Protection from the sun: A piece of cloth over your head protects you from the sun while ensuring you stay cool.

Protection from the cold: A piece of cloth wrapped around your neck is called a scarf and it serves to warm your neck, if it’s long enough you can wrap it around your head to warm your ears and head as well.

Soften your sleep: A piece of cloth can be folded into a soft pillow for you to rest your head on.

These are the three most common ways I use my piece of cloth. Now, I don’t want to turn this into an exercise of finding how many uses there are to a piece of cloth, not only because they will be endless, but also not to detract from what I am doing here, which is a simple declaration of gratefulness and recognition to the vital role a piece of cloth plays in the survival of human kind.

Feel free to share the three most common uses of your piece of cloth in the comments

Every time I have a project in mind, whether small or big, it seems in the beginning that it will be the cure for all the world’s problems. Forget about startups but let’s take a look at the floating box or the home made mobile phone antenna. It starts out seemingly simple, I’ll be done in a matter of days. Everything working out perfectly in my head.

The next step is a burst of energy, getting the material, getting the instructions, getting the tools if any are needed. Easy.

Then there is a bit of a low in the enthusiasm. But nevertheless perseverance perseverance.  And so I start working on it. On and off it goes, for days, months or sometimes even years!

The most difficult part is by the end, when I am so close to finishing up. Suddenly whatever I am doing seems useless. There is no point in finishing it. What would I use it for anyway? Why on earth did I even start such a project? What was I thinking? I should be using my time for something more useful, like making money or writing an article or anything really.

Sometimes I do what I set out doing, and sometimes the project is left uncompleted and the excitement fades away. But I saw this documentary recently and the maker said that he has to finish every film he starts, no matter what, because in every film there are always challenges that come up and difficulties that if you stop you will never finish anything.

So this kind of made sense to me. He’s had some good and famous films, not everything he made was widely accepted but I am sure that not leaving loose ended projects allowed him a certain energy and concentrations on all his films, that meant he got them out in the high quality that he did.

And if you know that you will push through and finish anything you start you will be more careful with what you start, and you won’t just keep jumping from one project to the other. You will get better at choosing which projects to start in the first place.

You must also see what a project is. No it won’t save the world, end poverty, cure cancer or eliminate hunger, so accept that. And no it isn’t completely useless either. When choosing projects think of the journey and if you would enjoy it, not just the end product. If you will only enjoy the end product then go buy it or get someone to do it for you while you do something you enjoy.

An important thing is be able to relax while going through it. Relax, relax and then relax. If you don’t feel peaceful stop. If you do things with haste, anger, or while unsettled, your results will be less than ideal. And more importantly you won’t enjoy it.

Always look forward and never behind
For there nothing useful you will ever find

The past is dust, again you remind

Again and again until you forget
That the past has had your future set
Accept the past without a single regret
And then you and your destiny would have met
And I know you will do this, I am willing to bet
So stay still young one, there is no reason to fret

So he worked and toiled for years and years, saving up everything he can. Decades later, he had the money he needed to buy his car.

On the day, he had arranged everything, went to the car dealer and drove off never having felt more pleasure in his life.

He stocked up his car, bid his home farewell and drove off.

Weeks later, he came to an endless river. It wasn’t on any of the maps, he didn’t know he would face such a difficult obstacle. He drove along-side it for weeks and weeks, but no bridges were to be found.

The rest of the world he wanted to see was on the other side. His car cannot cross a river, but he knew that if he swam across he would make it. He can put some of the things he need in a large plastic bag, tie a knot trapping air inside it and it would float with him.

But this car made touring the world easy, and he had put in it all his life’s work. He can’t just abandon it. Maybe if he drove further along the river he would eventually find a bridge, but there is no telling how far he’d have to go, or if a bridge does exist. What would he do?

The Islamists are playing on this and causing us to react. No bikini and we’re screaming yes bikini. No alcohol and we’re screaming yes alcohol. We’ve fallen into the trap of being reactionary, defending things that are indefensible in this country.

Liberals are also associated with Tahrir, which has become the ultimate symbol of saying No. The MB and the Salafis had little to do with Tahrir and even tried to stop some of the protests there and divert away from them. While we see this as treason of the revolution, and self-serving in its ugliest forms, people see this as a call for stability, old regime style. So again the liberals are associated with saying No while the Islamists are associated with saying Yes.

We must stop saying No and start saying Yes.

Freedom is responsibility. Now that we have our freedom we are the ones responsible to take care of our society, we cannot just throw it on the shoulders of government. And it is a perfect time, before government start reestablishing itself, to make many of the government functions obsolete. If we offer health services, if we take care of the poor, offer education and sports centres, the government will have nothing to do and these aspects of it will die out.

The Islamists understand this and they have used it very well to their advantage. Now if we start doing this as well, Islamists will no longer be the only option available to some. We must give everyone a second option.

