Book Club

Does anyone know the link to the free book?

I'm looking to really improve myself. Please recommend any books that help people pleasers becoming comfortable with confrontation, and advocating for themselves and loved ones. Preferably written by trained professionals but open to all suggestions. Tia 🕊️

Of moths and cold wings

The shadows stretched long as the flies gathered before the Moth King, beating their cold, pristine wings.

“We fly the same skies,” they demanded. “Grant us the status of the moth, for we are no different.”
The King looked upon them with heavy patience. “A flame has just been struck in the forest. Go, find it, and bring back its truth.”

The flies scattered into the dark. They found the hearth-fire, mapped its edges, and carefully stayed where the air was cool. Returning quickly, they boasted, “We have cataloged its warmth! The prize is ours, for your own have not even returned.”

The King sighed, a low ache in his chest. “They will never return.”

“Have they failed you then?” the flies smirked.

“No,” the King replied, unfolding his velvet wings. “You went to measure the light, careful to keep your distance so you could return to brag of it. But my moths are hollowed out by a beautiful, terrible hunger. They do not wish to look at the fire—they wish to be consumed by it. Even now, they are throwing themselves into its heart, trading their breath to become one with the heat.”

He looked at the flies, whose wings remained perfectly safe, whole, and utterly cold.

“You return unscathed,” the King whispered. “And that is why you will always be flies, and they are the only ones who truly know the light.”

For Whom the Bell Tolls

'Send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.' - John Donne, Meditation XVII (1624)

Centuries ago, the tolling of a church bell was used to announce a death, in the form of a 'death knell'. Whenever the bell rang, people sought to know for whom it tolled, hoping that it was not someone they loved. Upon learning the deceased was a stranger rather than someone they held close, they found relief, rejoicing in the knowledge that death had visited another household, instead of their own.

The rhetoric I aim to posit in this meditation is the following - what if that same relief was the very thing the bell was meant to interrupt? Why do we treat a stranger's death as though it matters less, simply because it did not visit someone we knew?

For some time, I admired Donne's words. They were intellectually stimulating, yet they remained to me, little more than a beautifully expressed notion. I had read them, I had heard them, but I had never truly, understood them.

I realised this when the mother of someone whom I knew passed away. I had not known the deceased personally, only what I had been told of her, yet seeing her daughter's grief left an impression upon me. It reminded me that death is not confined to the person who dies. It is like a ripple in water, radiating outwards towards those who had the privilege to stand near them. No life is wholly separate from another. The bell calls us all.

It was only then that I began to understand what Donne had meant.

The purpose of the bell is not only to sound. When the bell tolls, it serves a reminder, to notice death when it comes, and to remember that it will one day come for us too, for we are one. No life can ever be wholly separate from our own, because every human being is inextricably bound to another. It is therefore futile to ask for whom the bell tolls, because every loss is, in some measure, is our own, whether it be the loss of a parent, a neighbour, or the loss of a soul we never knew. Again, the bell calls us all.

And when a healthy heart answers the calling of the bell, and truly contemplates the death of someone they held close, the result is, love. Love in the form of grief.

The bell reminds us of death. Death reminds us of love. Love expresses itself as grief. Each is the natural consequence of the thing before it.

Yet, if grief is so natural, why does it so often feel unbearable? As though something has gone terribly wrong?

Perhaps every meaningful relationship begins with an unspoken pact that one day, one heart will have to learn to live without the other. The moment we allow another person into our lives to become our sanctuary, we also accept that they may one day become a fountain of pain. Akin to how one cannot have the light without the the darkness, the yin without the yang, and suffering without the joy. Love has always carried this inevitable risk within it. We simply choose not to dwell upon the inevitable, for we would rather cherish those whom we love while they still walk beside us, rather than live in constant anticipation of the grief that one day their bell will infact, toll.

I will now make a momentary digression, as the following, albeit tangential, is integral to this meditation.

