#forty rules of love

[iqrajafzal]

𝙄 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙚.

𝙀𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙞𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙚𝙙 𝙖 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙨𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙨.

[keatschild]

Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.

~Elif Shafak (Forty Rules of Love)

[scribbledpagesbysxn]

Do you ever think of reevaluating your relationship with God?

Sufism says we're all Reflections of God. Unique but One. Do you think maybe God, if he exists to you, is imperfect in his own way?

I've often wondered why some people are luckier than the rest. Why God carries some people in his arms without dropping once, while others have to go through so much pain and hardship

I dont know if Christianity or Islam has the answers to it, but Hinduism and Buddhism believe in the concept of Karma. Karma literally translated to "action". So again, roots back to Hindu beliefs of judging people by their actions instead of who they are.

Everything you face in life is because of your karma. Whether thats karma from your previous birth or from this birth. And thats how you go through 7 such lives experiencing life in many ways. The questions that remain unanswered to me is why we were put on the earth in the first place? Why was the concept of Karma event introduced by Gods? If we die anyway, after which nothing would matter, why birth us?

But again. I like life. I like transient moments of calm. Of joy. Of getting to know people, concepts, places, things. I like having someone to rely on when things get tough to bear. Hoping he'll do something to ease the pain. And he always does. And i don't think its my brain manipulating me into believing so. I think God really exists. I think I'm holding his/her pinky finger as i pave my way forward. Its nice to believe that.

~Sxn (Excerpts from a book i'll never write)

[shadychocolate]

Theres something so warm and intimate about signing off emails and letters with 'Yours' as if there's a part of You and your consciousness that belongs only to this person you're sending the letter to. Whoever it may be.

[starrful]

[maadhu]

No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey, a journey within. If you travel within, you'll travel the whole wide world and beyond." 🤍

[distantwayfarer]

Character Review

from the novel The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

ELLA: The Other Side of the Coin

The kaleidoscope has started rolling and there we see Ella making her way to the kitchen. Before everyone wakes up she prepares a distinct dish for each. After breakfast, the sound of loneliness echoes exclusively for her to listen to the melody. Motherhood suppressed her qualifications, making her talent in literature a rusty sword. Slowly and steadily her clock ticks, and with each tick emptiness grows more impatient, rebelling to break away from everything she has ever known. In the afternoon, she cooks again. At night the dining table represents a picture-perfect family. After dinner, Ella makes her way to bed. Preparing herself for another upcoming monotonous day.

Exceeding beyond her limit Ella breaks free from her paramour. She no longer lives a transparent, monochrome life but rather a colorful one with intricate feelings. This might be stomach-churning to someone. However, in the end, love will always find you one way or another. So, don't make love find its entrance the hard way because LOVE will always avenge its toil most inexplicably.

Rebirth featuring Desert Rose: THE HARLOT

A repertoire of excruciating experiences, she has seen misery beyond her years. It wasn't always like this - she wasn't always this sullied. She was part of a harmonic family, living her days in a humble abode. However, following one incident her life plunged into the unknown abyss of darkness unable to resist the course of ominous, overpowering pull; abandoning her youthful innocence. She was desired by men at night, yet rejected when dawn broke. As time passes her innocence becomes tainted correspondingly. Her belief in God and her religiosity were stupefied as to "what can be done". And then, comes a mysterious dervish whose powerful words struck Rose in such a way that she was conscious of the "self".

Ultimately, She was not in her primitive pristine stage but she was ready to change, courageous enough to make amends and embark on a journey to rediscover herself.

David: The Philanderer

David isn't your versatile go-getter rather he's the friendly next-door neighbor with a stable job, a beautiful house, and a picturesque family. When you have someone to shove your responsibilities to - your duties as a husband and as a father - focusing solely on earning money is very easy. Perhaps with this much free time to spare he ends up hopping from woman to woman. Being everywhere, he's cautious enough leaving his heart nowhere. When his neglected wife finally finds the warmth of love, the idea of being loyal dawns upon him. It is true that he loves his wife like he loves the utility of his coffee mug. Pensive and distressed, he just can't afford to forsake this familiar life he's so used to. That's why he refuses the change in his wife and uses the children as leverage to tie her into a marriage that has met its end long ago. Now, all he can do is accept the course of fate.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Destiny doesn’t mean that your life has been strictly predetermined. Therefore, to leave everything to fate and to not actively contribute to the music of the universe is a sign of sheer ignorance. The music of the universe is all-pervading and it is composed on forty different levels. Your destiny is the level where you will play your tune. You might not change your instrument but how well to play is entirely in your hands. Rumi - Shams Tabrizi and The Forty Rules of Love

[Guillaume Gris]

— with Ruslana Kovalynskaya.

