One of my (Impossibilities)

In a previous post, on my blog, I discussed the idea of having (impossibilities) in our lives, and how we should question those (impossibilities), because they might turn to be (possible), although we think they are impossible, I called us to investigate our paradigms of how we see the impossible in our lives, implying that many of them are not at all (impossible), but in our minds, as we all live slaves by them and to them.

I think it’s a good introduction to begin talking about that, as this post is about mentioning one of my once thought (impossibility), and I think for most of the Jordanians, back in the school when we were still kids we used to keep by heart a poem by Iliya Abu Madi it goes like this:
He said the sky is depressed, then he frowned,
I said, please smile, its enough frowning, and complaining.

قال السماء كئيبة، و تجهما، قلت إبتسم يكفي التجهم في السما

Excuse me for my poor translation, the poem is about a pessimistic person, who sees everything around as depressed as he is, so the poet gives him an advice, to stop frowning, and whining, and to see the bright side of everything, really a great poem, but I think should be read in Arabic, especially if its to be translated by me.

But what has this to do with of the impossible thing I'm going to talk about? Simply because it's about smiling, my mom used to tell people that I don't smile even to a hot loaf, which is an Arabic expression used to describe a person who never smiles, that’s really funny! I really used to wear that frown all the time, I was proud of it, but why do I use the "past tense"? May be I still wear that mask from time to time, and I see it in some others' eyes; want to ask "don't you smile ever?", despite believing in our Prophet Mohammad Peace be upon him: "smiling to others is a charity", it was impossible for me to smile.

Once upon a time, my boss called me; he was in another department, he told me that he needed me, I went there as quickly as I could, when I was there, he told me that one of my female colleagues had a problem with her computer, they were watching me, I fixed the problem on the fly, it didn't take me minutes, then I told him that I did it, and asked if he needed something else, he asked me to wait for a minute before I leave to my sacred department and office, that’s really funny! I stood there waiting for what he was up to, he asked me to look at my female colleague, and asked me "isn't she beautiful?" "Yes! She is" I answered, "doesn't she deserve a minute of your time?" he asked diplomatically, I frowned, then I followed it with another frown, and a third frown, oh God! What was happening to me? How I was thinking? Simply it was one of my (impossibilities), later I knew that he was trying to teach me that a smile is worth more than any thing.

I hear many talk about how Jordanians don't smile, and it's because of the hardships we face, and the hard economic conditions, I believed in that for a long time, but not any more, why because I meet many Egyptians who work in Jordan, who always keep a smile on their faces, and I think that they all have their own hardships, something else here, now I put a smile on my face more often than ever, although its difficult, I think its not a Jordanian problem, in my opinion its attitude problem, its how we see life, and hardships we face, when we frown, its implying that we have problems in our lives, and we can't be happy about, it implies that we will keep whining about them, but at the same time we forget that frowning isn't the solution for our problems, and hardships, the solution has nothing to do with whether we smile or not, so we have to make a paradigm shift, that smiling may help in the relaxation process needed to solve our problems, and frowning doesn’t bring any benefit.

So the first step I took to solve this problem was two to three years ago, that I kept a piece of paper in my pocket, and I used to read it every morning, there was written on it a line which read "smile, please smile, even if u don't want to smile" and as soon as I read that line I order the muscles on my face to smile, and that’s how I began to meet people with a smile on my face.

But later, may be one year ago, I began another way, which is to change my attitude and try to look at things differently, from another perspective, may be more optimistic, the problem with this way is that the new attitude is not yet rooted in, so sometimes I get to what I used to be, I'm working on this once thought (impossible), it was (impossible) only in my mind, no where else.

So do you have your own (impossibilities)? And do you still think that they are (impossible)? Please try to do something, try to check them; they might turn to be something of the past, change your attitude toward things.