But charity and social work are not goals in and of themselves.

In a farm far away from any village lived an old woman who grew tomatoes. Friday of every week was market day and she would walk for six hours to go to the market at the nearest village in order to sell her tomatoes and buy the things that she needs. Now there are many farmers in the market who also sell tomatoes and their price is more or less known. Nevertheless she would give a higher price in order for the customer to start haggling. And it would take them five or ten minutes to reach the price that both parties know are fair, and the middle of the haggling they’d start random conversations when the tension gets high or to try to divert away from reaching a lower price.

Why did the woman do this? Why doesn’t she just say the price everyone knows? Why doesn’t she just write a sign and avoid all this haggling? Because humans crave human interaction, and when you live alone in a far away place, you miss other people and the wonders of a conversation, a smile and just the presence of a stranger.

Charity and social work should not be just dropped at the communities that need them, they should be a pretext to integrate our societies. 

If you are going to go there, give out food and run away then you’re missing 90% of the point. Go visit people in their homes, know their names, know their address, get their mobile phone number, give them yours. Talk to them about life in general, understand them and love them.

And it will not stop there, because they also want to understand you, your thoughts, your ideals, your lifestyle. But they have no pretext to knock at your door, except maybe ask for charity which is a bit demeaning, and why would they when they have someone else showing up to their door. You have a pretext so use it.

Mixing with other groups in society not only helps you understand them, but helps them understand you and dispels a lot of the myths being propagated. 

And in the end the most important thing is to show up, show up and show up. The MB posters are everywhere, they show up in places we’ve never even heard of. When people don’t know where to go to vote, they show up, on election day, they show up, when there is someone who needs something, they show up.

And we must show up too, when we show up we give people options, We force people to think for themselves because they have two people they trust who are telling them different things, and they will have to chose one for themselves. This will be liberalism at work, choice. And in order to give people a choice we must show up.

Something so simple, like waking up early, could jeopardize the results of a whole election. If this happens in all constituencies, the whole parliament could be at stake.

So we come back to the topic of discipline. The Islamists are renowned for their organization skills, and the liberals need to catch up.

So what values should liberals embrace? Here is my view.

1. Responsible independence: Independence and freedom do not mean a bohemian lifestyle. A liberal is independent, making his or her own conscious responsible decisions.

2. Discipline: Just because you have freedom, this does not imply you are unable to make commitments. Discipline is committing yourself to something and pulling through, doing what you said you will do.

3. Acceptance: A liberal is non-judgmental, accepting of all people and integrative. Everyone is welcome.

4. Morality: A liberal has a basic set of morals, in Egypt these could be derived from religion. Both major religions here share a lot of common morals, but a reference to where these morals are coming from is not important. Simple morals like no cheating, no lying, and doing good. This needs to be developed more to arrive at something more substantial but you can see where this is going.

What other values do you think liberals should embrace? These core values will be a major part of the branding for the Egyptian Liberal Movement.

Sheep. We are all to some extent sheep. We try to liberate ourselves from the conditioning of others, we try to think for ourselves and make our own judgements, but only a few ever reach such states. For the rest of us, we are still biased by what we have been told.

There is a misconception that Islamists are all sheep who follow their leaders while Liberals are the enlightened souls. I have personally seen many liberals who are the epitome of what it is to be a sheep. They take after their parents, saying the same phrases and having a blind belief that they are right and everyone else is an idiot. They grew up in the middle of a certain lifestyle and they decided that that is what it means to be liberal, and everyone else just doesn’t get it. They are the Salafis of Liberalism.

Now trying to sell Liberalsim to the population by asking them to think for themselves will not work. Asking someone to think for themselves is like asking someone to stop being ill, or stop being unhappy. You feel bad? Don’t. It never works. It is each and every person’s experience that leads them to think for themselves or trap themselves into the cage of the known, and the process takes a lifetime, so don’t expect it to work before the next elections.

Liberalism is having a choice. Under a liberal system I can be an atheist or I can be a salafi and it’s no one’s business what I believe in. Women can wear a bikini or women can go swimming in a full niqab. Liberalism means the freedom to make your own choices.

But for some reason, Liberalsim has become associated with a certain lifestyle and certain values. And the Islamists have taken this association and blew it out of proportion, to their own benefit. But the liberals aren’t helping.

Their first immediate reaction was to fear for their own day to day activities and personal lifestyles. And they projected their fears upon the whole of society. I would venture and say that most women in Egypt do not think that wearing a bikini in public is acceptable. So what did the Islamists do? They said that bikinis are not good. Are they going to lose any votes because of it? I highly doubt it.

Now the liberals started defending their bikinis falling straight into the trap and losing the majority of voters.

When trying to sell liberalism to any part of society, we must look at what liberalism means to them and not to us. A woman in a farmer family couldn’t care less what she can or cannot wear sitting by the beach. In fact some have never seen a beach.

