For My Brothers a-Courting....

It's not hard to imagine a situation that goes like so:

Boy: I love you with all my heart :)
Girl: Just your tiny heart?
Boy: And my soul~!!
Girl: Then, what is left for Allah?

As an aside - this is what (a large number of) women will do. It's like an born-with skill, where they are very sweet when drawing information out of you, but not so sweet when they use said information against you. When she calls his heart "tiny"...well, thats a really good touch, because he overcompensates to impress her, and it backfires. It doesn't help that most men are willingly stupid around members of the opposite gender, but there you go.

Of course...a valid point is raised. The answer lies in the following beautiful extract:

“If we say the love of God removes all other loves, it is true. But what is truer is that all other loves come alive and find their spirit through the love of God. And therefore a person becomes full of love and mercy. And let me say it openly: No one except one who has given his heart to Allah knows how to love.”

- Shaheed Hemmat

Emphasis on the final line. So obvious, yet still in need of pointing out. The love for Allah needs to be the primary love, the one that comes before all else, especially when choosing a spouse. One line that remains with me from this past Muharram's lectures was this: "The best spouse is that who will take you closer to Allah". And that's what should be important. If you end up in a conversation like the one above (although you really shouldn't), and the girl ends up questioning your commitment to serving your creator, don't let her go. She's got her priorities right.

Of course, saying one thing, or faking your beliefs to get the girl are totally wrong. I'm not going to pretend that people kinda hide the worst parts of themselves when they are courting - that's human nature, and I guess when the time comes, I will end up doing it to some extent, but still end up surprised when I found out she hid the fact that she can't stand Apple (for example*). But, and especially with regard to this - I would rather own up and say that whilst the extract shows my eventual aim, I'm probably at the lowest possible level right now, and have a longer way to go than anyone who reads this.

And when, I hear you ask, will I be implementing this in my life? (Maybe you don't ask, but I'll answer anyway). For me, my thoughts are polarised (and have been for a while now) between really, really wanting to get married, and really, really not wanting to get married for fear that I'm not worthy enough. Not in terms of material value, (I'm infinitely better off without someone who judges my worth on how much worldly stuff I have - being a minimalist has its benefits here as well), but as to whether I can handle such a great responsibility. This extract sums up how I feel:

Once people insisted upon a man to take a wife. He did not agree and began to weep much. They said, “Why should you weep? If you do not want a wife, just say so? He replied, “What made me weep is another thing. I have not yet taken a wife. I must first carry my own load to destination to make myself worthy of Paradise. If I take a wife then it will be upon me to save that lady also from hell. I am myself yet not fortunate enough to pass through the Sirat Bridge how shall I make my wife worthy of Paradise!” Everyone who takes a wife takes upon himself a huge responsibility as the Holy Qur’an says: O men! Save yourself and your family from hellfire.



You cannot talk only about yourself. If you have a wife, it is obligatory for you to hold her hand to take her away from hell as you are the head of the family. Another responsibility imposed by Qur’an is to live nicely with her. Whatever excessive faultfinding, you are doing with your wives is all against the Shariat of Islam. The load of responsibilities on man is indeed heavy.

- Ayatullah Dastaghaib Shirazi

I showed this to a friend, and they disagreed, not with the blessed scholar's opinion, but with my own interpretation of what it means to me. Yes, if my reasoning is correct, then nobody would get married, which would be absurd. And yes, everyone is worthy of being loved and getting married. For me, the time is not yet (of that I am 100% certain), though I sense it getting closer. Whilst before I wouldn't allow myself to even imagine this happening, now I can allow myself to see it in the middle distance. With Allah is the best of plans, and I leave it in His hands. May Allah guide the unmarried closer to Him through marriage, and the married closer to Him through mutual love and respect, inshaAllah.

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*Be honest. Who groaned when I said Apple?

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My good friend H has switched from Wordpress to Tumblr, and it's updated every day - something new is always waiting for me when I wake up. I totally recommend following her. Tumblr is different - its more suited for micro-blogging, where a few words, or an image, or a video, or a prayer all "tumble" out of your head in a very neat follow-my-stream-of-consciousness kind of way. Also cool is a "reblogging" feature, which makes it easy to post something already posted that you like, whilst showing where you originally got it from, which just adds to the effect. The neat thing is that these very diverse elements, when juxtaposed against each other tend to spark new ideas, and new ways of seeing things. This blog is sourced from three different postings on her site (I, II, III).

