What does it mean…

…to be alive?

To feel air rush into your starving lungs, and be able to exhale the same in a deep, slow, breath
To sense blood constantly ebbing and flowing; a beautiful, balanced rhythm, from your heart to your extremities
To appreciate the gifts of your God-given senses
To feel both limitless potential and yet feel an insignificant speck of dust in the grand scheme of things
To progress unwaveringly, if slowly
To know that the “I” is not really the “I”
To attune yourself to the presence of the immortal soul
To give yourself to the Maker, over and over again - this is what gives us life over anything else.


…to be human?

To feel a common, transcendent bond with others despite man-made divisions of geography, race and culture:-
To hurt when others bleed
To hunger when others starve
To raise your voice for those who cannot
To know your life is not your own, and yet:
To feel the constant battle between head and heart
To feel the yearn and pull of desires both base and noble
To be able to seek out and enjoy beauty in all of it’s various manifestations
To feel the pain of loss
To strive
To learn
To alternate between weakness and strength
To make mistakes
To be able to laugh at your own failings

To smile


…to love?

Alas, I myself have not much to say in this regard. Maybe I’ll have something to say in a few years. In the meantime, I refer you to the words of the master, Gibran. For the wedding of my best friend 2 years earlier, I recommended that these verses be read out, and they were.

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself. 
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: 
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. 
To know the pain of too much tenderness. 
To be wounded by your own understanding of love; 
And to bleed willingly and joyfully. 
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; 
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy; 
To return home at eventide with gratitude; 
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

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Stay blessed

I

Dark Night of the Soul

Dark night of the soul

It’s just part of the process

Soon to be made whole

Dark night of the soul

Hide away when you transform

Change is part of hope

Dark night of the soul

Fix both your eyes on the goal

Understand your role

Dark night of the soul

From pure solitude comes strength

Within and without

Dark night of the Soul

Stand up and walk. Move Forward

To the unknown goal

Dark night of the soul

For every single test

Run towards your Lord

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So it's been a while since I wrote any poetry, but, composing this was probably not the best way to get back into it. The problem relates to the form vs. essence debate that rages on in this and other contexts since as long as the arts have existed.

"Dark Night of the Soul" is not a phrase of my creation; and it seems to me that the colloquial meaning of this is to refer to phases when human beings feel alone and despondent, usually in the face of some obstacle or test. Consequently they retreat inwards to their shell, work through what needs to be done, and then come back out stronger, ready to deal with what needs to be dealt with. We are human, we are weak, we need to sometimes get away from things before we can face them. Very few people have a limitless reserve of strength.

Where I limited myself was in decided that I would need a minimum of 6 Haiku to form the poem, and each time the first line would be the same, thereby restricting the amount of play I had with the other syllables. Less of a requirement was to have the third line rhyme, and to the effect that I wanted to follow this, I was further restricted. A positive thing for me was being able to tweet each Haiku as i formed it.

With the space that I had left, I had to then convey the following:

• It's a normal process
• It's required if you want to grow as a human being towards completion/perfection
• Change is sometimes good
• Change often happens alone in the dark of night.
• That it happens in solitude I think is a good thing
• It may be scary, but this is only if you forget your purpose in life.
• The need for regular progression, no matter how small.
• The need for humans to remember to turn towards their Lord.

I think I did OK, but I could have done better. Maybe I would have needed a few more Haiku to fully flesh it out. Who knows?

It is good to be writing poetry again.

The Future of this Blog

A long time ago, nearly approaching 8 years (has it really been that long!?), I started this blog.

I did not know what it was going to be about, and truth be told, if you look at the early posts*, you will see a little awkwardness, and a little uncertainty, as I found my voice slowly. At the time, all my online friends had blogs and it was a way of furthering our conversations without necessarily being present, and so an element of peer pressure was maybe instrumental in forming the decision to make the blog.

