tl;dr: Ending with “We are not in war with nature, we are nature!” after restlessly waking up at 2 AM for no obvious reason (except sleeping at 7 PM, hehe), Abdo decides to grab a coffee and reflects on a YouTube video arriving at an articulation of #WalaHaja as part of the new book (and another personal memoir) he’s writing.

I’m deeply touched by this video both intellectually and emotionally. Stoically and taoistically (I just made up a word, googled it and it turned out to exist), video in the first comment or search youtube: “Who We Really Are… When Everything Goes Wrong”

There are two ways to view the world, either that we are separate from everything and everyone and thus our best strategy for survival ought to be controlling everyone and everything around us, or that we are holistically connected to everyone and everything beyond our little intellect can conceive and thus our best strategy is to surrender, let go, and open up about the nature of what’s happening around us.

Opening up without structure can be dangerous as structures are necessary for survival and travel (having enough water and food during a mountain hike, calculating directions, energy level, covering your head from the burning sun, having good/reliable company, watching your steps, recovering bad mistakes), and closing off will result in our own demise and destruction and that of others, as we go back into inflicting our wounds onto others – even if and when they deserve it -.

Factually, our best strategy is to have as much control as nature permits us to have and to use that control to mimic the way nature works by a deep understanding of the laws of nature not only from the limited perspective of the laws of physics, math, psychology but from the direct exposure to the sun, the mountains, the seas, the animals, the dogshit, the garbage, the relentless drive of our natural ego, the excitement of our passions and the moaning of our lovers.

Take that balance and harmony and spread it over a timeline of daily actions, perceptions, and decisions and you get a life well-lived, not necessarily an easy, conflict-free life. But it could it a harder path as we grind deeply against two groups of people, those who are living under the illusion of absolute control and those who are living in the illusion of absolute freedom.

There are much rejection, alienation, and smearings to be had, but as we embody the practice of our balanced ideals, the same natural lifestyle allows us the strength, tenacity, and patience to build, support, and empathize even under the said circumstances and our belonging by then does not become as that of a belonging to a “group of people” versus another one, but a belonging into a ideal and a collective consciousness that transcends limited borders, manipulated intellect and distorted visions.

By then embodying and empowering our powerful and natural ego, becomes an act of pride other than shame as we express what mother nature has desired, nurtured, and invited to its embrace even by the time it thought it was being denied, rejected and expelled. And our drive towards bold, precise, and powerful action, even when and especially when encountered with resistance, blame, or hostility is responded to with, mostly, openness, flexibility, and patience, at least, most of the time. As we all know, nature can be nasty sometimes, and so we are capable of being when called for!

After years of emersion into Stoicism, by the end of last year, I fall in love with Taoism, December 31st, 2019, I recorded this video (https://www.instagram.com/p/B6vc1rNnEeA/) stating my intention of dropping all my big plans and paperwork and get in “the state of flow” or “intelligent spontaneity” as promoted by Taoism, I’m grateful to my journey and all those who contributed to it, (positively or negatively – though negatively seems favorable these days, hehe), that brought me here to experience that first hand and I look forward to all the powerful, beautiful and precise actions I intend for 2021.

This is the closest explanation of the #WalaHaja hashtag I had been using (before I even encode its meaning) as I have yet plenty to be discovered and possibly share.

Thank you Maryanne Stroud Gabbani and Al Sorat Farm family, humans, dogs, horses (here goes a long list of creatures) .etc for the warm, healing embrace and major inspiration at a time that I have needed the most. Thank you, J. E. Rash and Legacy International family for putting my inner warfare into models and systems and sometimes articulating (and others helping me / letting me articulate what needs to be articulated), I’m forever grateful as I draw my own path and conclusions.

Bye bye 2020. ya welcome, ya welcome 2021. We are not in war with nature, we are nature!

P.S. And for Facebook algorithms sake, here is an unrelated (really?) photo of Abdo confidently crossing the shady, previously terrifying fields of seagrass borders, leaving shallow reef, coastal water behind, and entering into the open, deep water. Guided, accompanied, and photographed into this new, unfamiliar and unknown world to him by his friend and mentor Tony Bo in this lovely piece of earth, called Dahab, that he now calls home. 

Also published on Medium.