It smelled like frying fish and cigarettes. It sounded like the Azan and broken English. It looked like cockroaches scurrying across the counters, undisturbed, as if some agreement was made that allowed them to live, so long as they cleaned up the crumbs.

For a month I lived in between the painted plywood walls of what they call a partition. It fit one bunk bed in width, with enough length for another. The remainder of the room gave just enough space for the door to open. Usually three or four would live in a partition, and there was about five in the apartment. We all shared a kitchen and two bathrooms. It was messy. And the lives of those living there were just as messy. But it was real. It was honest. And there was room for God in that space.

It smelled like lemons and freshly mopped floors. It sounded like birds chirping and Apple Music through Bluetooth Surround Sound. It looked like clean counters and large glass doors to a lush backyard.

For a month I lived in a gorgeous house in a gated community. We had a park down the street and access to a cooled swimming pool and a gym. I was there housesitting—feeding the dogs, cats, hamsters and tortoises of a family on vacation. And it was here that life got difficult.

It comes subtly. It comes in the mundane. It comes as you recline into comfort and let your mind wander away from the struggles of reality. You find yourself there, half-alive, wondering where the vibrancy of life went to. You readjust your posture. You try to get more comfortable, but with every breath you feel more life leave you. You’re tired, but of what? You find something to blame, some disturbance to silence. But the problem is you’re undisturbed. You’re tired of sitting. You’re tired of the selfish ambition that you were never made to live in.

I was there. I was rested yet restless, and didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to stir up the passion that had once come so easily.

Weeks went by until the time came when, by necessity, I had to leave. My month of the housesitting ended, and I moved out.

The same day I moved, I went back to my old apartment to pay an electricity bill. As I rode the Metro towards it, I thought of the faces I would soon see. Memories rushed back in. Tears filled my eyes, just like they had the day I left. And I felt it. Life. Purpose. I remembered the passion that had left me. It was like I woke up after a month asleep.

I walked down the dirty streets and into my that worn-down place. I went up the elevator that was three years overdue on its inspection. I knocked on the door and was soon greeted with excited expressions and that perfect broken English. The cockroaches didn’t acknowledge me. I hugged my old friends and asked about their lives. They were good, and I’m sure just as messy as before.

Dubai is an interesting place. It’s a world of glamour and luxury. It’s a city of cleanliness and wealth. Yet beyond this façade there is thousands and thousands of lonely and broken people. And more than anywhere I’ve seen before, there is the choice of what life to engage with. You can live the highlife. You can spend your time and your money staying above the grime and inconvenience of individuals, ignoring the stories of the grocer and the gardener. Or you can enter it. You can feel the real and the raw. You can stare brokenness in the eye, and sympathize with the struggling. It’s there that you’ll come alive. Selfishness gets old. Leisure drowns us. But this is what we were made for it. Oh, that we would get familiar with uncomfortable, and start truly living.