15. A familiar stranger

You don’t know the artist’s name, their history, their favourite song, or the shape of their laughter. And yet, something in the work recognizes something in you.

There are a selective few of individuals that enter my life at different points that I admire immensely from afar, and most times they will never be aware of my admiration for them because they are strangers. They know only my name, perhaps know as much as my birthday, but that is all I have given and all I have received of them.

But they aren’t just a stranger – they are a familiar one. They carry a silent strength that not many see, one that they learnt to deal with their emotions alone. You have some people who feel the rain on their skin and some who just get wet – these are the individuals that feel every single drop of rain touch the surface of their skin, every drop that skins into every strand of hair on their heads, they are the ones that absorb the petrichor scent into their lungs – and there is something so incredibly beautiful about that.

Despite only knowing their name, there’s this yearning intimacy I have for them, not in a romantic manner but as if  I’ve known them for a lifetime, even though I haven’t and most cases they probably would view me as an schizophrenic, something within me has this certainty that if I was to spend a night on a bench with them, I would freely be able to vomit out every single thing I carry, and they’d just get it. Because they are someone who has also carried and contained storms within. It is baffling isn’t it, how someone I don’t even know has this kind of effect – every time I come across such an individual it sends my avoidant nature into a spiral.

I’ve always made it known that I see beauty in sadness, that I see beauty in those that have suffered or are suffering – and that is for one sole reason alone, sabr. These individuals that I admire, all carry this strong presence of sabr, even in times where they may not feel it themselves – I do, as someone who knows nothing but your name and the things you choose to share, I see the immense sabr that resides.

People talk about sabr like it’s something soft, peaceful, and spiritually sweet. They quote verses, they say “just have patience,” they speak about the reward, the beauty, the strength. But they rarely talk about the bitterness. The heaviness. The nights where sabr feels like swallowing something sharp. The moments where your heart feels like it’s tearing and you’re expected to “just be patient.”

No one talks about the part of sabr where your chest burns because the thing you want so badly is out of reach. Where your hands are shaking because you’re trying to hold yourself together. Where your tears fall silently because you don’t want anyone to see how much it hurts. Where everything in you wants to scream, “Ya Allah, I can’t take this anymore,” but you stay quiet because you’re trying really hard to trust.

That is the side of sabr no one talks about.

Sabr is not always graceful. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes it’s ugly. Sometimes it feels like standing in the middle of a storm with no umbrella, just praying it doesn’t sweep you away.

No one tells you that sabr can feel like a heartbreak. That patience can feel like a test that pushes you to the edge of yourself. That it’s normal to feel exhausted from waiting. That it’s normal to feel frustrated when you don’t understand why things are happening the way they are. That it’s normal to feel like you’re dragging yourself through the days.

It demands strength you didn’t know you had. It demands silence when your soul wants answers. It demands surrender when everything in you wants control. It demands trust when nothing makes sense. It demands staying soft when life keeps trying to harden you.

Yet these individuals carry patience with them even when they are facing destruction because sabr was never about perfection. It was about trust. About survival. About holding on even when the rope burns your hands.  And that kind of sabr, the raw, trembling kind of sabr, is the sabr that transforms people into the most complex, yet beautiful beings – and it takes one to know one.

I visit art exhibitions every now and then, I like the quiet environment, how there is so many people in one area not connected by conversation but by art. Rarely do I come across a piece that places me in awe, but when I do, I can feel it physically in my heart – you drift past canvases the way you might pass faces at a gathering—appreciating colour here, composition there—until one piece stops you. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t beg. It simply holds you. The brushstrokes feel like breath. The shadows seem to carry unspoken stories. You don’t know the artist’s name, their history, their favourite song, or the shape of their laughter. And yet, something in the work recognizes something in you.

You study the texture like you would the subtle expressions crossing someone’s face. You trace the colours the way your eyes might follow the movement of their hands. There’s an intimacy in the distance. A connection that doesn’t require possession or explanation. You don’t need to know the artist to feel understood by their work—just as you don’t need to know a stranger’s story to feel a pull toward their soul.

In both moments, you’re connecting not to facts, but to essence.

This is the exact same feeling I get when I come across such people. A feeling I wouldn’t be able to describe, but rather something you’d need to experience and understand. To understand what it feels like to be physically stopped in your tracks and hear nothing but the story being told.

We underestimate how much we quietly belong to each other; we may be two completely different people. But in melancholy we become more of one. Maybe it’s because I see myself in them, a direct reflection, or maybe it’s merely the fact I know that they’d understand me the same way id understand them, without the awkward silence and the regret that fills the air afterwards.

