By Sudanese-born prolific author Amr Muneer Dahab

nasdahab@gmail.com

In “Wisdom Highway,” translated into English from the Arabic origin by the author himself, Sudanese-born poet and essayist Amr Muneer Dahab questions ideas that people accept as standard rules for living, aiming to make individual life paths easier to navigate rather than providing rigid success formulas. He uses short, witty statements to prompt deep thought ins. In this series of posts, the prolific author shares excerpts from the book.

Week 6: What Does It Mean to Be Sane?

• Life: An illusion that we are forced to take seriously.

• The dictionary: A book that contains the meaning of every word in life. But it will not help you know the meaning of life itself.

• The one who read life and said that it is a stunner must be illiterate.

• The provocative problem: The one whose solution appears to you post-factum.

• The blind: The one whose eyes are looking in the wrong direction.

• The disease of the age is this age itself.

• Mirror: The one we look at and don’t care to see.

• Confidence: To close your mind to a concept, any concept, even if it is wrong.

• Truth: You realize it when you accept every thinkable possibility and anticipate the unthinkable.

• Mess: The farthest thing from being reached by the absurd in this world.

• Success: To embrace any wrong idea and insist on implementing it.

• It may not make sense, but it is the truth.

• My wasted life: Every promise I sit waiting for.

• My useful life: Every promise from others I forget.

• To be sane means to do what society tells you to do, in submission and politeness. It has nothing to do with your mental strength.

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Amr Muneer Dahab is a Sudanese-born passionate essayist, literary critic and poet. An electrical engineer living in the United Arab Emirates, he juggles his professional career and writing, which has birthed so far 50 books.