How Perfect Are You? | Paul Coelho

He was talking to a friend, who asked him: Have you never considered getting married?

I have, he replied. In my youth, I resolved to find the perfect woman. I crossed the desert and reached Damascus, and I met a lovely, very spiritual woman, but she knew nothing of the world. I continued my journey and went to Isfahan; there I met a woman who knew both the spiritual and the material world, but she was not pretty. Then I decided to go to Cairo, where I dined in the house of a beautiful woman, who was both religious and a connoisseur of material reality.

Why didn't you marry her, then?
Alas! my friend, she was looking for the perfect man, he replied.

- From Stories for Parents, Children and Grandchildren by Paulo Coelho

- Paul Coelho is brazilian Novelist and a Lyricist and one of the most influential authors of all time

Nasruddin Stories | What is fate?

At one point of one's life, the question of what is fate exactly would have sprung in the mind.

It's a difficult question to answer without proper knowledge and it's hard to answer.

The most common counter-logic is if, everything has already been predestined, then why the punishment of hell & rewards of heaven. God said we have free-will but fate is the contradiction of that statement. The correct understand and reasoning about fate is quite issential in Islamic studies. I will blog a post about fate at another time, as i want to share Nasruddin's interesting and maybe hilarious view of what is fate.

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A certain man asked the famous Mulla Nasrudin, "What is the meaning of fate?"
Mulla replied, "Assumptions."
"In what way?" the man asked again.
Mulla looked at him and said, "You assume things are going to go well and when they do not, you call that bad luck. You assume things are going to go badly and when they do not, you call that good luck. You assume certain things are going to happen or not happen a certain way, but you do not know what is going to actually happen. You assume the future is unknown. When you are caught out (things do not work out for you), you call that Fate."