Loud Sighs | everyone's blog

We as Jordanians and Arabs are living in a period of transition; everything around us is changing, our culture, our perceptions, and the way we talk, dress, eat… etc.

Your thinking is rather dark and pessimistic at this time. You see the superficiality, the flaws, and the silliness of one another but yet you can’t express the way you feel. Communicating with others is difficult now, and people resist what you are saying. You feel more inhibited and uncommunicative, and you sense that others are not responding to you. Frustrating conversations and the feeling that you are coming across negatively with no support whatsoever are really affecting the quality of your life, which simply leads to you keeping your thoughts to yourself.

I’ve been wondering for quite some time if you guys know what “stereotype” means? Wait wait…don’t rush to a dictionary and cite a formal definition, let me simplify it for you:

It’s basically the widely held perception of appearance, behavior, culture, etc… and it doesn’t have to be true just because the majority think it is.

These stereotypes have strongly emerged into our lives (Jordanians and Arabs), breaking the genuine and modern representation of what this country is all about, forcing us to think with out-of-date concepts. They say that we Jordanians don’t smile, well, obviously we all do smile; I do… DON’T YOU?

We can’t just go around labeling people with no way to back it up. That is such a close-minded way of thinking, but it seems to be everywhere nowadays.

I want this project to help participants to know more, not only about our country, but also about themselves.

No one can deny that there are serious problems that need to be addressed in Jordan. The use of stereotypes, however, creates more problems than it solves.

Today, I see things entirely different as a result of me changing my thoughts, and so can you. Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, a leading promoter of social and human development projects, has launched her own channel on YouTube in a bid to encourage young people to help tackle stereotypes of Muslims and Arabs, she issued a statement regarding that issue and I quote:

“In a world where it’s so easy to connect to one another, we still remain very much disconnected. There’s a whole world of wonder out there that we cannot appreciate with stereotypes”.

Everything you are today is because of your thoughts and your decisions that you make along the way. Let’s stop labeling whole groups of people with broad-brush traits, and let’s look at people as individuals, each with personal, unique values and characteristics.

That’s exactly where the idea of OUR blog “Loud Sighs” came from. Yes, ours.

Loud Sighs isn’t going to be your typical “lets just chat” blog. My primary objective is to create a platform where everyone can express their thoughts and feelings regarding any issue that he/she faces throughout life.

The best way to fight stereotypes is to show how ridiculous they are, so yeah, let’s ridicule a few of them!