April 29 2011
There are many topics that have experts, some that have been defined to the nth degree. For example you could find someone that can teach you almost everything there is to know about philosophy, making cakes or physics. Or can they? In these topics the expert would teach you the point of view of the leading way of going about practicing the subject matter. Another way to say that is, “My grandmother says you can’t make a good cake without a good oven” or “my teacher says you can’t learn about quantum physics without understanding Newtonian physics” or “my dad says you can’t fix something you don’t know how to put together from scratch!”. Valid points some would say, and to a certain degree it is how you learn a science.
Then there are topics that we feel we can’t learn about, they must be experienced, Love for example is a favourite of mine, you can read all the love literature there is and then you love someone so much you can forget your own name watching them smile.
Not all topics are positive though, for example being a victim, we learn about this very early on. When I was young if my younger sister broke my toy or ate my cupcake my dad would say “it’s only fair that if she ate your cupcake that I could eat her desert”. When I was young I don’t think I even hesitated. “She ate my cake”, she can sob and cry and I wouldn’t even hear it over the shiny balls in my icing being crushed and savored.
Then I grew a little older and my dad would offer the same chance and I would say, “I’ll share it with her” and we would both get half. The I got a little older and I would say, “That’s ok I forgive her dad, she’s only young”. That’s the natural progression of maturity, we learn that forgiving is superior to getting even. This is taught in the Quran and the words of the Prophet Peace and Blessings be upon him always.
What happens as an adult isn’t that different, except that instead of your sibling it maybe someone who you don’t know or know but don’t like, it also maybe by accident or not… the scenario is the same but what about our reaction? If we aimed to have the same values we knew once to be superior, we might be surprised to find our lives a lot less stressful.
In the short term I would like to believe that a Muslim who puts things in context of Allah testing one might be able to overlook the annoyances of life. For example that driver that cut you off or that co-worker who was insensitive, if we see these people as puppets being moved by Allah we find it easy to smile knowing that it is all some sort of stage and Allah is giving one the opportunity to react in the manner we might expect from the Prophet Peace and Blessings be upon him.
In the long term however, things seem to take an entirely different context. No one seems to vividly recall whose mistake it was that cost you so much. Who it was that distracted you before that exam, or why you stayed up that night before that interview. Who was it that caused you that sports injury, or who was it that caused you to get fired from that job? People and causes seem to fade into the background, you don’t think about it, your feelings towards people are forgotten. What seem to carry through are the effects of all these incidents. Disadvantages, setbacks… etc.
At this point a danger presents itself, little bits of resentment and regrets can snow ball together to cause the feeling that you are somehow a victim of many little setbacks caused by people you may or may not remember. This feeling of being a victim of your own life causes an attitude change from being in charge of your own life to being always under the mercy of circumstances and decisions made by others. This can be called Victimhood.
In this topic you need no expert, after all how can you take someone else’s opinion about your own life? This isn’t something that is a matter of fact like the speed of sound or the time it takes for a cake to cook or how much electric tape dad needs to fix the faulty ceiling lamp. In this topic everyone is an expert, as no one has your life, no one knows how much better your life could have been if this hadn’t happened or that person hadn’t set you back.
We know better as Muslims don’t we? Your life has happened exactly as Allah has willed for it to happen. This is a part of Islamic core belief. We don’t hold grudges against people because we know this life is set, it has a purpose, it’s a testing ground, and the point is not how much you can collect or how good you get at doing something. The point of life is to see how good of a person you can be before your time runs out, good character and manners, good deeds and showing kindness.
The reason we’re talking about this is that being in a state of victimhood is a lot more spread in this day and age, all of the movie heroes seem to be vicitims of their own lives until that one instance they touch that radioactive substance or get bitten by that genetically modified spider. In real life however radioactive substances cause radiation sickness in Japan and spiders poison people all over the world!
You don’t need special accidents to improve your life, you need a special understanding, and that is that this life is what you make of it. And it’s running out even if it doesn’t feel like that right now. I for one hope to smile for the rest of it and be a cause of happiness in my life and for others.