Noha Mohamed

“Simone said, "Do me a favor. Picture a map of the world."
I was not in the mood. She said, "Just picture it." So I did.
And she said, "And you're in L.A. You're a blinking light, you with me so far?"
And I said, "Sure."
"And you know you blink brighter than anybody. You get that, don't you?"
And I said, "Sure." Just humoring her.
And then she said, "And then in New York today, and London on Thursday and Barcelona next week, there's another blinking light."
"And that's you?" I said.
She said, "That's me. And no matter where we are, no matter what time of day it is, the world is dark and we are two blinking lights. Flashing at the same time. Neither one of us flashing alone.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“The way yoga has been stolen is not a unique example of the way money and capital blind us from our social responsibility, but it's one of the most glaringly obvious cases. .... As if yoga was for white women only. This claim that whiteness has enforced, the claim all white people always seem to have to the other, always centring themselves in every narrative, is a very bid problem that needs to be addressed and unlearned. This has to be included in the necessary evolution of yoga. If white people spent more time humanising themselves, maybe they could see non-white people with more depth and complexity a well. This means not treating us like we're the other, unconsciously objectifying our difference, only to expect sympathy of the very definitions that were created by white people. All black, indigenous, and other people of colour deserve your respect and humanity, not your sympathy. If you're a white person who profits off of yoga, what we need now is your action, your commitment, find trusted organisations and give at least a quarter of what you make on work in India.”
― Fariha Róisín, Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind

“The greatest scam is colonization. The greatest scam is us believing that you’re better than us, when you stole all that we were and sold it back, convincing us of our inferiority, spitting on our graves.”
― Fariha Roisin, How to Cure a Ghost

“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.
We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library