Theres a beauty in knowing that these familiar strangers carry pieces of you, of your life, without ever having to fully step into their life. You don’t see each other in person, you don’t text, but your lives brush together enough to make sense of who they are.  

But I do also wonder why God keeps these people afar, why he only limits this to admiration – I’ve had several embarrassing attempts in trying to step closer, but with each step I took the more distance grew. As if there’s this invisible barrier that I cannot cross, that this interaction can merely be admiration from afar. Maybe it is gods’ way of telling me that when someone is drowning, it is not the time to teach them how to swim. Or perhaps we as humans are truly never meant to be fully seen out loud, but only from a far. I am not quite sure what the answer is to this, all I know is that there are souls out there, just like mine, who are merely just trying to survive.

A message to my familiar stranger

Perhaps my dear familiar stranger, you are reading this right now – I will never know and you may forever be oblivious, but in the meantime, you have inspired me to write and this one is for you.

I don’t know what you’re carrying, but I know the posture of someone who is carrying too much. It shows in how you speak, in how you minimize your pain, how you keep going even when stopping would make more sense. It shows in the way you explain things that occurred, and in the moment, you may choose to smile when silence would be more honest.

I am, too, familiar with being strong for so long that people no longer ask if you are tired. They assume endurance is your natural state. They forget that strength is something you do, not something you are and fail to see the quiet calculations you make every day, the emotional weight you manage without witnesses, the nights where your body rests but your mind refuses to follow.

Carrying a burden changes you. it sharpens you, yes, but it also ages you internally. it teaches you discipline, but it also steals softness if you are not careful, perhaps it already has stolen your softness, perhaps it is anger that resides within now. As anger consumes some to the extent, they no longer see themselves as anything than rage embodied. Their vision blurs at the beauty present, the beauty I see within you – and the world is to blame for that. Because I know what it means for all this anger, this anger that was once love. I know that there are limits to what we can endure, and it can reach a point where anger becomes more beneficial, more secure in surviving.

This security can become addictive; I don’t blame you. You grow into refusal to surrender your rage – because doing so means allowing sadness to consume instead. And who would want that right? To have something consume you when you and have control instead – why have tears when you can have a fire rest in your fists, and travel through your veins into your heart – at least then, there’s a warmth within our souls – one that sadness could never provide. But I know this feeling too well, as this anger isn’t just merely anger. It goes by a name called grief.

I want you to know this.

Your exhaustion is not a moral failure. Needing rest does not mean you are weak, feeling overwhelmed does not mean you lack gratitude. Pain can coexist with faith – fatigue can coexist with purpose. You are allowed to be human even if others have benefited from your resilience.

Sometimes the heaviest part of a burden is not the weight itself, but the loneliness of carrying it alone. You learn not to speak because explaining feels harder than enduring, you learn to say “it’s fine” because unravelling the truth would take too long. but silence accumulates. It settles in the body. It shows up as tension, irritability, numbness, or tears that arrive without warning.

You are not required to carry everything forever. Some burdens are meant to be put down. Some were never yours to begin with. Responsibility does not mean martyrdom, love does not require self-erasure, strength does not demand perpetual sacrifice.

If you have been waiting for permission to pause, consider this your permission. If you have been delaying care because others depend on you, please remember that an empty system cannot sustain anything for long, preserving yourself is not abandonment – it is foresight.

And if your burden is something no one else can lift with you, know that even then, you do not carry it unseen. Every quiet tear, every patient step, every moment you kept going when stopping felt easier is known by the One who sees without being told. nothing you endure is wasted. Nothing you survive is invisible. I do not know you, but if you are reading this then I hope you have come to be aware my admiration for you, the I see a certain kind of beauty within your soul that many people do not possess, even if you are blind to what I see, even if you in end call me the blind one, know that I am stubborn in my beliefs, and once I see art that speaks not only to me but to my soul I will forever have it embodied.

I hope you learn to be as gentle with yourself as you have been with everyone else. I hope you find moments of relief that do not require explanation. I hope you remember that your worth is not measured by how much you can carry, but by the fact that you exist at all. Don’t think your patience is failing just because it hurts. Don’t think your sabr is invalid because it feels bitter.

Sometimes the bitterness is the sabr. Sometimes the bitterness is the beauty. Sometimes the bitterness is what pushes you into the right path and makes you whisper du’as you never would have made otherwise.

You are not behind. you are not failing. you are carrying something heavy. And in my eyes, you are one of gods most complex yet beautiful creations.