The Manifesto of Imran the Ever-so-Slightly-Ponderous, Age 27

It has been a particular affectation of mine to decide not to celebrate any birthdays, as they come up. I use them mostly as periods of reflection, but never actually as an occasion for celebration, although normally I do not discourage people from making a fuss over me. After all, it’s nice to be made a fuss of*.

I can, however, point to recent birthdays and say that my affectation, such as it was, no longer exists. For each of my last 3 birthdays (years 2013/14/15), I have decided to willingly celebrate them, and I am happy that I did. Year 2012 may well have been the turning point; after spending it in hospital suffering the bouts of a self-induced ulcer. It is perhaps too simple an analysis to say that I discovered a zest for life after that episode, but who knows? It may well be true.

In any case, this is not to say that I do not intend to use this moment for self-reflection and setting loose goals for the year ahead. I fully intend to, and my thinking has been guided by these two quotes:

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

- Oscar Wilde

and

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

 - Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Walden is more than the point I want to make, he talks about minimalism and whatnot, but please ignore that.

The thing that I take away from both of these is a kind of intended shift in normal day-to-day thinking. Both of them hint very subtly at a trap that I would say ensnares most people who live in the Western world (and quite a few who live in the East, it must be said).

The problem that we have, a lot, is that we run our lives on autopilot and routine, mostly. How much thought do we give to the actions we are doing, constantly? Or are we just running from instinct to instinct and urge to urge? How much thought to the habits that we are building for ourselves, good or bad? Or now that we have formed them, we just submit and succumb to their pull?

I don’t know. I speak only for myself when I say it is too often.

Now, I am not saying that habits are a bad thing. Of course not. Habits are a good thing, or rather, good habits are a good thing. However, how many “good habits**” do you have? How many good habits have you consciously and deliberately engineered? And, crucially, how many do you want to have?

There’s another quote that goes like so:

The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

In a nutshell, this is a powerful way of illustrating the power of habits in our lives, and so we should be very, very careful of what we already have implemented in our lives. Pretty soon they will become nigh-on irreversible.

I did not intend for this post to become a mini-essay on habits, so I will stop that right here.

The overall post was intended to be a reflection as to the extent to with we are deliberate about our actions. As I understand it, in Islam, intention plays a major part in the morality of the actor. Taken one step further, if I do a good deed out of habit, and so do not give any deliberateness of thought and confirmation of intention, then perhaps I shouldn’t have bothered, maybe?

Of course, My Lord is merciful and generous, and I am sure some level of reward would possibly be assigned to it, but still - why hobble yourself? When you do something, do it with full awareness and intention, and when you are consciously trying to form a habit, then do it with twice as much. You’ll see the benefits, I promise.

Perhaps not so obviously, this is my target for the next year. To have more awareness and consciousness of what I do, and try to limit the autopilot as much as possible

————

One of the reasons why I am more than happy to celebrate this particular birthday is the amount of progress I have made in the last year, Alhamdulillah. I’ve travelled a lot, and I have had very good experiences, I finished off my Postgraduate course, etc etc. Furthermore, towards the end of 2014, I hit upon a major realisation, which has done a lot to shape my life since.

In the past, in order to make people happy, I used to let myself be walked over. This probably would have continued on indefinitely, until an incident happened where someone really overstepped the mark and, angrily***, I pushed back, and told them to get lost (I really did; “you and your ego can both get lost” were my words, and I really like that phrasing. I may reuse them in a fiction). I was conflicted at the time, and felt bad for doing it, but looking back, I am more than 100% glad I did.

A lovely, and unexpected side effect was me realising that I should accept myself for who I am, and not hide certain aspects of myself for the sake of shallow friendships. Wearing your heart on your sleeve has its own benefits (I should point out that it also has its drawbacks, so myself I am trying to find a happy middle, but one more transparent than how I was before.)

To wit; here is my manifesto. This is me, and as much as I can tie it to the topic above, these are all deliberate choices. This is who I am at age 27, and any changes that I make, both additions and removals, will be my own conscious decision.

I am Imran.
I am who I am, and finally, I accept it fully.
When I love something, it shows. It shows in the way my eyes light up, and I become animated when I talk about it. And I become animated about a lot of things. For example:

• I like tea. I LOVE tea. It matters not what culture the tea is from - I will have it all.
• I love my comic books, especially The Sandman series. I love delving into aspects of the comic book subculture. The opening of a new comic book store here in Peterborough has had more of an effect on me than I would have thought possible.
• I love books, and I will probably never finish my reading list, though I do read on average one book every 2 weeks, if not more. It runs deeper than that; I love stories, and great storytellers, and I aspire to be one myself.
• I love well made, clever, multi-layered films. I love collecting steelbooks. Steelbooks are gorgeous.
• I love technology, and I am extremely excited about what the future has to hold.
• I love design. I love to see people rack their brains and come up with elegant solutions to everyday problems. And if we could have elegant solutions to worldwide problems, I would love that even more. Side note: I love love love the arabesque style; geometric patterns repeated ad infinitum are just mesmerising to my eye
• I love creating stuff. Poetry, fiction, graphic work, logos, you name it. I love seeing my work out in the wild, though I am more than happy for people not knowing I made it.
• I love learning. About anything. And I really do mean anything; Art, Philosophy, Economics, History, Science, Design, Technology, Mathematics, Theology, Law, Literature, Poetry, Architecture, Language, Linguistics, Culture etc, etc. It matters not the topic, I will drink it up.

If I can help you, then I will help you. I do my best not to charge, but if I do charge you, then you should know you’ve got a fantastic deal anyway.

I've overextended myself somewhat on social media, and I don't like it as much as I used to. I'm now actively working on making my circles smaller. Mission almost achieved, I think.

I love my religion, but I fail it more than I should. I have come to accept that I will not make massive amounts of progress on my own. I will need her**** help to truly progress. In the meantime, I will do the best I can, and not be too harsh on myself when I do fall off.

I am haunted by certain decisions made in my past, and I regret them as I relive them, over and over again. Consequently, a substantial amount of my thoughts will dwell on redemption, forgiveness and absolution.

Given the above, I genuinely see no point in judging others. I am doing my best to only focus on improving myself. My own cross is enough to bear.

————

And so on. There is more, but this is enough. who knows what I will write next year, if indeed I do so.

Also, this is my 300th post. Wow. Who knew I would hit this milestone?

To the next year; hope yours is awesome.

With duas

I


* I have my doubts as to whether that sentence is grammatically correct, but I will let it stand.

** It is not my place to assign value judgements to certain habits, and so I am not going to label certain habits as good and others as bad. Universally, and instinctively, we all know of certain habits we would like to cultivate, and others that we would like to uproot.

*** (Righteous) anger has it’s place. But it is useless if you lose control of yourself. Whilst you should allow yourself to feel these emotions so that you can process and work through them, NEVER lose control of yourself or your emotions.

**** No. There is no “her”. I am speaking abstractly.