Rediscovering Truth

Six days ago marked my four year anniversary of being in Egypt.

Four years ago, I was a Californian teenager, who swam, cheer-led and was class president.

Four years ago, I could care less about my family, could only understand Arabic but barely speak it, and showed no interest in religon or Arab culture.

Boy, how the tables have turned.

I have never really been a fan of keeping  blogs. I remember how much drama they created in middle school, I remember the painful gossip websites and the hurtful anonymous comments left on ‘chatter boxes.’

Despite all of this, I have decided I need a venue wherein I can document my thoughts and reflections about life. I don’t want this to be my diary, rather I would like a place where I can speak my mind about politics, religion and everything in between. What makes this blog different from the gajillion that are out there you ask?

I don’t think I could answer that question because I myself do not yet know. All I know is as each day goes by, I am constantly realizing how wrong I was about ‘facts’ that I previously held to be self-evident. This is why I am titling this blog “Rediscovering Truth.”

In the four years I have spent in Egypt, I have learned so much more about the world and myself.To think that before I boarded that 12:30 pm flight from San Francisco en route to Cairo, I had no idea what Dubai was and would probably struggle to explain where Palestine is on a map.

And yet, I recognize that my thinking capacity is so limited, and it really gets to me. Earlier this year, a friend of mine asked me what my political afflication was.  When I asked for some clarification, he asked “you know, are you a sociaslist? a democract? a communist?”

I was embarrassed that I did not have an answer. I thought about it all night, mortified in thinking that I considered myself a political scientist and yet did not know where I stood when it came to how I looked at politics. But should not having an answer to such a question really be something I take chagrin at?

If anything, I find comfort in describing these past four years with Socrates’ famous words: “One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.”