It grew on me soon, as I discovered that I loved writing poetry in 2009, and then fictions soon followed. Eventually I would write longform opinion pieces, and then I really grew into it. The best thing, for me, is that I am blessed in not needing to post-edit much. Everything comes to me near-enough fully-formed as I start writing. I am very grateful for this. I cannot imagine what it must be like for people who have to struggle line by line to create a medium-to-long sized piece.

Without realising it, I was aiming for a particular aesthetic with my blog; something akin to the magazine The New Yorker**. To explain; I want this blog to be a space for experimentation with and creative expression through fiction and poetry, definitely. I love these. But tying it all together would be the “normal” posts; reflections, musings, reviews, oddments, travel and other journals, etc. And these, well, they have to be delivered to my loyal handful of readers with wit, humour, exuberance, and the ability to captivate - which is what I mean by The New Yorker style. Ideally I imagine that said readership would see that I have a new post and make a cup of whatever warm beverage they like and sit down to read. The quality ideally would even be more than that; I want it to be such that it is something readers would be willing to pay for***.

It’s pretty obvious that I have not achieved in this regard. For starters, I have fallen well below my goal of once a week, and now even once a month seems like it may be too much to achieve. When I have managed to write, it has been writing for the sake of writing; I am not sure that I myself would be willing to pay to read what I have penned. The goal of writing, first once a week, then once a month, I think created an inward pressure to just write, and see what happens, and just publish, and so the goal became quantity, not quality.

There is are a few other factors at play. My life has become very busy recently, and I love it. I am hitting a sizeable number of my goals for the year so far (Alhamdulillah). As such, whilst the choice is not framed exactly as explicitly, if I have to choose between writing here, and getting on with the other things that I am doing, which I also enjoy (both solitary and group activities), then, more often than not, the other thing happens.

The other factor is social media. I had left Facebook in 2009, and I was glad to have done. I signed up for Twitter and Instagram in 2011, and, whilst correlation does not imply causation, at the time of writing I have 17,418 tweets (to be fair, probably well over half are retweets) and 1,313 posts on Instagram. Conversely, since 2012, I have written 54 posts in 4.5 years, averaging 12 a year exactly.

What I think has happened is that the low level fluff, and occasional thought which may have formed into a blog post if I let the idea germinate for a while, have all found expression on those other platforms. If that’s the case, then, well this is to be a good thing, because then only the high quality stuff makes it’s way here (in theory anyway). I rejoined Facebook in 2013 because my work required it, and when I left that job in 2015, I kept the Facebook. However, in contrast to the other two, it’s definitely not a time-sink for me because I don’t even consider it as important and rarely spend more than a few minutes a day on it.

So, what next?

I am going to continue to write, but the self-imposed goal to publish will go. Meaning that I will continue to try and find the time to write, but, this is divorced from needing to publish every month or every week or any other arbitrary deadline. Once I am happy to post something, I will, and in the meantime, if inspiration and environment combine to allow me to knock out a piece in 30-45 minutes, then I will do that too.

Let’s see how that goes.

Also…

At work, I have started to use dictation software. It’s really, clever. I speak, and the words form on the screen, and it learns to adapt itself to my voice and learn the modularities of my speech, so it gets more accurate over time. I can have a relaxed posture in front of the screen, and talk for 20-30 minutes, and have a letter ready without having to type much. Obviously it’s not 100% perfect, so I do end up having to use the keyboard to correct the text, but overall it’s actually quicker, more relaxing, and more efficient than my typing (and my typing on a good day is 50-60 wpm).

The Apple devices I use all have dictation built in, and use the same software company for voice-to-speech analysis. I am tempted to try and do the same for blog posts, but so far I have had mixed results. I started to dictate this post, but in the end, using a keyboard was less headache for me. Minor though; having teething pains with respect to dictation software is SUCH a #FirstWorldProblem that it makes me chuckle. I will be trying this again, and maybe soon I will be dictating my posts. Who knows?

As ever, I have at least 10+ topics listed that I want to write about, but, now that I have the position clear in my head, it may be a while before I write, and even longer before I post them.

Stay tuned, and we see where this goes.

