Why do people have to leave each other?
Ultimately, the question was about the nature of the dunya as a place of fleeting moments and temporary attachments. As a place where people are with you today and leave or die tomorrow. But this reality hurts our very being because it goes against our nature. We, as humans, are made to seek, love, and strive for what is perfect and what is permanent. We are made to seek what's eternal. We seek this because we were not made for this life. Our first and true home was Paradise: a land that is both perfect and eternal. So the yearning for that type of life is a part of our being. The problem is that we try to find that here.
And that's why if we live in dunya with our hearts, it breaks us. That's why this dunya hurts. It is because the definition of dunya, as something temporary and imperfect, goes against everything we are made to yearn for. Only when we stop putting our hopes in dunya, only when we stop trying to make the dunya into what it is not -and was never meant to be (jannah) -will this life finally stop breaking our hearts.
We must also realize that nothing happens without a purpose. Nothing. Not even broken hearts. Not even pain. That broken heart and that pain are lessons and signs for us -they are warnings that something is wrong and that we need to make a change. Like the loved one who hurts you again and again and again, the more dunya hurts us, the more we inevitably detach from it and stop loving it. And pain is a pointer to our detachments. That which makes us cry, that which causes us the most pain is where our false attachments lie. The pain creates a condition in our life that we seek to change, and if there is anything about our condition that we don't like, there is a divine formula to change it. Allah says: "Verily never will God change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves." [Qur'an, 13:11]
After years of falling into the same pattern of disappointments and heartbreak, I finally began to realize something profound. I had always thought that love of dunya meant being attached to material things. Nevertheless, I was attached to people. I was attached to moments. I was attached to emotions. What I didn't realize is that all the pain I had experienced in life was due to one thing and one thing only: love of dunya. I gave my blood, sweat and tears to this endeavor: making the dunya into jannah. And if there is one recipe for unhappiness it is that: expectations. But herein lay my fatal mistakes. The problem was in where I was placing those expectations and that hope. At the end of the day, my hope and expectations were not being placed in God. They were placed in people, relationships, means. Ultimately, my hope was in this dunya rather than Allah.
But what does it means to place your hope in dunya? How can this be avoided? It means when you have friends, don't expect your friends to fill your emptiness. When you get married, don't expect your spouse to fulfill your every need. When you're in trouble don't depend on yourself. Don't depend on people. Depend on God, The Exalted. Seek the help of people -but realize that it is not the people (or even your own self) that can save you. Only Allah can do these things. The people are only tools, a means used by God. But they are not the source of help, aid or salvation of any kind. Only God is.
We experience this emotional roller coaster because we can never find stability and lasting peace until our attachment and dependency is on what is stable and lasting. How can we hope to find constancy if what we hold on to is inconstant and perishing? To attain that state, don't let your source of fulfillment be anything other than your relationship with God. Don't let your definition of success, failure or self-worth be anything other than your position with Him [Qur'an, 49:13]. And if you do this, you become unbreakable, because your hand-hold is unbreakable. You become unconquerable, because your supporter can never be conquered. And you will never become empty, because your source of fulfillment is unending and never diminishes.
RECLAIM YOUR HEART -YASMIN MOGAHED
I learned something today.
Again.
This is dunya. Dunya. Not a place of ease. Only glitter.
The place where you have to feel cold and hungry.
The place where you have to worry and feel scared.
The place where it gets cold.
So cold, sometimes.
The place where you have to leave the people you love.
Where you can't get attached because even if you do, it doesn't make it stay,
it just makes it hurt when it doesn't.
The place where happiness and sadness are only players, waiting for their next line in a play.
Competing for their place on stage.
The place where gravity makes you fall and frailty makes you bleed.
The place where sadness exists, because it must.
And tears fall to remind you of a place where they don't.
Where they just don't.
And isn't that just it? Isn't jennah that place after all?
That place that Allah describes over and over and over in 2 ways?:
"On them shall be no fear...nor shall they grieve".
But I'm still here, aren't I?
The scar on my flesh reminds me of that.
The burn on my arm left a scar that I love.
I love it because it reminds me how weak I am.
How human.
That I burn. That I bleed. That I break. That I scar.
Yes. It is here that I am. Here that I fall. Here that I cry.
Here, just the same, that You filled that room, and lifted me humbleness,
and an acute knowledge of my own powerlessness and excruciating need for You.
And then you took care of it.
Of course You did.
Of course,
Like Younus and Musa and his mother. You took care of it.
You are the Peace of the peaceful.
The Strength of the strong.
The lighthouse of Truth in this storm of lies.
So I found myself praying for peace today.
Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children. -Sylvia Plath
xoxo,
HfshAfndi
No comments:
Post a Comment