A title for which Jon Bon Jovi may be well within his rights to sue me; however, despite the threat of a lawsuit and a lengthy trial, I still soldier on with the same title.

For a while people have been asking me why I named my site this, and after lengthy discussions, I have decided to once and for all, explain myself.  But rest assured, you probably won’t understand; for I’m a bit of a closed book these days, or more like a book in a foreign language.  Have you ever picked up a book in Arabic which was printed really badly - and I mean REALLY badly - and tried to decifer what it meant?  Or even which letter was which?  Well that’s me. 

Anyway, the title as many of you know is the name a well-known Bon Jovi song which I loved in my “youth”.  Yes, I was a bit of a rocker in my hey-day, a wild child and a drummer with neon pink drumsticks and a black Metallica t-shirt; the picture of defiance in every way - but somehow, I still managed to keep at my five daily prayers! (don’t ask me how that was easier than it is now!)  In these days, rock spoke to me; Jon Bon Jovi wrote lyrics especially for me; Steven Tyler of Aerosmith had my tortured soul on his mind when he wrote “Livin’ on the edge” and David Coverdale of Whitesnake saw me as his lone ranger when he crooned through “Here I go Again On My Own, like a drifter I was born to walk alone.”   And don’t even get me started on Kurt Cobain of Nirvana!

Even now, many of these classics hold claim over me, pulling me in different directions, holding great significance, making me wish I had never given my CD collection away when I, sanctimoniously considered myself more “practising” (more about that later).  But “Living on a Prayer” symbolises exactly how I, and many others, live their lives. 

We live not for the moment, but for whispered prayers in the midst of the night when things get tough.  We live not through the great pleasures of this life, of which we consider to have so many, but appreciate so little, but for the pleasure we may have later on.  Many of us live our lives from one self-induced crisis to the next, but many live through crises they cannot avoid and survive to tell the tale.  But only just. 

The Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov once said, “Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s the day-to-day living that wears you out”; and he was right.  Because things break us, break us beyond belief and when we feel we cannot go on, when we feel we cannot face another dawn, another accusation, another stab of pain, what keeps us going?  The only reason many of us who go through this are still living is we are ‘livin’ on a prayer’. 

“But do you not have faith in God?!” I hear you cry?  The answer is of course; this does not mean I’m a raging atheist, or someone who has little faith in God. 

I have long given up the hope that things will change or get better; this does not make me a pessimist, this makes me a survivor.  This does not mean I despair and think Allah (God) cannot make things better for me, this makes me someone who lives in the present, not regretting the past or resenting what the future has in store for me. 

We don’t hope for things to get better or to change, but we live on our prayers. 

As Jon Bon Jovi crooned, “We’re half way there; livin’ on a prayer.”

So in the words of AC/DC, “For those of you who are about to rock, I salute you.”