THE PRESENT: Catch Your Breath — Haider Syed, Hip Hop Artist, Toronto
THE PRESENT is a series we are producing based on reflections, stories, and messages sent to us by our listeners.
“For the first time in forever, it seems like time is finally slowing down. We’ve been running constantly on this chase for so long. We’ve never really had a chance to take that breath. But right now, it seems like we finally have that chance.”
This is an interesting moment that we’re living in. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed before in our lifetime — certainly in my own 25 years. There’s all this chaos and pandemonium around us. You’re following social media and the news and these never ending updates. We don’t know what will happen next, how this disease will spread, who next will contract it.
Everything seems to be in this sort of freefall. Our way of life and the social structures as we’ve known them seem to be in disarray. Everything is coming away at the seams, so to speak. And it’s unprecedented because we really didn’t prepare ourselves for this sort of a calamity. So it seems very monumental because it feels like every day things won’t ever go back to how they used to be.
But at the same time, this moment offers us something else too; that amidst all this uncertainty, the world just about seems to have come to a halt. And I sit here, um, and everything is still and quiet outside. And for all of this gloominess, for the first time in forever, it seems like time is finally slowing down. We’ve been running constantly on this chase for so long. We’ve never really had a chance to take that breath. But right now, it seems like we finally have that chance.
We’re immersed in this hyper individualistic consumer culture that we live through. It values and rewards based on output and productivity. And it’s not necessarily mental wellbeing, peace of mind or fulfillment in our souls that it prioritizes and we’re constantly chasing it on this grind and we’ve come to see ourselves through this lens too.
But this is a unique opportunity for us to just stop, to reflect, to reconnect, to regain our actual and true purpose in this dunya: to go back to our Creator and the reason for what we were placed on this earth for. To just rest and heal, to clear that fog from our minds, and see this as an opportunity to gain some sort of clarity and direction. To set course. And I know it feels like everything’s falling apart, but maybe things are actually just coming together.
Haider Syed is a hip hop artist based in Toronto, Canada. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
