The Transformation

Being judgmental is in our nature. Like God cast his hands on the Earth. Created Adam and from his rib created Eve, then threw away the instruction manual and bypassed love. 

"Thou shalt have the power of judgment." 

I bet they don't tell you that in Religious Studies. Perhaps that's because it's not true. Yet regardless of our God-given or self-created 'right', no one can deny the unruly and overpowering nature of judgmental-ness that comes from human character. 

No one's perfect - we've been told it enough times - and because of this; self-consciousness is just another one of our by-products like excess wind and indigestion. 

For as long as I can remember I've been rather self-concious. Not 'sexy' enough to strip down into a bikini at 10 years old. Not cool enough to bare all and go clubbing in anything less than a pair of fur boots and jeans at my first under-seventeens 'disco' at Liquids. There was always something that stopped me. But a body I wasn't entirely proud of or hair that wouldn't fasten like the other girls in my year tended to be something I could mask. And so the (extra) timid, subconscious me would only be revealed  at selected times when each section of my body was under pressure to do so. All other intervals, around family and playing on the computer, would show my semi-shy but nonetheless, cheery personality.

Yet there was one product of my creation that I - and everyone else, for that matter - HAD to confront. When I looked at myself and smiled to the mirror, sometimes feeling a little special with some mismatched and fluorescent outfit I'd put together, the lure of an elongating and darkening upper lip caught me every time and dragged me under. Once I saw it, the said 'moustache', I couldn't shake my own critical thoughts let alone the criticisms of others. When I knew I'd seen it that day suddenly everyone in the world was looking at me; pointing and jeering. Some were but not everyone. 

It only really became a problem when I was in secondary school. I would heard people talking about it. Boys would point it out and even when friends or teachers talked to me they wouldn't talk to me, they'd talk to it. It destroyed me every time. On occasions people would ask why I hadn't had a boyfriend - as many people ask every teenage girl. I would shrug, knowing deep down the potential and, most probable, reason why. 

But for all the stick I got, I failed to publicly admit its existence. I don't so much want to show it off as to avoid succumbing to a pressure of judgments which would destroy the image God had clearly wanted to create with me. But by year 12 I was conned into doing it, unable to face a life of being the hairy one. 

I had had my hair cut in a salon in Dubai - an annual affair.  

"It looks so pretty but ... You've just got this..." The hairdresser remarked drawing her finger seductively over her own lip. The discretion in Dubai is evident. 

Let it be a lesson, once you let someone win with their 'suggestion' you give them full power to abuse you as they wish. Reluctantly I consented only to be dragged into the beauty room and be told of how long and thick the hair was. The hairdresser unleashed every thought she'd had of me from when I walked in to how it would effect my future. 

I walked out of that salon faster than ever; embarrassed, head hanging but also very very happy. I could now look myself in my reflection and not have to cover my lip to see what I'd look like without a rim of hair over it. 

And every time I go for subsequent waxes I come out of the salon with a huge self confidence I shouldn't have. Yes it makes me feel nice and yes "I am now a lady, again!" as the beautician remarked today but why should I need materialism to boost my self-confidence. Why should I be saving money to pay for treatments just to cull thoughts I can't take, stares I don't want and full-frontal abuse? 

"Thou shalt be judgemental" - a phrase I'm pretty sure God didn't and would never say, nevertheless still stands.

Tree Hugger

Nature cannot be compromised. It can be retained or destroyed. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Regardless of whether you believe in a God or not, everyone associates nature with divinity. Atheists will try to convince themselves that beautiful landscapes aren't a work of God or any higher being. The religious will work to convince themselves that it is. And anyone in between will be weighing up both arguments. 

You can fall in love with nature, just as you can a wife or husband, boyfriend or girlfriend. You can find yourself, be yourself. I know that staring out at the Indian Himilaya and walking in the valleys of its surrounding foothills is where I've been truest to myself. I figured out what I wanted in life, only to return home and lose all concept of my dreams that were so perfect they seem detached from modern and artificail reality. So conceivable in the wilderness, in a life of tent living and trekking, those dreams were lost to the baffling power of the modern world. It was nature that made me see what I wanted: to immerse myself in religion, straddle continents in a bid to see the whole world and live the simplest of lives by farming, teaching and living of the land. 

The impact of nature is humongous. Just 2 weeks and I was a changed - or realised - women. I had been on a pilgrimage to find myself and settled for nothing but what was true in my heart. Just 2 weeks. And that was all thanks to nature. 

Ask a gardener and they'll tell you how much dedication is needed to maintain a healthy, natural environment. Ask a building developer and they'll tell you how easy it is to destroy everything. 

The fragility of nature is awe-inspiring. Rainforests, deserts, mountains, beaches all create such a strong image in the mind and heart but they are so helpless. 

When I walked down to the beach behind my house one evening, I felt the weakness and powerlessness of the nature. The beach had been a pleasure spot for us on many muggy evenings and warm winter afternoons. White, coarse sand that singed the skin from the bottoms of your feet spread for kilometres. And the sea that lapped at the shore had been so clear and turquoise. Looking out, the horizon was made of the ocean. Just ocean. 

Only I went one evening and realised all those features were gone. Bulldozed, the sand was laced with tyre tracks. There was now a walkway. Nice? Bit at all. Sand had been dumped out to sea and lorries full of more sand and rocks growled along it. At the end of the arm of sand was an island. Trucks were loading the island with rubble to pad it out and laying out the foundations for, what we later found out, was to be a hotel out in the water. All the sea that had once run rampant, crashing against the rocks and dragging small boats out to sea was now stagnant; baking still in the man made lake. The vast expanse of sea that we had taken our kayak out and paddled half way to the Burj Al Arab was now drowned under many feet of imported sand. 

The future income prospect has not, so far, been worth the damage. The UAE, Dubai particularly, has grown so fast within the past few decades. Sprawling and generating a brimming economy we were hardly in need of any more development. 

But maybe I've got it wrong. Maybe I haven't. But the toll of the land is heavily evident. It's a beauty that's list FOREVER! Something as natural as that is never coming back. Ever. And when they realise it will be too late. For that one, seemingly unimportant, beach in one of the hottest places in the world, it is already too late.