[mythoughttherapy]

“Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.”

—Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

[namitha]

How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves; We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we.

🌿 Shams Of Tabriz (Elif Shafak, Forty rules of love)

.

[priyatakespictures]

What the lovers do..

[loving-jack-kelly]

superhero au where Davey has been a hero his entire life, recruited as a child, is looked up to and honored and admired by so many people, a shining example of what it means to be a good metahuman, somebody who uses their powers to help and uphold the morals and standards that everyone knows are best. he's been doing this for so long, his whole life, and everyone expects him to be perfect. he's merciful when he needs to be but knows that justice comes with a price. he's well-spoken and respectful, he knows how to talk to a crowd, he's the kind of hero that kids have posters of and people swoon over. he sits up straight for interviews and talks about the moral obligation those with powers have to protect those without, how choosing to do anything else with those powers is a waste of positive potential and only contributes to the problems that he's working so diligently to face.

and maybe he believes it for a time. for a long time. he believes it because it's all he's ever known, all he's ever been allowed to know. he's a role model, a hero, somebody for people like his kid brother to look up to. all of those things are good, aren't they?

but he knows there's more out there. and maybe he wants to give that more a try. maybe, after a long month of neverending fights, when he's bruised and sore and still nothing is fixed, nothing is better, maybe he has a moment of rebellion that he never allowed himself to have as a kid. maybe he puts on a new disguise, one that nobody will recognize, and he slips away into the city to live his own life, just for a night, not the life that somebody else decided he should have when he was a kid.

and the thing is. there's a whole world out here that nobody has ever thought to tell him about. a world of people who are rich and colorful and bright and full, who have lives on the streets of the city so unlike the sanitary, solitary existence he's believed in for himself for so long. he slips into the city and before he knows it, somebody who melts into the shadows like he's one of them and leaves streaks of light across building faces as easily as spray paint is grabbing his hand and telling him to, run, goddamnit, you led them right to me!

and this boy, this shining boy who's barely older than davey but knows the ins and outs of this city better than anybody davey has ever met, is laughing. davey is learning that he knows nothing about being on his own, nothing about how to sneak away, nothing about any of this, even the things he's supposed to be good at. he was followed from home by people who want to make sure he's never anything less than perfect, but this boy pulls him by the hand into an alley and surrounds them in shadow so dense davey hears rather than sees their pursuers run past, and then he's laughing.

and this boy, this shadowy, shining boy, pulls sparks from the air to leave his mark on every street corner they pass. he presses light into crevices in the sidewalk, gives warmth to the people they pass who have no home to return to, flashes a smile so bright that a shopkeeper doesn't notice when a little kid with holes in his shoes steals something to eat right in front of them. he's everything davey is supposed to warn against, somebody powerful, somebody strong, who doesn't use their powers for good the way davey has been taught is the only way to be good. but this boy, who names himself jack, is doing more good in one night than davey feels that he's done in the last year. these people recognize jack, they thank him for something he did yesterday and he laughs it off as nothing, nothing, just doing what needs to be done. he pulls a blanket made out of shadow from thin air and wraps it around the shoulders of a woman shivering in the night's breeze. from a block away, he throws up a wall of shadow that lets a woman disappear around a corner without the man following a few paces behind to see where she went.

and davey is in awe. and davey is realizing for the first time in his life that there is so much more to life and so much more to being a hero than he thought there was.

and jack, who's smarter than he tries to seem, has noticed right away how davey moves faster than he should and reacts before he should have noticed, has noticed the hidden strength that doesn't seem possible with the way his body is built, and he says, you don't have to hide it, you know, you should meet my friends.

and for the first time, davey meets people like him who are allowed to just be people. people with powers who use them for fun, a boy who can fly using it to steal his brother's hat and stick himself to the ceiling so he can't get it back, a boy who can read minds playing cards and pretending not to cheat, a boy who can see through walls teasing his friends by shouting out what embarrassing thing they have hidden under their pillow. not heroes, these kids, at least not according to what davey has been taught a hero should be. they're not neat and coiffed and carefully maintained, not scripted and stiff and poised. and he loves it. and he wishes that he'd been allowed to have this. and he wishes he could be a part of this.