I hear no one saying that Liberalism means that this woman can help her family in the field if they need it, and no one can ever force her to stay at home. I hear no one saying that Liberalsim means the mosques will finally be open 24h/day so all those who want to pray can pray at any time and those who want to spend the night with God can do so. I hear no one saying that Liberalism means that you can keep your hijab (headscarf) and no one can force you to be a niqabi. I hear no one saying that Liberalism means you can stay out late with your husband without a million government employees asking you if you are married.

So how do we sell it to the people?

Even in my educated, arguably liberal family, relatives call me to ask who they should vote for. We cannot expect everyone to do their own research. Instead they will just find someone they identify with and trust, and will ask them what to do. Liberals who insist on telling people that there is no right answer and that they should think for themselves will not get anywhere, while the Islamists offer an easy answer, vote for us. This is the right thing to do. We will do what is best for the country and religion. Everyone loves their country and their religion so they will just follow these instructions.

Liberals must provide an easy answer for what is best to be done.

But why would I follow the Liberal easy answer? I have to start trusting them, and how can I trust them? Because I see that they understand the reality of the life that I am living and that they share some values with me. And here is where the Liberal brand building comes into play.

Liberalism must become a lovable brand for people to accept it en masse.

The Islamists understand this concept very well and the MB in particular have a very strong brand. They have become a fraternity and joining it gives you purpose and status. Liberalism has to become another fraternity in town.

Liberalsim also has to stop being the opposite of Islamism. We must start thinking of ourselves not as two teams competing in a head to head game, but rather as two athletes running side to side on the racetrack. The one who runs faster gets to form the largest part of parliament and has more control on issuing laws.

And as a consequence of shifting our view from opposing the Islamists to running side by side, the attacks on Islamism will be toned down, and they need to be. Even if you see clearly how whatever they are preaching is a huge danger to society, if you focus on attacking them you immediately create a defensive reaction, and you push them towards more of an extreme. Attacking someone’s idol no matter how right you are almost never creates the desired effect.

So allow me to summarise

1. Let us stop being philosophical about liberalsim, stay pragmatic. Asking people to think for themselves will not work.

2. Liberalism is having a choice in lifestyle, not following a specific lifestyle.

3. For each part of society we must make it clear what liberalism means to them and their values, not to us.

4. The liberal movement must provide an easy answer for what to do.

5. The liberal movement has to become a lovable brand associated with values most of society see as positive.

6. The liberal movement must not present itself as the opposite to Islamism. Liberalism is a stand-alone belief whether Islamism is there or not.

Step 1: Go to the General Traffic Administration in Nasr City. You can find the building compound on Nasr Street right after you pass Rabaa El Adawiyya as you make your way down from 6th October bridge. Take the right right before it and this is your best bet at finding a parking spot.

Once you go in, go to the second foor of the main building, take a left, then take another left, keep walking till the end of the corridor and you will find an office with a signpost saying International Driving License. Give them your license and your National ID and they will give you a small paper slip. Take this slip and stamp in from the man sitting on the large desk in the room next door.

You’re done here.

Step 2: Now go to Automobiles Club in downtown Cairo. I don’t remember the street name but it is close to Tahrir. If you’re doing this on a crowded weekday, I suggest you park in El Bostan, otherwise you’ll find a spot in the side streets. The office you are looking for is in a building down one of these pedestrain walkways. Your best bet to find it is to ask passers-by.

Once you go up the two floors, the office is in on your right. Walk-in to the counter, pay the 100LE and get your form. Fill-in your form, preferably in English and give it in with your two photos, and the paper slip you got from Nasr City.

Step 3: Now find something to do for two hours and return to pick your International Drivers License up.

An old man, who looks like he didn’t have a shower for a long time, with long uncombed hair and dirty old clothes was on the train. I didn’t notice what happened but somehow he was in an argument with a man in a suit, your typical corporate executive, middle aged, white, bold, and wearing glasses.

At the point I noticed the argument, the executive was scolding the other man in a condescending way. He was berating him and talked down to him criticising his lifestyle.

The man in the old clothes answered him with one sentence that ended it all. I looked around the train after this sentence and suddenly I realised that I’m probably the only person who thought the old man owned the executive completely putting him in his place. The others seemed to just dismiss what he said, and the executive having no answer for it, just gave him a look and then started reading his paper.

The old man said “You just wait till Monday and go to your office.”

There is false security in modesty. I could be driving an expensive car but I chose to drive a normal one. I could be wearing expensive clothes but I chose not to, or I chose to wear expensive clothes but will not show it. I can go to this expensive restaurant but I’ll get food from the street cart. If you are taking security in what you could have done then you’re using modesty to feel better about yourself, to protect your vulnerabilities.

Watch out because modesty might be the wrong path if you are looking to detach from your ego.