The lessons I learnt are as follows.

- Some things will come easy, some things will be tough. The last 10% of finishing anything perfectly takes 50% of the time.

- Some things can never be achieved without trying many times. It is impossible to get them right the first time. So keep trying, and try something new every time.

- Sometimes you will be stuck, and that’s when your brain goes on overdrive to try and figure how to get unstuck. If you don’t give up an epiphany comes your way.

-  When stuck, take a break and come back. Stop thinking about it for some time.

- Sometimes you won’t make it through no fault of your own. The phone screen won’t register your touch or you run out of memory when you’re just about to finish the level. Oh well! Just do it all over again.

- Don’t give up. Keep at it and at it and at it. You’ll arrive in the end.

During the construction of the bridge, a man, through some way or another, had lost his face. An accident. This man will live without a face forever. His wife can never see his face again, and his children will have to adjust to their father’s new look. His friends won’t see him the same way again, and strangers will always react differently to him. Most importantly when he looks in the mirror he will not see the face he has grown accustomed to throughout the years.

Antoine asks, if you show each person crossing the new bridge the man who lost his face, and give them a choice between the short walk or his new face what would they chose?

Sitting behind a desk, looking at numbers and statistics, thinking about the welfare of society, the economic strength and the advancement of our position between the nations anyone would chose the bridge. But is this really the case?

A man’s face is what in economics is called a negative externality. It is something that the numbers don’t reflect, it is a negative outcome, a cost that is being incurred, but not showing on the balance sheets and therefore misdirecting the economic decision. The idea then is to internalise the externality, or in other words make it visible in numbers.

So which number would you put in the balance sheet for your face?

This resistance will not take you anywhere. What can one man do, pushing with all his might against a tsunami that’s about to turn. Only you will be harmed, the tsunami won’t even notice you. Man is arrogant like that, thinking that he can change the present. The present is and that is all there is to it, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you will find peace and the sooner you can make choices that will change your future to what you want it to be.

So here I am, many years after graduation from university, so many years in fact that I am wondering why I still remember university or use the day I left it as a milestone. Top universities, top performance, good job offers (If I had continued with my first job offer that I didn’t even apply to I would have easily been a millionaire today) and everyone expecting for me a stellar career. In fact many would even say something along the lines that I deserved the best. (Deserve is one of these words I don’t understand and I don’t like using.) I’m sure many of you have heard this phrase, you deserve the best.

So what happened? I don’t even remember. Between days doing nothing and nights staring at the ceiling, between days spent working with no free moment to think, and nights the same way, between days living movies in my head and nights planning for the future, somewhere along these times something happened but I cannot put my finger on it.

And then I look around me and most people had started their ‘career’. Now I don’t really understand what a career is, but what I have come to see is that most people around me have become good at doing something. Some have become so good in fact, that seeing them do what the do best is akin to seeing someone having a spiritual experience.

Back to resisting the present. The fact is that what I want to do (and I am still looking for that, although I feel closer than ever before) required nothing of all the things I spent a long time learning, and spent a lot of effort doing. I gained some sort of knowledge along the years, knowledge that can’t be put in a CV. The good thing is that what I want to do doesn’t need a CV. Only social conditioning makes me feel that a CV is important.

And so something inside me tells me that I have been doing a lot, and so I should get what I want. Wrong! If I want to get where I want then I should take the path to it and not because I’ve walked along other paths should I expect to get a head start. Don’t get me wrong, some things learnt from other paths can be used to walk faster in this one, but that’s not the same as a head start.

I have to start from the beginning, from the very bottom and climb up. The sooner I let go of the past, the lighter my load becomes and the faster I can climb. So don’t resist the present, and at the present I am at the very bottom, but I will climb up.

It’s much more comfortable not to climb at all. You see, if I climb then I’m a beginner, at the very end of the group, but if I don’t climb then I’m above all of this. No one knows where I stand. But I do. And not only will I do, but I will not get to where I want as well at the end, and that is the biggest tragedy of all, to see where you want to go, to see the path and not to take it.

And at some point along the path, as has happened with other paths, I will be climbing for a while, tired and on the verge of collapse, I look down and see I haven’t climbed much, I look up and see the peak towering above me, seemingly unreachable. My hands let go, and I drop all the way back to the ground. I then take some time until my wounds from the drop have healed so I can start climbing again.

But not this time, I have learnt the trick, and I have located, albeit vaguely, the peak I am sure is the one I want to reach. It’s at that point where you feel that you have exhausted all your climbing skills yet you are still not moving anywhere, the point where you feel completely and absolutely stuck,  the point at which your mind stops, not because you have consciously stopped it to mediate but because it has turned all its gears and exhausted each and every thought it can come up with to no avail that there is nothing more, it is exactly at this point that you are looking at a breakthrough. And it is exactly at this point that you are most tempted to let go.

I’ve let go and let go and let go, but this time, the circumstances are different, this time I am different,  this time I won’t let go, and I’ll stay there stuck until I find my breakthrough.

The idea of the game is simple. There are four opera singers but one moving spotlight. The singer in the spotlight is the one who’s singing and  the one who sings the longest each round wins. You get the spotlight by running into the singer who’s in it and bumping him off the stage. But your singer is constantly rotating around himself, and you have only one button to press to make him run. When you press that button he’ll run in whatever direction he’s facing.

Anyway, we started playing, and things weren’t really going my way. Soon enough I started feeling like my singer is slower than all the others. I was about to say something, complain, but then didn’t. It didn’t make sense, this was a computer game, why would my singer be the slowest. I should stop finding reasons why I am not winning and focus on playing.

Less than thirty seconds later, one of my friends said it. “I think my singer is slower than the rest.” Then it was clear, when we’re not winning, we have a tendency to think that the odds are stacked against us. We all think we deserve to win, that we must win and that if we are not winning then something in the system is wrong.

This strengthened my belief that my singer was not slower than any of the others, that my chances were equal, and that I should just focus on playing.

I won.

Lying tends to have a negative connotation. Lying is merely not saying the truth as you see it. You think something, you see something, you know something, and you say something else. But ironically sometimes the truth you see is that you should lie and say wrong facts. So doesn’t lying become the truth then?

No, not buying it?

We are all aware of some general situations where lying becomes acceptable. A prisoner of war giving out wrong info, a man telling his wife that she is the most beautiful he has ever seen, or since beautiful is a loosely defined word, that she is the most physically attractive he’s ever seen. So let me assume that most of you reading this would find at least one circumstance where lying is acceptable.

In the possibly more acceptable case of a prisoner of war lying… what is the truthful action to take?

The truth is to be true to yourself, to do something out of pure conviction and out of honest belief. Then, no matter what happens, no matter what anybody tells you, you will be happy that when the time came you lied from the bottom of your heart.

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.