the gaming table, it goes and dwindles away through loss along those same two roads. Ill-gotten money bears no fruit whatsoever; but the honest piaster which a person earns by the sweat of his brow and the toil of his right hand — that is the blessed piaster which a person enjoys in his lifetime, and his children after his death.

And life has taught me that the small good deed a person bestows upon the beggar and the deprived wards off great calamities from him. This is a standing truth in which I believe with all my faith. It is necessary that the beggar and the deprived should have a share of our money, and God cannot but multiply for us every dirham we give as a good deed to the deserving and as alms for ourselves and our wealth. As for the stingy rich man who hoards money and hides it away, he is

deprived of it in his lifetime and abased by it, and he is most often an object of cursing and contempt in both abodes.

And finally, life has taught me — and I am certain that this is the most important thing I have learned from it so far — to find no pleasure or value in anything I obtain easily, without striving or toil. I shall offer proof of what I have said: take the example of a man who inherited money or property from his fathers. Does that man's pleasure in the goods he inherited equal the pleasure of another man who owns money, property, and goods thanks to his continuous striving and his labors? A person's enjoyment of the money his own hands earn, his care for that money and his esteem for it, surpass his enjoyment of it and his care for it had it come to him by the easy, soft road of inheritance... And there is the example of a young man who won his diploma thanks to his perseverance in study and diligence, and another who obtained it by way of luck and happy accident: which of the two takes greater pleasure in this diploma, and whose esteem for it is stronger?? No doubt the one who paid the price of his diploma in nights of vigil spent studying, reading, and pursuing knowledge values his success more than the second — indeed, I believe he respects himself and trusts in himself when he feels that he has reached one of the degrees of learning by worthiness and desert. And a person's self-respect and self-confidence are the two fundamental factors that build up his personality and drive him to work and to produce.

This lesson which I have learned from life is not confined to men rather than women; it is a comprehensive human constitution which people — and especially the young — must set before their eyes in every undertaking they venture upon in their lives.

Damascus: Salma al-Haffar al-Kuzbari