With duas

I

Interact with me on Twitter @th_mnmlst and on Instagram @sublimated.

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Yes, the key to a good joke is commitment.

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* I have never un-posted anything. What is posted remains so, warts and all, but maybe this is somewhat counteracted by the fact that only a handful of people actually read/follow my blog.

** At the time, I was not aware of the existence of the New Yorker.

*** Of course, I will not charge to read. Heavens no!

Love Potions and Hypothetica

In my very first I’tekaaf session a few years ago now, one of the brothers there mentioned the concept of “white magic”. It’s a weird concept, and I was not sure that it fit in with Shia Aqeedah, but when explained, it made a lot more sense. Basically, it was defined as in contrast to black magic, as being a way of the human beings and souls to control the metaphysical/paranormal through means that are Islamically, valid, accepted, and can be found in the books of Hadith. Aims that white magic can be used for include “destroying your enemies” and “love potions/making people fall in love with you”.

I really did not like the idea, especially the concept that we as sentient, conscious beings can control the thoughts and emotions of other people through supernatural means. What then followed was a series of cascading hypothetic scenarios and thought experiments that changed my view to some extent, and did not for the rest.

Is it possible that white magic exists?
Defined as above, yes. We know from Quran (2:102) that black magic does exist, and so it is *possible* that the same can be true for white magic. An-officially-endorsed-by-the-AhlulBayt (as) form of magic is harder for me to get my head round, but I concede that it *might* exist. I have reservations because it doesn’t mesh consistently with what we know of them. They have left us the keys to the universe in the form of prayers and supplications, and I don’t really think that alongside that, they would tell a select few companions that “magic” was acceptable and furthermore then reveal that certain rituals would achieve certain desired effects. On the other hand, they did have true knowledge of the unseen, and so if anyone were to know about the existence of such things, it would be them.

Is it possible that love potions exist?
It seems like stuff from a fairy-tale, and I have actually used this as source material for one of my fictions. I still find it hard to believe that drinking or eating something will make a person lose their senses and logic and irrevocably fall in love with someone else. On the flip side, we know that certain foods and drinks affect us physically, emotionally, and spiritually, so again this is something again that I concede may be possible, but the existence of such is still problematic to me.

If a love potion existed, would you use it?
I had to think, only for a fraction of a second, and then I said no, firmly. I may be called old-school or romantic or whatever, but, I do not want a girl to fall in love with me except by fair means. No underhand manipulation of any kind, no deception, no stagecraft, no building up of a sense of mystique to then segue into a careful, orchestrated reveal. (I have learned the hard way, that it’s simpler and also better). No winning of a female’s heart except by fair means. And a love potion (if it works), is decidedly unfair.

Much ado about nothing, then, as I proved to myself and to the others around me that, practically, the existence of such things are moot anyway, because I would never use them even if they did exist.

Epilogue
A few weeks later myself and the brother met up after I’tekaaf, and we had a third brother join us. I brought up the same topic again, saying that I still had reservations in believing that they existed, that they worked, and that their use was sanctioned Islamically. The third brother then piped in and said that they definitely worked. He knew because he had used them himself as a gullible teenager. However, they came with a cautionary tale. He used it on a girl who was extremely pretty, and it turned out she developed some affection for him that was unhealthy, which caused him some problems to extricate himself from, not without some scars. Listening to that brought a smile to my face, and I reinforced to me that my overall thought process is right.

Moral 1: Be careful what you wish for.
Moral 2: When it comes to matters of the heart, don’t mess about.

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I did not listen to how such potions (if they exist and do work) are made, so please don’t ask me. I do not know, and do not want to know. The unseen belongs with other people; I have enough trouble with the "seen", so to speak.

Humans & Relationships.

“Over 5,000+ years, humans have solved every technical problem in front of them. Relationships are a different, unsolvable story, it appears.”

 - Me, 1st November 2015, on Twitter somewhere.

