Learning from Hafez

HAFEZ: UNFINISHED LOVE AFFAIR 

There's a Persian lady here in Washington DC that does a beautiful job of waxing your eyebrows. I love going to her - she's an artist, and I feel in the sagest of hands when in her company. I happen to be a talker and people somehow open up to me - I have a cousin who's convinced I cast some kind of a spell, or "trick" the audience. I have no idea of what happens - all I know is after the first few courtesy "how are you"s suddenly the person is telling me the most heart wrenching tale of their life. Fasten your seat belts

So, as the wax was warming my brows, suddenly we were catapulted into a 10 year relationship that this lady had had. The relationship ended 3 years ago and the European gentleman she's dating now is apparently an ocean of calm, compared to the storm she'd apparently been in for 10 years. But somehow, during the course of the entire 45 minutes I was there - it was the "storm" that filled the room. Not a peep was uttered about the virtues of Mr. "calm". I have a finely tuned ear for hearing "love",  or in this case, unresolved love, and it was resonating loud and clear.All of it while the European gentleman whom this lady apparently never ever argues with, sounded like a situation she had resigned herself to.

I desperately wanted to hint at her unfinished business - that perhaps she should still honor the unresolved emotions, embrace the "storm" and see where it was supposed to take her, as she sounded utterly bored of the calm sandy beach. That perhaps she should dive in one more time, and as Hafez says in today's Beyt/couplet: feel the darkness of the night, the frightful waves and the tempestuous whirlwind. For now, she had landed "sabokbar"/ disencumbered and with a light load, on a calm but lifeless beach. The most I could muster was to tell her that none of us really know what fate has in store for us - my way of reminding her that perhaps she needs to reflect more on her tale, without directly forcing my observations onto her. It certainly was a stormy tale I sat through for 45 minutes. And of all the times I've seen her, this time, she didn't really do as masterful a job with my brows. Her passion was consumed by the tale

The scenario reminded me of Hafez telling us time and again of the trials and tribulations of real Love. Hafez often finds himself in the midst of such storms. Sometimes, like a surfer riding the waves, he's lapping up the waves; other times he's reaching out to a higher power to decipher the why and the wherefore of his circumstance - but always, he strives to remind us of the necessity of the embracing the journey

شب تاریک وبیم موج و گردابی چنین هائل

کجا   دانند   حال  ما   سبکباران  ساحلها 

Shab-eh tarik o bim-eh moj o gerdabi chonin ha'el

Koja danand hal-eh ma sabokbaran sahel-ha

Riding the darkest of nights, amidst frightful waves and tempestuous winds

How little they know,  those lying  disencumbered by the soft sands of the shore 

Not that we want to be permenantly entangled in a tempestuous storm, but not going through it is not the way of the "seeker." I hope for my friend at the salon, and all loved ones, to remind themselves to not be lured by the lifeless, "calm" of a random sea's shore, without having take  a proverbial dip into the  ocean lying ahead on the horizon