Vital Invasion

Change. It is something we don’t like, something we fear yet; we cannot stop it from coming. Change is preordained. There comes a moment when our lives change forever, whether from one gesture, one person, one word or one thought… We feel frightened, we become aware that something will change us, and we don’t want it to, but we cannot stop it. This is when reality slaps us on the face and we fathom for the very first time that we only have two options; we either adjust to change, or get left behind. And if we choose to adjust, we realize after a while that our fears gradually start going phantom and that’s when we appreciate the fact that change isn’t too bad after all, that change grants us with new eyes and adds extra colors to our sight, that’s when we become cognizant that the invasion of our lives’ routine, it can be exactly what we all need.

Constant Companion

Everyone is predisposed to it, the fear and fretfulness of not knowing what the future beholds; the anxiety felt when thinking of what might be coming our way and the tension intuited when imagining the possible obstacles that may bump into us. This is when worrying appeals to us as our constant companion.

Fear comes in its own time for everyone, in its own way. What do we do when we sense it coming? Do we fight it? Do we question it and try to understand why we are feeling it? No we don’t. The best we can do is try to let ourselves feel it when it comes, to allow ourselves to be one with it, just go with the feeling and smile. We cannot reason with our emotions, nobody can and there comes a time when we determine that it is pointless to. The more we allow our body to feel it, the more we come to accept the emotion and this is when we become indomitable and decide to focus on the present, do what we want to do while allowing our anxiety to remain in the background. This is when we shift our focus to the topical and start believing that freezing won’t help, and this is when we realize that one-day, somehow, we won’t feel this way anymore. The best we can do is let ourselves feel it, and let go of it when we can….

Emotional Crime

In criminal law, the defendant must be proved to have committed a guilty act whilst having had a guilty state of mind. The physical elements are called "Actus Reus" and the accompanied mental state is called "Mens Rea".

When an actus reus is committed with no intention, the person may not be guilty of a crime. As is often the case, there are some exceptions. Some criminal offenses do not require the Crown to prove the "state of mind" of the accused. These offenses are called strict and absolute liability offenses and are mainly aimed at deterring risky behavior and stopping harm before it takes place. 

Humans tend to be criminals by harming each other in different ways. Whether physically or emotionally, hurt remains the prominent emotion felt by one of the parties, leaving an injury which may be difficult to fade away, an injury which is most likely to turn into a scar, and regret in many cases becomes the dominant sense felt by the other party.

The most difficult type of a crime committed by humans may be that which causes emotional harm, particularly when it is committed with no intention, using different tools such as sharp words, saying things at the wrong time or even worse, by remaining silent. People do good deeds for many reasons. However, such deeds may have bad consequences; as the old expression about helping people says "no good deed goes unpunished". When such crimes are committed and are not interpreted as strict or absolute liability offenses, the verdict of innocence becomes the main driver of regret, and it increases the amount of guilt in the committer's mind because no matter who we are, or how secure we feel, we all face moments of dread. We ask ourselves questions like "Have I hurt the person I love?", "Is there a chance people will never see me as innocent?" or "Have I caused permanent damage?". And sometimes, the answer is yes but this is life; we all experience moments of dread but there comes a time in life when we must expose our weaknesses, when our secrets can no longer remain confidential, when our solitude can no longer be denied, when our pain can no longer be tuned out, and even when we feel so alone that a weakness we thought we'd overcome suddenly becomes too long to fight, we need to stand still and brawl. Only then will we notice that it may be the little things that make us feel invulnerable, like a friend at bedtime, an evil eye bracelet, a bible on a table or a message from a lover and only then will we appreciate these small comforts and become aware that the word "sorry" is merely a simple word with no positive power, and only then do we realize that one action can be enough to countermand all impairment resulting from our ignorant modes.