May is ending with a real bang!

Alex the ALEX of Alex House of Social is speaking and she is a firecracker!

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Alexandra Maia a.k.a Alex House of Social | CreativeMornings/Dubai

Nada Badran has written this month’s theme essay, enjoy and see you Thursday.

Living in the Now

By Nada Badran

“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.” – Mahatma Gandhi

In the ‘Book of Virtues’, author William Bennett tells a story called “The Magic Thread” about an aspiring young boy, always daydreaming, and flawed with impatience.

‘Peter found it hard to enjoy whatever he was doing at the moment and was always hankering after the next thing. In winter, he longed for it to be summer again, and in summer he looked forward to the skating, sledging, and warm fires of winter. At school he would long for the day to be over so that he could go home, and on Sunday nights, he would sigh, ‘if only the holidays would come…’’.

One morning, Peter was out wandering in a forest near his home. He dozes off on a patch of grass and wakes up alarmed to see an old woman standing above him, holding a silver ball, from which dangled a silken golden thread.

She tells Peter ‘this is your life thread. Do not touch it and time will pass normally. But if you wish time to pass more quickly, you have only to pull the thread a little way and an hour will pass like a second. But I warn you, once the thread has been pulled out, it cannot be pushed back in again. It will disappear like a puff of smoke.’ Peter was over the moon about his newest toy. It was exactly what he wanted. From then on, every time he grew restless, bored, felt like his life was routine or difficult, he would pull the thread.

He pulls it to hasten his military time, his marriage to his childhood sweetheart, his child’s crying, his wife’s pain. Time goes by and Peter’s hair turns as white as snow and his body aches. He looks at himself in the mirror and sees someone he no longer recognizes. He goes back to the forest and sees the old woman who had given him the ball. She asks if he has had a good life. ‘I’m not sure’, he replied. ‘Your magic ball is a wonderful thing. I have never had to suffer or wait for anything in my life. And yet it has all passed so quickly. I feel that I have had no time to take in what has happened to me, neither the good things nor the bad. Now there is so little time left. I dare not pull the thread again for it will only bring me to my death.’ The woman then grants him 1 final wish, and Peter then asks to live his life as if for the first time, experiencing both joy and sadness, without cutting anything short. He wakes up, a young boy again, and can hardly wait for the mundane of everyday life and the joy that can unconsciously bring.

Embrace the now, and always remember to stop, and pause for joy.