I have come to realise that there is a peculiar cruelty to grief. The world continues as though nothing has happened, while your own has been irrevocably altered. The sun still rises, children in the nursery still laugh, and strangers continue their conversations. The outside world seems whole, yet everything on the inside feels incomplete. I believe this is due to the realisation that someone who once helped make the world feel whole, is no longer within it. For the sake of brevity, I will draw the analogy that it is akin to a puzzle with a missing piece. Every piece may still lie before you, and even though you may know exactly what the finished picture ought to look like, the final piece has been lost forever. You can still see what the picture was supposed to become, but your eyes are helplessly fixated to the empty space where that one, irreplaceable, piece should have been.

Yet still, grief is not the enemy, for our grief bears witness that their life mattered, that they occupied a place within us that no one else could ever fill. In this way, mourning becomes an afflicted person's final act of service. Though death may separate loved ones physically, it cannot sever the imprint one life leaves upon another. And that imprint is what makes us who we are. If the ache never fully dissipates or disappears, that is not failure. On the contrary, it is love refusing to surrender to the bludgeonings of time. Irrespective of what one may feel, the ache is not something to be conquered or solved, it is an emotion to be honoured, for it bears witness that another life was great enough to become part of one's own.

I once was told a saying by one of my senior people that has remained with me to this day - 'A person dies twice'. The first death occurs when their soul departs this world. The second comes when their name is spoken for the last time.

The saying captures something profoundly bitter yet sweet. As long as we continue to remember our loved ones, a part of them continues to live within the lives they touched; ours. Every story retold and every prayer offered on their behalf is an act of defiance against the pain of their loss. And if one's love for another does not end when their life ends, then neither can their remembrance. If love is eternal, the only logical conclusion is that remembrance must be too.

On the contrary, remembrance, while beautiful in its own right, is rarely without pain. There are days when grief gives way to anger, anger that they left us, even though they never chose to. There are moments of joy and bliss they should have witnessed, burdens they should have helped us carry, and moments that would have been easier had they still been beside us.

But perhaps remembrance is among the greatest gifts we can offer the dead. We cannot return them to this world, nor can we undo the grief or ripple their absence leaves behind, but we can ensure that the lives they lived are not reduced to engravings upon headstones or coffins engulfed in soil. Forget not that we have the power to do this. We can continue speaking their names, preserve the lessons they taught us, and strive to become living testimonies to the goodness they once cultivated into the world.

Donne's epigraph above was written in 1624. The year is now 2026. The days of a church bell tolling announcing death have long passed, but the bell has not fallen silent, it simply tolls differently, through a different medium. It tolls through the dreaded phone call received in the early hours of the morning. It tolls through the Janazah notification sent to the Masjid group chat. It tolls through tear-stained pillows. It tolls through the sore eyes left after ones tears have been exhausted. It tolls through the emptiness that we feel.

But despite what I might assume, death itself is not the greatest tragedy. From the moment we were granted life, we were also promised death. We are born knowing, whether we acknowledge it or not, that one day the bell will toll for us too. Yet in the end, we spend our lives asking 'for whom the bell tolls?', hoping it is not someone we love, only to find it has been tolling for each of us from the beginning, trying to remind us that no life is ever lived, nor lost, in isolation. The bell calls us all.

And when one's own bell finally tolls, may those left behind mourn deeply, for to be deeply mourned is only possible if one was deeply loved. And though death may claim a life, it will never have the last say, love and remembrance will.

I began this meditation contemplating the deaths of others. But now I am inadvertently contemplating my own.

As I write this very sentence, I find myself coming to one last realisation. The question was never 'For whom does the bell toll?', rather, it was this: 'When my own bell finally tolls, who and what will I leave behind?'

Time will tell.

• -Dan

20/07/26 - 24/07/26

Originally written in MS Word. Excuse any formatting or syntax errors that may have occurred when pasting.

When i read “life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage” i gasp for the breath and reminisced every occasion i couldn’t be brave.

Who loves reading novel? What makes you could spend time reading a novel? What's your favourite genre?

Nevermind

two stages of reading:

1. ​i’ve read 5 books in 3 days.
2. ​i have not read a single sentence in months.

Do you prefer e-book or real book? 📚

Last book you rated 5/5?