letters to my younger self: 10 year old me.

Dear Araali

You don’t know it yet but you’re already a story teller

You little Araali with with your curious eyes, as Hassan climbs the Ffene (Jackfruit) tree and you watch the clouds drift by, a lot awaits you, I mean a lot. At the moment you’re asking questions no one really has time to answer, like where the moon goes when it’s not full? Why do some people look sad even when they’re smiling, especially the sick ones waiting in line to talk to your mother every wednesday? How does God look like when He’s not busy Goding?

Every where you go, you take the long route home just to see what the world is doing, you’re already paying attention in the way that story people do, quietly, curiously, without needing applause.

That small town fort portal where the air is often cold and time feels like it’s deciding where to go, you don’t know it yet but that slowness is a gift. One day you’ll understand the kind of magic it is to grow up in a place where you can still hear your own thoughts. Where the hills aren’t just green but poetic with crater lakes and where silence isn’t empty but a room for things waiting to be noticed and this is going to influence how you see the world.

And you must be wondering who it is…its me, well its you at 29 and am seated in this organic cafe and the AC doesn’t seem to work, its 35 degrees and am wondering how I go here to this country.

You’ve not started reading books yet, and when you do which is soon they’ll be like maps to other lives, you won’t always understand them but I do now or you do and for now it feels like a promise and you should hold on to that feeling, keep making up stories about strangers you see at the market place and keep writing at the back of your exercise books when the lesson gets boring.

You see that feeling you have now, where the world feels so big and you can be anything, well as you grow older the world will become a small village and life will try to convince you to shrink, to trade wonder for certainty and to trade daydreams for productivity, DON’T, maybe do, damn I don’t know bro, cause if you don’t then how do I end up here, I kinda like it here, but don’t because i am trying to break even unshrinking this life. You’ll be tired, people will call you quiet or sensitive or strange but just stay curios, it’s not a weakness but your compass

I am telling you all this because at 10 no one tells you that the world doesn’t get any less mysterious as you grow, it gets more layered and those of us who keep wondering and keep searching they’re the ones who carve out a life worth living.

You’re already doing that

You’re already enough

With love,

From the you who’s still learning to wonder, too.