and when jack starts talking and they start listening, davey hears a whole different kind of hero. the kind that jack is, the shining boy who doesn't care about the grand, posturing battles taking place miles above the city but cares so much about a kid going hungry that he can bring himself to tears. the kind of hero who isn't a role model because he never curses and is never anything but polite and never questions let alone breaks the rules, but is a role model because he isn't scared to get dirty, isn't scared to throw a punch against somebody dressed up and nice and neat and respectable and kind when he sees through that show, isn't scared to be seen as a bad guy by some people when he knows he's doing the right thing. and all of these kids are like that, davey notices.

when he leaves that night, with a shard of crystalized light he has to wrap in three pairs of socks to hide in his dresser drawer, he starts paying attention. starts noticing the way that the fights he gets thrown into don't change anything because that's the point, they're not supposed to. he's a hero because the status quo says the good guys are the ones who listen to the rules, even when the rules are hurting more people than they're helping. he's a hero because when he was little and not in control of his powers, promising to be good and sit still and not show off was the way to get people to leave him alone, he's a hero because somebody saw that he was so eager to please and so eager to be good that he could force himself to never think about anything as long as he was making people happy and keeping his family safe. and that tiny seed of rebellion that made him steal a night in the city grows bigger and bigger and bigger until it's driving him crazy, making him restless and reckless and stupid. until he's asking his sister, what if things were different and I didn't need to be this way? what if things were different and everyone understood that there's nothing special about me? and he's noticing the way she catches her breath and the way she's lying when she says, but this is the way it has to be, this is the way we need it to be, this is the way that it's safe. and it breaks his heart to realize that, however heroic everyone else seems to think he is, his family doesn't trust him, not really. because he never breaks the rules, and if he never breaks the rules, that means he won't tolerate them breaking the rules, either.

when he's on duty at night, he watches the streaks of light that appear from the shadows, burning messages that nobody but the person who created them can erase into the face of the city. he starts to notice how many people have gifts from shadowy, shining jack, and he starts to notice what the other kids he met are up to, too, the people they help and the difference they make. and that seed of rebellion grows and grows and grows until even the people who think he's a perfect, controlled, impenetrable example of their goodness start to notice. until sarah confesses to him, late at night and whispering so low he almost can't hear her, that she's been sneaking into the city at night, that les has been sneaking into the city at night, that they both thought davey would hate them for it. and when davey pulls that shining shard of light out of his sock drawer, sarah laughs just as quietly and says, it's like cinderella in reverse.

and on the day that perfect and poised, stiff and scripted, excellent example of heroism davey jacobs finally lets that seed of rebellion burst into something more, for the first time, he actually feels like a hero. not like an actor playing a part. and when shining jack kelly takes his hand this time and draws him into a shadow so deep he can almost taste it while letting dangerous pursuit run past, this time he doesn't say, run, you led them right to me. he says, I knew there was something weird about you. he says, do you want to help me change the world?

and for the first time since he was very young and very naive, davey actually believes it when he says, yes, I'm here to change the world.

[sillytriumphdragon]

Book Name: Forty Rules of Love ~ Elif Shafak

[dreamersdiariesblog]

Loneliness and solitude are two different things. When you're lonely, it's easy to delude yourself into believing that you're on the right path. Solitude is better for u, as it means being alone without feeling lonely. But eventually, it is best to find a person, the person who will be your mirror. Remember, only in another person's heart can you truly see yourself and the presence of God within you.

-The forty rules of love

[fiction-quotes]

It’s easy to love a perfect God, unblemished and infallible that He is. What is far more difficult is to love fellow human beings with all their imperfections and defects. Remember, one can only know what one is capable of loving. There is no wisdom without love. Unless we learn to love to love God’s creation, we can neither truly love nor truly know God.

 —   The Forty Rules of Love (Elif Shafak)

[lenteur]

"C'est comme s'ils nous disaient qu'ils sont désolés qu'on soit tombées si bas, mais que maintenant qu'on y est, on doit rester au fond pour toujours. Je ne sais pas pourquoi il en est ainsi. Tout ce que je sais, c'est que certains se nourrissent de la misère des autres et qu'ils n'aiment pas qu'il y ait une personne misérable en moins à la surface de la terre." Soufi, mon amour - Elif Shafak