Grief for the past and worry for the future are the single two destroyers of the momentary happiness of the present
I preach to myself.
Just press the pause button in your day. Be still. Close your eyes. And feel your feelings. Are they empty? Are they positive? Or are they negative?
Chances are if you’re thoughtless then you would be feelingless too. Thoughts are the generators of feelings — positive thoughts beget positive feelings and negative thoughts beget negative feelings. Know that feelings are never ever derived from sensations, but by thoughts alone. Thoughts of the future or of the past or of the present moment. Memories, anticipated memories or momentary ones.
To feel happy and positive, you have to think of happy and positive thoughts. To be happy, you have to feel happy. To be always happy, you have to always feel happy and you have to always think positively.
Is this possible?
Is this possible in a world full of suffering and injustice. In a life full of mistakes and sinning, of ignorance and immorality, of bad people out to cause you grief? How could you always be happy, at peace with yourself, when you know there will be disappointments and bad experiences in the future? And forget the future, what about the past? What about the mistakes and lost opportunities?
There is a way. A way of being at peace with yourself, with all your faults and weaknesses, and with the world, with all its cruelty and injustice. A way that would instill in you an appreciation of the temporal nature of this world and all its happenings, and of your life and all your experiences. A way that would give you patience to fight against the pain, and gratitude to accept the blessings of life. A way that would give you humility and dignity. And that is the way of the believer.
“Amazing is the affair of the believer, verily all of his affair is good and this is not for no one except the believer. If something of good/happiness befalls him he is grateful and that is good for him. If something of harm befalls him he is patient and that is good for him” (Saheeh Muslim #2999)
The question obviously is: why is the believer patient in the face of calamities? How could their patience be so strong as to extinguish any grief or worry? The answer is because of their belief in God and His Attributes, especially His ability to script the life of each and one of us, the way he wants and for the believer’s own good. The calamities that befall us, should not undone us and it would never destroy us if we believe that each and one of those are for our good. We live in only one page at a time, but God knows the entire book and He wrote it for us in the first place.
Any suffering we may face — let it be the death of a loved one or hunger, poverty, war — are all limited to only a few pages of the book of our life. They are never permanent, and life carries on ever after death. We are allowed to be sorrowful due to separation of us from the states we yearn for or the souls of whose presence we seek, but we shouldn’t deny that these states (of happiness, peace and prosperity) exist or that the soul of a loved one lives on even after death. The Prophet Ya’qub (as) knew of the dream, and that his son Yusuf would eventually return healthy and in a lofty position, but he was indeed sorrowful and allowed himself to cry in silence because his beloved son was separated from him. In the belief in the eventual reunion of you with your loved one or with the state of bliss that you yearn for is the negation of any thought, word and deed that would tarnish your patience.
Matters of your sustenance, let it be exams or job interviews or the profits of your company — anything — have all been pre-written for you. It’s none from yourself, you don’t deserve any of it. If you are successful at some exam, that doesn’t mean you deserve it because of your hard work and/or ability. It means God gave you the love for hardwork and the ability, and so God gave you the success. Your true worth lies ONLY in matters of faith, in your level of faith in Him and how you live that faith in your life. It does not lie in the “success” of this life — because those have been pre-written for you and are actually means of testing your faith. We are all at different levels in this world purely because God chose to test us differently. At the end of the day, life for a believer is a test of faith.
When I was younger, I used to not believe in the necessity of supplicating to God for one’s needs and wants. It was not due to my lack of belief in God or His Attributes, but quite the opposite. If God knew everything, why should I bother asking? I believe in Him and I submit myself to His Plan. Why should I remind Him of what I need and want? And besides that, isn’t it ridiculous to even pretend to know what’s good for us with our limited knowledge? I thought it was supposed to be a state of being, rather than any action (of raising hands and voicing out your specific needs).
Then someone asked me:
Is the Lord your servant, or are you the servant of the Lord?
Of course, the Lord is the Master and I am a servant of His, which means I have to serve him and not the other way around. Then dawned the realisation, that we tend to treat God as our servant. We pay him by our prayers and expect him to serve us the way we want to without us even asking Him. Where is our humility or our sense of inferiority, if we do not ask Him for our needs, even if they be as mundane as our daily bread? And it’s true that He knows better, and He knows what we would ask of Him anyways, but still we have to bear witness to our own humility and limits!
And when My servants ask you, [O Muhammad], concerning Me - indeed I am near. I respond to the invocation of the supplicant when he calls upon Me. So let them respond to Me [by obedience] and believe in Me that they may be [rightly] guided. (2:186)
We are guaranteed a response only if we call upon him. So why not ask Him for ALL our needs and wants? Even if they be big, or small, possible or impossible, of this world or of the next. Our striving is also a form of supplication. The more we show how desperate we are through our words of supplications and actions, the more we glorify God who need only say “Be” and it will be.
That means that even though we have submitted ourselves to His Plan and His Will, we do still have to work through it as best we could, knowing that it was He who taught us the words of supplication we use as well as the means we take to bring about what we desire. Furthermore it is true that our supplication and our work (of doing good deeds) can and does change our personal worldly destiny. If we do not make use of this, we wouldn’t achieve as much as we want to achieve.
Imagine if your mother was allowed to script your life as she sees fit. Even though, she loves you a LOT and wants the absolute best for you she wouldn’t do a good job at it — simply because she does not own all the knowledge of the world and of the possibilities futures. God loves us more than our mothers do, and wants the best for us, and He alone is capable of scripting our life for the absolute best. Life is a test of faith, so have faith in Him and His Plan for you and work your best through it, and God willing your destination would be more than what you deserve.
In that faith is comfort. Have your thoughts, at any difficult moment of the present, point to that Beautiful End. They will be filled with hope and acceptance, and would beget feelings of peace and happiness.
We must never get tired of calling people to the Truth and calling people to Patience. If we stop doing that, then truly we would be among the losers. Believe, do good, and encourage people to be patient in this worldly life.
By the Time! Man is surely in loss, except those who believed and did good works, and exhorted one another to Truth, and exhorted one another to patience. (Surah 103)
0 comments: