Life is Complete the Way It Is

My cousin who has just come back from Iran called today "while still smelling like Iran". He said he had a great time taking care of his aging parents and visiting family. Now that he was back he found things were too orderly here it was boring to him. In Tehran, he noted, the days were alive with people talking to, arguing with, and even shouting at each other because they were noticing things and each other. Never a dull moment while traveling in the huge city taking care of the daily chores he said. Of course being with family was all full of energy.

I know what he is talking about. Life is easy here. Thank God for a paying job. Things are indeed too orderly here, the walks, the drives, the shopping, the never talking people, it can be boring.

He joked that we were expelled to exile.

I told him I thought about this sometimes, about what was gained now that I was here and what was lost.

"Life is complete as is", my cousin claimed. One should believe in it. It is complete as is when driving in the traffics of Tehran or spending a lonely Sunday afternoon thinking about your scattered friends around the world in San Jose. Life is complete when at 9pm your son has not finished his homework after a long weekend. Life is complete when you spend the whole day on solving a problem and by the end of the day you are not even one step closer to the solution, or so it feels. Life is complete when you get to chat with a friend from Australia after more than a decade. Life is complete even when it feels lonely, boring, incomplete. Life is complete.