Do not place yourself in someone’s shoes only, Instead, try to replace your whole life with theirs… you can keep your shoes.

My reminiscence chose to be my company today when I started to think that I have only two days left for graduation. My brain took me far back in the past that it shattered my chronological barrier and went the extra distance to the times before I was born.

I looked at my origins, at how my father had started, as a son working in the farm with his own father… my grandfather. He was a farmer who had always found time for his studies even after his whole body is depleted, in the times where old Iraq was conflicted by the varieties of political parties. I can never understand what kept him going? My only answer would be family, they did everything for my father to keep him in the university.

He graduated, and as he went through the bumps and highways fate had constructed in his path, he eventually became one of Kuwait’s most successful AC engineers. My life was easier, I only got to live the hard parts of life when I went to college. I never saw my life more clearly than today, I saw how different my life would have been if my father didn’t keep pushing himself. I tried to see how I would have done if I was in his shoes him. I am a writer, and I honestly can say that it is impossible to channel him.

I got to see ‘Life of Pi‘ two days ago. One quote from the movie had stuck in my brain, it was this quote: ‘I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.’ I couldn’t find the rest of the quote in which he goes on saying how he had never had the chance to thank his father for everything he had done for him.

I called my father that day, I told him I was extremely grateful for giving me more than one chance to set a direction to my life, even though he got only half  a chance when he was younger than me. That made him concerned, he thought something was wrong with me. I simply told him ‘I’m fine, I said that because everything I’m doing right now I do so I can have a chance to repay you… and if I failed, at least you’ll know I’m grateful for all that you have worked for’.

Only two days left for my graduation, and once the day comes, I’ll be working my whole body and the aura that surrounds it toward printing the second chapter in the Psych series, ‘The Remnant’, and toward starting the third book in the series, ‘Ib….. you know what? I won’t share the name yet, will do so once book two is in the open.

Cherish those who are around you, and never judge them, just look at their shoes and picture yours instead.

~ A. H. Amin