Status Updates From Vanþakkláti flóttamaðurinn

But in forcing assimilation, are we asking for
performance? We want to see that newcomers are happy, grateful,
that they’re trying. But real gratitude doesn’t present itself loudly, in
lofty gestures. And learning to posture is a much quicker process
than transforming.

Oh girl. I want to hug you. I also used to feel like that, though to a lesser degree. And I hope you could heal from it.

How else was a person supposed to live, I wondered? How do you
find any happiness without goals? Without a place to go? Maybe it
was just me – home was already far away; I couldn’t be stuck in this
nothing land.

How do you make your true story the
‘right’ kind of true? If your listener already has far greater lies
embedded into their worldview, then the only way to sneak the truth
into their mind is covertly, like sneaking medicine into a child’s food.
Perhaps this is why Christ spoke in parables.

I’ll believe in anything, you’ll believe in any thing.

How can one decide what’s the truth and what’s not? What are the lenses through which we view stories? How does a system accurately do that?

Kambiz I believe you.

Someone told me (perhaps they read it somewhere) that refugees
are forced into cement shoes and told, ‘Now you have roots.’ But
being held down isn’t roots. They are told not to move, to build a life
for a year, two years, to learn a culture they may soon leave behind

shouldn’t wanting a better life
be enough on its own? Isn’t being ‘underused’ in your twenties the
greatest tragedy for the mind and the spirit? Why should these men have to spend their lives idle and
mediocre with no hope of accessing their potential? Isn’t a wasted
life also a life that is in danger?

I had never thought of dignity that way