In the past few years, gradually and over time, I have been losing my ability to sleep soundly. To sleep peacefully and uninterrupted. I get up a lot, slow and groggy, and when I do, there is always this lingering confusion that settles around me. A touchable nostalgia that I can sense in the darkness. An unsettling fear. The fear in particular is interesting – like rolling thunder, it moves swiftly, bursts into my chest and settles in, arms crossed and determined. The feeling is hard to shake. When it does finally pass, it takes with it all remnants of sleep. So I lie there awake, listening to the night. Sometimes I write, late into my insomnia.

I’ve already covered the basics: the doctor’s visits, the blood work, the Googling. Every natural remedy anyone I’ve come across has ever suggested has been tested out in some form or another. My poor quality of sleep has now started to feel like some kind of a bad joke and over time, I’ve come to accept that I am one of those people who just doesn’t sleep well. That was until this morning.

I realized as I stood at the kitchen counter sipping my coffee, browsing my Instagram feed and navigating a wobbly toddler between my feet, that this was perhaps not a physical issue after all. I realized it because I had stopped scrolling and stopped at a post about a little 7 year old girl in Pakistan who had been kidnapped, brutally raped and killed and to add insult to the most heartbreaking of injuries, her small body had been disposed of in a pile of garbage. I studied her smile, her pink hair clip, her green eyes staring back and I wondered – what was I doing, in the comfort of my first world life, at the very moment when these unimaginable things were happening to her? I tried to imagine what she must have been feeling, what her final thoughts had been? How her little heart must have fought, crumbled under the weight of something so painful? Something so inconceivable? I paused on this for a long while, placing my heart where hers had been, where her mother’s must be now. The sadness that followed was sobering. This exercise in empathy, the act of letting your soul feel what another must have felt, suddenly had me tight-chested, weary, and afraid. A familiar fear filled my throat, one that moved and settled just like the one that visits me in my sleep. I studied it, held it in my palm and outlined its dark edges. Somehow, I had a feeling that I recognized this fear, as if a distance part of me had experienced it long ago. It was a fear that seemed to live in an abandoned place in my gut, the metallic taste of which I gripped between my teeth. I have always been aware of our inherently coded connection to one another as a species, but now for the first time, I could actually feel it.

It all reminded me of a poem my dad introduced to me years ago, written by the Persian poet Saadi called ‘Bani Adam’. A poem about the connection of human beings, our collective awareness, our shared essence. Saadi ponders in the poem, what are we if not the collective limbs of one body? All of us light bulbs lit from the same source. Flowers growing from the same soil, hearts made of the same clay. Limbs of the same body. Is it not true that when your head hurts or your heart aches, the rest of you can’t find comfort? Peace eludes you entirely. When one part the body is uneasy, the rest of the body mourns this pain. Similarly, the unrest, the heartache, the fear and grief felt by one soul resonates among billions of connections and is felt, like distant reverberations, in the heart of another far away? These channels that open and flow from clasped hands, shared stories and shared empathy. Ever felt a sadness you couldn’t explain? A lethargic sense of sorrow? An anxiety in your chest that wasn’t attached to anything you could pin point? All of them so fleeting, yet constant and familiar.

Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain, 
Other members uneasy will remain. 
If you’ve no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain 

(Rhyming translation by M. Aryanpoor)

So now when I stare out of my high-rise office window, watch the greyness of downtown life melt into unexplainable melancholy, I embrace it. When I wake up in the middle of the night, dazed and afraid, I embrace it. When a moment of loneliness or grief overcomes my heart, I embrace it. I put my arms around the grief that has settled between my sheets and I squeeze tight. I shut my eyes and breathe and pray for the one whose pain has travelled to me. I honour it with meditation, with love and prayer. I send back strength and hope through open channels, knowing it will reach them. Knowing perhaps it already has.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with all that I see. The reach of social media so pervasive, it brings to me awareness of a collective pain. Reports of the military arrest of little children, mass abuse of vulnerable girls by a trusted physician, persecution of ethnic minorities, poverty, war, famine. It’s impossible for one person to fix all of this pain, but we must each do what we can and I have come to realize that the smallest gestures can add to waves of change. I make daily attempts to put words to paper and write about our shared connection, our spiritual oneness. I raise awareness of injustices, through blog posts, news articles and dialogue. I practice compassion in my daily life. I strive everyday to be aware so that I can raise a daughter who will be aware, informed and empowered. I strive to raise her to be fearless, to fight for the most vulnerable of society, for the underdogs. I am raising a heart warrior and teaching her the value and fragility of human life.

Perhaps I am too sensitive to the suffering that I can’t look away from, the pain I can’t stop myself from reading about and the pictures I am compelled to click on, knowing full well that the injustice of what they contain will break my heart just a little bit more. I promised myself years ago though, that the least I can do for my brothers and sisters in suffering is to read and acknowledge and understand their pain, their plight and the injustice that haunts them. Zainab, that innocent, little Pakistani girl is one of many. One of too many and I keep reading. Every article reminds me of my humanity, every article makes me doubt it. But one thing I know for certain – the day we no longer care about the suffering of others is the day we cease to honour our humanity.

What are we if not the collective limbs of one body? 

*****

(Note: This poem is inscribed on a Persian carpet that hangs in the United Nations HQ, gift of the government of Iran to the United Nations. I contacted them and received confirmation from the UN Visitor’s Centre that the carpet is indeed at HQ after a short relocation due to renovations. Click here to see the carpet on the UN’s official website)