‘Those who look for perfect friends,
remain friendless’
RUMI

“Once I fell in love with a girl in London. We met and I felt she was so beautiful… I had to have her. But she wouldn’t like me, why was that? I constantly thought that I was not good enough. I was asking myself the questions of how I could turn myself into a better man?

Looking back, it reminds me of my first memory of Rumi. I was 4 or 5 year old and my grandmother had a trinket on the wall in one of her bedrooms where I would occasionally sleep. It was a trinket of Rumi and under him would read: Those who look for perfect friends would remain friendless. That stuck with me.

I really like that he was so welcoming to any sorrow or difficulty. The more I read about him, from him, by him, the more I felt settled about myself, made peace with myself.

Each time something unpleasant was happening to me, like family troubles, failing my courses  or falling in love with girls and never managed to go and talk to them, I turn to Rumi. Even during serious times when people around me died, instead of turning to a God which I never had, I would turn to the stories of people like Rumi and he would always be one of my forerunners. My aim was finding the meaning of life, but instead of the meaning of life, what I would find in Rumi were meaningful stories that helped me guide my live.”