Thanks, H.

Focus 2011

It was my intention that this post would be the last one of 2010, and thus be my 100th for that year. No matter - this will now the first post of 2011, and I hope to continue posting away throughout the year. Again, like last year, the new year period for the Islamic and Gregorian calendars overlap, and both lend themselves to a sense of reflection, and a hope for renewal, and (re)generative growth. What's been bugging me are the ideas I laid down in the attention post. What I choose now will be intensely important, as these then become my areas of focus for the upcoming year, largely to the exclusion of pretty much all else. So I have to make sure that they are worth doing to the exclusion of all others, and be sure that if I achieved these, and these only, I would be happy, no matter what.

Financial

I have a deep hatred of two things. One of them is debt, and the second is debt with interest. These hates are secondary, and they flow from me hating the idea of dying in debt, and my family consequently burdened by them. I've always felt this way, but my Series on Materialism brought this to the fore (also, if you haven't done so, I recommend you read that series. I think it my best writing to date). And so, since October-ish, I've been clearing my debts, one by one, and gradually a sense of peace is coming to me. I look back at the progress made in just a few months, and I am happy. In more than one way, debt to me is a limiter, a restrainer, and affects the choices available to me at any one time. As such, clearing debt to me would not feel like growth, but rather something that needs to be done as a precondition to true growth.

Procrastination

It is too easy to completely waste the gift of time by filling it with rubbish. To this end, I'm going to make sure that, as every day progresses, I waste less and less time. This is going to probably be the toughest of the lot. Nevertheless, i want to, by the time this year is over, waste not a single second of my waking moments. The key here is being fully engaged in all that you do, and not therefore living some aspects of your life under a kind of autopilot. I want to be more clear in what I mean by this, but can't come up with examples, or metaphors that extend themselves enough to encompass what I mean to achieve. I'll lay down an indicator though - when each day is done, I want to be able to say, eventually, that there was no way I could have spent my time better. That's the target, and it's a big one, and hopefully iterative and conscientious applications of the indicator help me towards this goal. inshaAllah.

Minimalism

I am still committed to this, but will approach the goal differently. My house is not my own, nor are all of the possessions in it. As such, any wide-ranging changes I hoped to make in this area last year were quashed, and though I made enough progress to be satisfied with, the obstacles to my goal warranted a re-think of strategy. Consequently, this year I will focus exclusively on my own stuff, and see where I can pare down my possessions to the minimum possible. To this end, I'm going to dedicate at least an hour a week to clearing out stuff, which over the year will add up to 50-odd hours, inshaAllah. If I can finally get round to doing that inventory that I've been meaning to do, that would be a bonus as well.

The above three kinda mesh in a holistic way, if looked at correctly. For a while now, I have felt like an insect trapped in the spider's web that is this world, and feel that extricating myself in the best way possible requires a large amount of tact, delicacy, and forethought (another metaphor is available, but I think the soul-as-trapped-bird has been done enough times in mystical poetry), and in achieving these three I will be able to both focus on the afterlife more than I am now, and one by one, cut the cords that tie me to this one.

Other Stuff

I have some other focus points for the year, but these are not set as much in stone - I consider these to be "paths to explore", rather than "paths laid down". As such, I will give time and attention to them, but I may find eventually that time and attention is better spent elsewhere, and decide to pause the exploration, or abandon it altogether, without feeling that I should rigidly stick to a path that may not be right for me.

Stuff like this includes:

- Learning how to code. Languages would be HTML, CSS, C, and Objective-C (for iOS devices)
- Learning to drive. Is it time yet? Maybe.
- More travelling.
- Optimising/tweaking various aspects of life. This may or may not be a law of diminishing returns.

And so on. There may be others I haven't thought of yet.

The missing area

Religion/spirituality is conspicuous by its absence on this list. Suffice to say I have plans in this areas, but will not lay them down on paper for now. These remain with me, for the time being. Also, it makes little sense for me to post them now, because I've kinda already started in this area, from early Muharram. Anyway, if I see fit to write them down in a later post, I promise to do exactly that, and update this post.

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So that's it. 3 goals, or 3 facets of the same goal, and one hidden goal. Last year I made 8 resolutions, and achieved half of them, and was satisfied. This year, I make 4, and will be over the moon if I achieve only half again.

Onwards and upwards, inshaAllah.