Between Love and Death, Life Goes On

By: Nadine Fahmy 

Managing English Editor 

In a recent conversation with a friend, I asked them what they thought I should write about: mother’s day or the attack that happened in New Zealand.

I was aware of the irony of the question, yet I was serious. How does one choose between something happy and another that is so depressing (yet important beyond measure) to talk about?

This is poignant not just in a newspaper, but as part of our everyday feelings and the weights we carry: how do we manage to balance between something we are so grateful for and another that rips us to pieces when we think about it?

Of course, that is the reality of life, or as my mother always says to me, “sunnet el hayah.”

We lose people and life goes on. We remember them, grieve, and we try to let it remind us of the things we should be grateful for and that manage to keep us going through the trials and tribulations.

Yes, tragedies happen and have happened and will happen. It infuriates me. And it breaks my heart.

But to watch how people go on—how they deal with such events and continue to make space in their lives for others to enter and help them through everything, is like watching magic unfold. 

It’s what I remember when I think of sunnet al hayah.

This sunna is that life goes on- a cliche we all know by heart and that often doesn’t really help. But it’s the truth and it’s what keeps us going when we need to—because of the life that surrounds us, we begin to remember that death is only one part of the whole.

Death is part of life, but so is magic, love, friendship, and happiness.

What we choose to put out there in the world, whether it is our grief or our moments of appreciation—either for our mothers or fathers or friends or whomever we love—takes a lot of thought and emotional energy.

But they are all parts of the same life we live at the same exact moment. We know this: at the same moment, thousands of people die. And a thousand others are brought into the world.

To remember this fact of life, that those who pass and those who stay are but two sides of the same coin, is a challenge.

But it is a challenge we overcome by virtue of our living: our lives are proof of the ultimate sunnet el hayah, that we will always go on and there will always be something to appreciate, even beyond, and because of, those people who have left but have not really left at all.