The Village

I have been this weekend to Hasbaya, a small village located South of Lebanon, my native village but haven’t been there since 7 years.

My Grandmother and Aunt lives there, and It was my Aunt’s wedding.

I was amazed by the beautiful road and landscape that gradually changed as we went further away from the noise and heavy traffic of the city, and my excitement increasingly grew as we arrived to “Welcome To Hasbaya.”

It is a calm village, as if it had been kept there for a long time and nobody have yet touched it. Unlike the city, you can hear nothing but the sound of birds.

The purpose behind posting this article, is to share with you something i supposed had gone astray, and to my utmost surprise, when I walking to get something from the grocery, I found the first man walking the city at 6AM buying from the same grocery I was entering (the man on the left).
This man was a Durze(درزي) and he speaks Arabic with some distinguishing features such as the Qaf that sounds like a strong “K”.
I couldn’t understand most of their language, as it sounded so strange and weird, and as you see in the picture all of the religious people (Druze) still wear traditional clothing. Women wear a black dress with white head covering, and men wear a sort of baggy pants, a head scarf, and most of them have large moustaches.


The point is that Beirut with all of it’s night clubs, super night clubs, pubs, cinemas, large malls, guys wearing earings, girls wearing the finest clothes, was only 1.5 hours away.

I experienced two extremes in just 1.5 hours driving. Two totally different ways of living. A simple, trouble free tranquil life, where all people know each other, greet each other all the time. And a complex life, where you have to strive and work hard to make a living, and noone even cares about one another.

And a question always remains:
Which is better?

Believers and Non-Believers

Can you think about the one thing that could block anxiety and minimize stress?
The answer to this question is Religion.

Religion has evolved because of it's ability to help people excercise self-control.
By this theory religious people may be better at pursuing and achieving long-term goals that are important to them and their religious groups. This, in turn, might help explain why religious people tend to have lower rates of substance abuse, better school achievement, less delinquency, better health behaviors, less depression, and longer lives.
So let me point the following:
**Religious rituals such as prayer and meditation affect the parts of the human brain that are most important for self-regulation and self-control;
**When people view their goals as "sacred," they put more energy and effort into pursuing those goals, and therefore, are probably more effective at attaining them.

Nevertheless, we tend to see many non-religious people as successful as those people who believe in “GOD” so what is the story to this phenomenon?

Non-believers succeed in life, since they believe in their power to accomplish things. They are their own Masters.

As a non-believer, a person acknowledges that there is no supernatural power that could help him succeed and accomplish things. He knows that he has to strive in order to reach his
goals; consequently, relying on his own skills and aptitude, and improving his mental and physical ability to attain those goals.

Yet Believers tend to rely on that supernatural power; hence, accomplishing their goals with the help of “GOD”.

Whether there is a “GOD” living in the skies, watching everything we do, and holding in his hands 10 commandments we are supposed to follow, or if there isn’t, people are able to survive and be successful.

And by that I conclude that we choose the life we want to live, be there a supernatural being or not, we are able to reproduce, live, and accomplish everything.