Life Stories

It’s astonishing how different yet similar people’s stories are. Well, it’s even more astonishing how important they become for you once you listen to them. You find yourself partly or in a great extent as belonging to it. Your sole departs from the limits of your body and travels through time and space, merging together with the sole that conveys the story it has lived.

The moment people open their mouth, their story starts writing itself with the pen of memories, emotions and facial expressions. Words suddenly turn into pictures, put together in such a unique way that makes each storyteller a world on its own. So much emotions flow within you that you forget who you are and become the story you hear. You breathe in the memories and suck up all the emotions the storytellers portray. The trembling of their voice arrives in you through the vibes of feelings it is produced by, their tears become the seas through which you sail within their souls, and their laughs and smiles enlighten the dark tunnel which seems to have no end. In all this complexity of feelings, each one finds his/her own way of defining themselves, be that through their own or someone else’s story.

In the process of sharing life stories, there is an urge in you that makes you tell the story that best defines you or that you have thought the most about. When your tongue becomes the ambassador of your life, it gets a tremendous power over your choice of what to say. Suddenly you find yourself not only telling others something you didn’t plan to talk about, but telling the story to yourself as well. You tell and at the same time listen to your own story, so instead of a monologue there is actually a dialogue going on as you speak. In the struggle between what your tongue narrates and what your mind dictates, your story not only gets told but analyzed as well. You try to explain in the process the meanings of events, people, dates and what else not, not as much for others as for your own self. Once your story is told, you start feeling weird especially due to the atmosphere it has produced. The glimpses you get from your listeners seem to be full of compassion, understanding and empathy. It is as if in one moment the perception of you in the eyes of others has changed and you now get a totally different definition from them. Your story becomes a definition of you, a channel through which people have penetrated in your life, navigated through the most important parts of it and got acquainted with you on a deeper level. With it [the story] you have opened the gate to your soul and invited them in. Your life becomes a museum and your story guides the people through it.

Apparently, telling your own story is a quite important step towards listening to and sympathizing with other stories. By understanding the complexity of emotions flowing in you while you tell your story, wearing someone else’s shoes becomes a piece of cake, since all of them seem to fit you now. You hear other stories through the prism of your own, and get involved in it using the elements of your story. In that room of storytellers, you are undressed of the socially imposed and any other differences. You are genderless, statuteless and don’t belong to a particular place. You travel from Bosnia to Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Italy, Montenegro, Germany, Greece, and all over the globe, as a man and woman, a kid and adult, with family and friends. Your soul multiplies as many times as the number of stories told while you still hold the flag of uniqueness due to your particular perception and angle. The room you are in transforms into a time machine, sending you at exact times and dates of importance for the people who share their own story with you. Your eyes are windows through which sceneries are viewed, wells of tears through which sadness is expressed, and mirrors which reflect the soul(s) in you and around you. In a room of physically many, all it remains is a spiritually one.

At a certain point within all this process you realize that the treasure you have always searched for is in the diversity of the stories you hear. Your story now becomes part of this beautiful mosaic of life, without being any better or worse than any other. The feeling you have when you first share your story, namely as someone who is special in one weird way at the time the story gets out of the walls of yourself into the heads of others who listen, diminishes once you learn how stories overlap and how fulfilling it gets the more you listen. The uniqueness you once had becomes a pattern in the architecture called life, as each of your stories constitutes a building within the larger neighborhood. Finally your weirdness becomes an important part of the whole and you finally realize how beautiful life is, regardless of the sadness or happiness it contains in each story it is composed of.

You are a diamond…

You my friend are a diamond.

A beautiful, marvelous, awe-producing diamond. One of the rare ones that my humble eyes have had the chance to see.

You are not any diamond.…you are THE Diamond.

You shouldn’t feel privileged for it, cuz it is not your choice to be it, you are just born as such. It was an amanah that He gave to you to shape and make it priceless. It is an obligation and responsibility, not a privilege. You, same as the diamond we materialistically know of, are valuable only if carved and cut in the finest way with a high level of precision. It is up to you where to carve it, on the hands of whom do you bequeath it. The price it will get will depend on the way it is cut, and that responsibility falls solely on your hands.

You are a diamond.

And I love you for it. I love the beauty you reflect, the awe you expose, the shape you are getting. You are the prism through which I understand your Creator. A window through which I see His master plan. A mirror which reflects all His beautiful names. You are a diamond that makes me feel as one too. Or at least be happy that a diamond like you exists.

You are a diamond.

A diamond that thus far, for as much as I was allowed to see, has had such a great shape and price beyond the numbers I can think of. In the quest of shaping your diamond, you have started in a really good path…yet, the work on it is not over. The better it is carved, the more priceless it becomes. This world provides so many ways for you to be properly or improperly shaped. Make sure you get the best path, for you are of such a value, that you yourself are not aware of. The amanah that you represent is more valuable than all that is on earth, all its beauties and riches.

You are a diamond.

And it is not only the shaping that is your responsibility. For you will be judged on its shape and its use as well. The beauty of the diamond gets even more visible in the hand that holds it. The value of it in the way it is used. Never ever allow for that diamond to be in the hands of those that don’t deserve to hold it. Never ever allow for that diamond to be used in the places it cannot fully function, for the purposes it was not made and carved for. It is up to you to give it a good use, once you have shaped it well.

You are indeed a diamond.…yet, not everything around you is of your material.

When your diamond was born, it was thrown among the mud of the immoral society. You were thrown in such a society that knows not of the true beauty of a diamond like you, because it is mud that they have been used to see and learned to cherish and value. And unfortunately, once thrown in it, you are covered with the same mud that the others around you are covered with as well. To be clean in terms of the filthy society is to be filthy in your own nature i.e. to be mud as all others regardless of the diamond you hide within. It is up to you to be considered filthy in the filthy society, which will ultimately make you clean in your own essence. You never know how many diamonds are hidden in the mud around you, but none has the courage to clean itself of it and shine. You should be the first of those diamonds. The first that will not care if you are not considered moral by the immoral society, because that’s the only way for you to be truly moral. You should be the diamond that will be an example for all other diamonds present in the mud of this filthy society, one that will absorb the rays of the light of truth and reflect them through the clear-cut shape you have, with the wide spectrum of your colors. It is up to you to make those colors work for all and to reach as many things possible.

You are a diamond.

A diamond that once served its function, will be judged for it. Don’t avoid this world you were thrown into, because it is only here that your diamond can be shaped. It is only here that your diamond can serve a cause. It is only here that you can get prepared to return your diamond to its rightful Owner, to the One that created it in the beginning. Use the world to make yourself proud in front of the Beholder of the beauty of your diamond. The better it is carved, the more pleased will his Creator be. The joy of seeing Him pleased is beyond any bounties that His Jannah (Heaven) can afford. Cuz that joy makes even the fire of Jahanam (Hell) be a gentle breeze, a flower garden of Ibraheem alayhisselam.

You are a diamond.

A diamond that shall never seize to be so. One that will stand proud in front of other diamonds because you my friend are not just a diamond, you are a role model diamond, a priceless and quite cherished one. You are my DIAMOND!

From a Diamond *Admirer*