"Being YOURself"

An egyptian friend of mine has been immersed in a series of doubts and fears.

-I really want to open my own "coiffeur" but...- She started telling me with the classical "buts" of someone who doesn´t REALLY want to take the chances, the work and the potential troubles to make something HAPPEN.

-But what?! Do you feel you WANT to do it? Do you feel you can do it RIGHT? - I answered, with less patience than I wish I had.

-Well, yeah. I think so but imagine what people will talk. It is a "coiffeur" for women AND men, so...you know Egypt. Even my parents are against the idea. Just think what people will say about me. - She continued, looking at the floor in desolation.

-I know it is important for you what your family and neighbours and...and...everybody!...thinks but you will NEVER do something that makes YOU happy if you continue to bother yourself with other people´s opinions. Look at me, I am a dancer, for God´s sake. Half the time people think I am a prostitute because of my profession and the other half they think I am a nun because I don´t sleep around with the men that come after me. So...

-Yes, but you are a foreigner. You can take it. I can´t. - She concluded, not leaving me space for further arguments.

No one can push anyone else to TAKE the steps to FREEDOM. Only oneself can do it. It just makes me nuts when I hear anyone complaining about how "they can´t" do this and that when I KNOW, for a fact, that "YES, you CAN" do anything if you re willing to do the WORK and pay the PRICE for it. I am not "naif" to the point of affirming dreams fall from the sky - bad news, they don´t! - yet I know, by my own experience, that YOU are the ONLY REAL OBSTACLE for not doing what is in your heart.

Whatever you do or NOT do, people will talk. That s certain in Egypt, I guess everywhere. One minute I am seen as a prostitute and the other I am a frigid nun, who cares? I´ve been called a lesbian - also because I refuse lots of men who think they´re irresistible - an arrogant, a man eater, God and the devil know what else. Did I EVER cared about all this nonsense?!

Hell, NO.

If I did, I would not move anywhere.

Remember, sister:

"Good girls go to heaven,

bad girls go everywhere!!!" and by "bad girls" they mean "every girl who dares to BE herself and DO what she dreams doing". So move your "derrière" and LIVE.

(ah, and let them F.......themselves talking and talking...while they TALK about you, you are LIVING and ENJOYING your life.)

Got it?