This time I landed on an old time favourite: Bob Marley "Redemption songs" and my mind was travelling back in time of when I was a young girl. I remembered when I was in my late teens. I was overwhelmed in my music writing, poetry contemplating and filling my head with tiny long braids. Yes, I enjoyed wrapping the bright pink, green, red scarves around my head...the way we do it back home and appreciating every bit of my African heritage.
However, listening to Bob Marley's song touched me today like it touched me when I heard it for the first time, almost 10 years ago. This song couldn't have been better to explain the disappointment I have felt from the various changes that have occurred where I am working. Changes where people have been let go of their jobs, not because they were in competent, not because they didn't do their job, but because of mental slavery. It shocks me that in this day and age people still judge other people from ancient "class systems" that only enforces racism and prejudice. Till this very day people still treat people as "servants" and I am the "boss". It bothers me a great deal, because I am not that kind of person that can turn a blind eye. However, if someone is stuck between a rock and a hard place, what can we expect of them to do.
Really, the hardest thing for me to swallow about all of this, is that it is brushed off and therefore makes it appear as "ok", when it is NOT "ok". Maybe our silence is the fuel to the fire of continuing this kind of behaviour.
One thing I particularly love about this song of Bob Marley is that he says "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. Non, but ourselves can free our minds." This became a reality check for me in my life and also seeing it in other people's lives.
If we track back in history, there has been a lot of slavery, hard economical slavery, where people were slaves in foreign countries and in their own countries. Since time has moved on, slavery has been abolished, however, people are still slaves. People can't seem to lift themselves up from where someone forced to place them to a place that is made of freedom. Even though slavery is over, people still have that slave mentality. "The slave and the slave-driver" mentality is still happening today. I see it on TV, on the news, how people treat each other like animals, as if we have no regard for other human beings.
In order for change to happen, even the person that is treated as the slave needs to lift himself/herself from that state of mind to be absolutely free. Who is that slave driver? Just another human being that has a lot of money and a loud mouth, but he isn't God. He can't change time nor rule the world.
I was happy to see all the revolutions and protests that have been happening in the Arab-Nations and across the world, where people emancipated themselves and said "no more." No more of treating people like crap, no more robbing people from the right to live, the right to strive and the right to all the basic human needs.
In the light of all of this, it is still a sad reality that people still choose to be slaves for the pleasures of money. What is money? Since when has money become more important than our divine right for freedom? I start to wonder whether we are robbing ourselves rather than those that take from us.
I just had to write about this, because it is something that is heavy on my heart. Something that I would like everyone to really think about. This goes deeper than just work, economy, how bosses treat staff, but it also goes right into us. In our daily lives some of us choose to be slaves of this world. Working for ever but for nothing and sharing no pleasures at all. We forget that we have the power to take ourselves out of that situation, even when it seems impossible...and believe me, I know what impossible can look like.
People often just sit and wait for God/Allah to shower them with everything, Sabhan'Allah, but we don't get up and do. Faith does not work on its own, it needs you to get up and take the first step, Allah will sort the rest out.
I remember when I was also stuck in a really terrible situation in Turkey. Believe me, as much as I love this country, I will NEVER work there again. I swear, I was actually worried about what I will eat the next day. That is how bad it was. Believe me, I cried, but I soon realized that crying was not actually going to solve my problems. So, I had to get up and literally move myself from that situation. I needed to get up and move, the rest was faith.. There was no ways I was going to allow someone to treat me like a slave, after my family struggled for freedom just for me to fall back into slavery.. Hell no! Believe me, at that point in time, it all looked impossible, but I tell you, I freed myself from that bullshit.
However, as long as there is greed in this world, slavery and slave mentality will be in this world. So, the change is big, but possible.
I will share a poem I wrote when I was in University about 3 years ago.
I am a prison of myself
I am a prisoner of myself when I threw my key away.
I am the lover of these walls that they have kept me in.
I am trapped in their history of what they have made me to be
I lick my wounds in these chains, money is for what I bleed.
I let them look down on me till I can crawl back in the womb
I let them measure me and take the height of my ability.
I am a servant of punishment for I lost my worth
I am ever obedient for their rage and curse
I am counting my pennies and nickles for all I deserve
I lick my wounds inflicted on this skin for dirt
I let them snap their fingers at me till I crawl to their needs
I let them have me in anyway they want it to be
But my mama said...
No, my child you are the key of your prison door
You are the strength to break down these walls
You are free from history and everything they made out to be
Wound are only a memory of what you bled
They look up at you till they crawl to your feet
For there ain't no measurement nor height for someone that's free
So, think about this and don't let anyone tell you who you are, what your dreams will be and where you will be. They can't move Allah's hand!
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