Dust

On that weekend, Zeynep decided to clean up her room after breakfast. She was the tidiest person in the entire household. Tidiness, cleanliness, aesthetics were very important to her. 

- I cleaned this room just a few days ago, how quickly does it get so dusty? Like it’s fighting me. Are you going to defeat me or will I be defeating you? Let’s see.

Zehra, who was cleaning up the breakfast heard her daughter speaking:

- Who are you talking to?

- I am talking to the dust in my room, Mummy. It gets dusty so quickly… If only I could clean it so deeply that it never gets dirty again.

A smile showed itself on Zehra’s face:

- That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Right, if only I could prepare a meal that we could eat up to the gills so that we get never hungry again… 

What her mother said didn’t suit Zeynep at all. 

- Mummy, how can that be? I get hungry all the time. I am still within my developmental age.

Her mother continued to give more examples:

- Or we could take a bath and never get dirty again… Or your father earns that much money in one day, and he never works again for the rest of his life…

- But… I never really have thought like this. 

- Yes, you haven’t, have you?

In life everything is within a continuous movement. 

When we look around us, we can see that everything is in constant motion. The sun rises, and a while later, it sets. As we learned in our school years in Natural Sciences classes, the moon goes through certain stages. Seasons come and pass. Also, trees, plants, and animals always have always some kind of movement. 

Even the human body is in constant motion. The digestive system, getting hungry, getting sleepy, the growing of hair…

Zehra kept asking questions to her daughter, trying to make her think.

- Zehra, tell me; do feelings change the same way as our body does?

With her eyes wide open, she answered:

- Yeeees, for instance, last week I decided never to speak to Ayça again because she took my pen without asking me. Yesterday, I couldn’t resist myself and spoke to her. I was surprised that I was not angry at her anymore. Why is that so, mummy?

There is movement in life but also boundaries…

- There is always movement around us but up to a specific point. When the sun rises it doesn’t say that it will never set. People are born as babies and they constantly grow, they are getting taller and taller up to a certain point. Then the growing stops. After a certain age they are starting to shrink. Our emotions are the same. We delight in something very much but we never can stay the same. For instance, you got an appreciation document from school last year. Remember how happy you were, you were riding the air for the whole week. But how are you feeling today? Do you still have the same feeling? 

- No way!  I was happy for a while, put on a show and then it was over. 

- It’s the same way with all emotions, anger also doesn’t last long, as doesn’t happiness.

Zeynep, wickedly wanted to remind her mother of something…

- Remember last year you were angry at my grandmother and then on bayram (festive, holiday) day you went to her house to kiss her hand and to offer her your respects like nothing ever happened. 

- Yes, but let’s not stir up that dust… So, like that my dear child, life is always in motion; joys, sorrows are always there. 

Sickness and wars also. No pain lasts forever. 

- Mom, sometimes I am praying like this: If only we never got sick, if only there were no microbes, no wars, no bad people…

- That’s a beautiful prayer. But, can it really be like that?

- No, I now understand that it can’t but what can we do then? 

The illnesses over the World never end; the patients change over time. One heals, then another gets sick. 

The evil never ends; the evildoers change. One vanishes as another one emerges.

In this life people never want to get frustrated, they never want to lose anything. People don’t want to feel sad or unhappy. But as there are happy days in life, there are also sad days in life. The important thing is to be able to respond with the right reaction to both situations. 

And this was exactly what Zehra was trying to teach her daughter.

- That means that we must put an effort into everything we do, without getting tired or losing hope. Maybe we can pray to get stronger and become more skillful and to increase our fighting power. 

- Oh, ALLAH, increase my power to fight the dust in my room, ameen  

- Ameen