Dalil Majalat Oprah Al Saghir Lil Asila, Hardcover Book, By: Oprah Magazine

For seventeen years, I spent most of my time at school doodling. I've studied the types of clouds, and what happens to bananas when you put them in liquid nitrogen, but there haven't been any chapters on how to live this life. I wanted to know what we must do to be happy, how to make love last, and why we must continue to live when we will someday be gone. In the absence of formal guidance, I became obsessed with self-help. And by frequenting my mother's bookcase, I learned about the different parts of the body, the bad things that happened to some good people, and how Helen Gurley Brown had it all, and all of this made me anxiously await (and still wait) the changes of puberty. After college, I entered a new, transparent phase when I read Jung's Elementary Pattern Theory; As the millennium greeted with new beliefs about the essence of void - each beautifully prepared but not as filling, like common fast foods. As I got older and reached the age of forty, I discovered that I was fortunate; I have a wonderful husband, wonderful friends and an interesting job, but I was worried that I didn't deserve it all or that I was spoiling it, or that I would lose all my blessings. I was a seemingly cheerful child yearning to make everyone happy, but I lay down wondering: What if the world ended? Now I'm an outwardly happy adult woman and do the same, I have the rest of my life to figure things out, but the rest of my life doesn't seem long anyway. Some things change quickly (the nature of my skin, the elasticity of my knees), and some things don't change at all (I've always been overweight and allergic to it and have never known what motherhood feels like - it was my choice but it's a final decision). I am not mature enough and yet I am getting old. My indulgence in feelings of fear and pain was unpalatable; Because I was loved. How can I feel that I am lost in this universe while I am drowning in blessings? I had a husband who would put up with me when I got sick or get angry or do both. And when I was crying about the future—my future, or the future of our planet, which is rapidly descending into the abyss—he would say healing words that soothe my fear and apprehension, such as: “But I am always by your side.” But when I was forty-five, my problem was realizing that I might not always be there for him.