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    A Daycare of Feelings
    A Daycare of Feelings
    A Daycare of Feelings
    Ebook100 pages1 hour

    A Daycare of Feelings

    By George Malki

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    About this ebook

    This is a short fictional easy-to-read philosophic novel in which Dr. Malki explores the relevance of feelings and their impact on our lives. In the beginning, Mother Nature grows lonely, and decides to create humans to keep her company. Her initial attempt utterly fails, because Mother nature created humans without feelings! What is Mother Nature to do? Should she scrap her experiment and continue to live lonely, or take a gamble on humans who only understood the language of feelings and turned a deaf ear to their creator. The novel is basically a dialogue between Fear and Mother Nature on one hand and between Fear and Joy on the other. Will Mother Nature and Fear become friends? Will they be able to see eye to eye on the important philosophical questions of life? This novel is quite original: It takes place in the soul of a human being (the Daycare), where our invisible feelings finally come to life, with Fear, Joy, Hunger, Anger, Sadness and Guilt leading the pack.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateMay 30, 2016
    ISBN9781483572673
    A Daycare of Feelings

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      Book preview

      A Daycare of Feelings - George Malki

      End

      INTRODUCTION

      The idea of writing about feelings came to me in the year 2000. As a first generation American, with type A personality and a medical practice to run and a family of three children, my life was quite hectic. Like so many of my colleagues in the medical profession, I was on the run all the time. By the year 2000, my outlook on my life was more positive: my family was doing fine, I have a very supportive and loving wife and work was good. So I felt like I could take a deep breath and slow down a bit to absorb everything that is going on around me. That is when I started connecting to my inner feelings. Yoga and meditation did also help in that regard. I realized how precious my feelings were, and I did touch on this personal experience in the novel, under the paragraph Mid-life crisis. I was awed by that experience and wanted to express how important feelings were in our life. But how can I convince people of the importance of feelings? How can I express on paper, the emotional awareness I experienced? That is when the idea of using reverse psychology hit me: let’s assume that the first edition of humans was created without feelings and see if those early humans could survive without them…and if they cannot, then that proves how crucial they are. It is just like in Geometry, when we try to prove that 2 parallel lines will never intersect, we actually assume that they would, then go on showing that the assumption will lead us into an absurd and erroneous logic, forcing us to refute the assumption, and thus proving that the 2 lines would never meet. This is what I endeavored to do in my novel. I remember vividly when the idea of creating humans without feelings came to mind. I remember running to my office right away and putting the idea on paper. I was almost afraid that if I don’t write it down at once, I would lose it. Initially, I was writing my thoughts on paper, the old-fashioned way. But after writing 15 or 16 pages, I realized that I needed a computer to preserve and organize all my ideas, and that is when it actually dawned on me that I am writing a short novel, not just an essay. I still have the early printed drafts from 2000 and 2001 when the novel was still ‘work in progress’. I also kept the small rectangular floppy disc where I saved my early draft.

      As I browse through the early drafts, I can see how the novel slowly evolved into its current format. There are two salient points worth mentioning here. The first is how the content of the novel slowly drifted from its initial abstract and somewhat rigid format, to a more lively and entertaining script. The second, is how our invisible feelings slowly but surely evolved into real personas and real characters. The early drafts were narrated by Everliv, a fictional human who was born since the early creation of humans, and who never dies. Basically, Everliv lives to tell the tale. He represents Mother Nature, and he narrates to us how humans were initially created without feelings, because he lived through it all and he still remembers those days. The format at the time was rigid, and I soon realized that if the novel is about feelings, then they need to take center stage: Fear and Joy and the other feelings should be the main characters of the novel, not Everliv. That is when the novel assumed its current format.

      By 2002, I reached a dead end, and could not think of how to improve the novel any further. Also at that time there were no electronic publishing companies I knew of, and it was very difficult to convince any of the mainstream publishers to take me or my work seriously. I did not know what to do, so I neglected my work for few years. In 2008, I heard about electronic publishing and realized that may be finally I could publish my novel. I contacted iUniverse and asked them to edit my work. They did. They also asked me what I wanted the front cover of the book to look like. I told them I wanted the cover to depict a daycare with Fear, Joy, Anger, etc, having caricature-like personas running and chasing after each other. The records of my correspondence with iUniverse are still extant. The reason why I did not proceed with the publication of the novel in 2009 is because the editing done on the draft was so extensive, that it would have required me to spend so many more hours on it. At that time in my career, I was very busy at work, so I decided to put a halt on the publication, and wait until retirement to do the final touch-ups on it.

      Recently, an animated movie was released that was based largely on my novel. That prompted me to change my mind and go ahead with the publishing of the novel as I originally submitted it to the publisher in 2009, making some minor editing on it only. I hope the reader will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

      George Malki April, 14, 2016

      THE STORY OF FEELINGS

      It was getting late in the evening, and Fear knew that a long night awaited her. She had promised her carefree sister Joy that she would be sharing with her some important information tonight. The human body that Fear and her sister feelings inhabit has grown old—eighty-four years old, to be exact. Deep in the soul, the sisters have lived together all these years and have managed the affairs of the human flesh they inhabit quite remarkably. The heart was starting to fail, however, and one of the valves needed urgent replacement. The doctors could not guarantee that the flesh would survive the surgery. The intervention still remained the better option because, without it, the flesh’s condition was going to deteriorate rapidly. Fear knew that she was running out of time, and that is why earlier on in the day she told Joy about the need to sit together when the other sisters all went to bed. She had some secrets that she had kept to herself all these years and thought that it was time she shared them with her happy sister. Joy was of limited intellect but was always eager to listen and soothe her worried sister. Fear, thanks to her worrying and caring nature, had grown to be the undisputed leader among her sisters. In fact, out of respect and courtesy, they sometimes called her Mother Conscience, for she truly represented the conscience of the soul where they all lived. Fear had always felt more comfortable when they called her Sister, though; it made her feel closer to them.

      Fear had conveniently classified her sisters into different categories. The nagging sisters were Hunger, Thirst, Sex, and Pain. Once these feelings opened their eyes, their nagging started, and Fear had to answer them quickly. They were hopelessly naive and demanding in nature. Then there were the moody sisters—Anger, Frustration, Guilt, and Sadness. These were the dreaded sisters that Fear hated to deal with. Next there were the sisters of the five senses, which help bring the world outside to the soul. The good sisters were a class of their own— Joy, Satisfaction, and Peace of Mind. Fear loved her good sisters, especially Joy. She felt very comfortable with her carefree sister, and it was natural that she selected her, among all the others, to tell the secrets that she had kept to herself all these

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