By way of introduction, one thing I love about Twitter is that it forces me to be concise. I will do my utmost to write a coherent thought within the 140 character limit. If I can afford extravagances like bullet points, numbering, and line breaks, then I will put them in as well. And if I can’t, I will go through any number of literary and linguistic contortions to get the tweet right; including replacing words with shorter words, and replacing word combinations with others that take up less characters. I have had plenty of experience in this, especially during the years where I was studying, and had to contend with various word limits.

If I still can’t say what I want, then I will either give up, or, do one thing I hate, which is to abbreviate and use slang-ish type words, like “h8” and “l8r”, and use ampersands (&) instead of the word “and”, use numbers instead of numbers (47/forty-seven) and various other crimes against English that would make my various English teachers groan and put their heads in their hands.

And the reason for explaining all this is to then highlight the tweet that I started with. It took a few goes to end up with that formulation, but I am happy with it; and I hope to achieve with such tweets to contain a whole argument or point of view that can be expanded upon at leisure, which is what I hope to do now. This is also the introduction part of the post done. (I also apologise for not embedding it; currently I am keeping my twitter profile on private.)

It is true, of course.

We have gone from primitive cave-dwellers and hunter-gatherers, to so, so much more. The one fundamental driver in this change is the human brain, a glorious gift. Being able to grasp logic and rules, being able to harness fire, to build tools, to communicate ideas, to use tablets (ha!) and later, scrolls to be able to read and write, to organise in complex societies and tribes, to understand and utilise the principle of division of labour, to measure time, to incept trade, commerce, and banking, to manufacture at scale, to print books, to create standards and laws, to develop healthcare, to industrialise farming, to eliminate need (we are not there yet), to invent flighted, landed, and seaborne travel, to see and split the atom, to map the human gene, to put man on the moon, to create the digital world, to transmit messages across the world in seconds or less - wow.

To our 5,000 year old ancestors, what we do today would be magical. In fact, science that we use in our everyday lives should be considered just as magical and wondrous as that in the stories we read; it is just familiarity that has dulled us to it.

And we have gone beyond the practical; to invent philosophy, politics, literature, art, music*, and poetry, to strive to discover meaning and joy in the mundane and the profound. Some works of poetry and literature are so powerful that they have survived hundreds and thousands of years. We have the wisdom of the sages throughout the ages at our fingertips to draw upon, to fill our heart with their teachings, and our brains with learning from their successes and from their mistakes; we truly can, to paraphrase a certain Mr Newton, stand on the shoulders of giants.

And yet, despite all this…

We still fail at human-human relationships. I don’t get it. If humanity has been around for 6,000 years at the least, and billions (if not more) human-human relationships have existed before us, why are we so bad at them? Additional questions follow:

• Why is the majority of my social media feed just complaints about people, and appreciation for “things”?
• Are we fated to repeat the relationship mistakes of the people who came before us?
• Are we even going to see the mistakes in our conduct with other people?
• Does the huge disparity in experience that every human has make it not more likely that we will get an equally wide disparity in advice, should we choose to ask for it?
• Why is it, when two divorce lawyers choose to marry, that the joke is that the new marriage is “a triumph of hope over experience”? (ok, this is not a serious question, but I had to insert a joke somewhere)

To summarise: Why is it that humanity has no problem conquering technical challenge after technical challenge, but even the most “clever” humans have serious relationship issues, and, anecdotally, the more clever ones have more trouble with their relationships?

I don’t know. The more I think about it, it seems that we only every have a couple of key relationships with other humans, and these themselves are subject to having the dynamic change and alter over time. I think eventually, all humans discover/realise that these are the relationships that are crucial, and determine the majority of your happiness. I make them as follows:

1. Parent-child (both ways)
2. Siblings
3. Spousal / Marriage
4. Extended family
5. Friendships.

To me, the most important one is the spousal / marriage one. The others are also extremely important, but the spousal / marriage one is the one that I see most people complaining about, celebrating, and making others sick with**.

It’s also the only that most people make jokes about, and allows half the world to sympathise with each other’s pains, whilst gently chiding or not-so-gently antagonising the other half. Finally, it is the one about which the most advice (rightly or wrongly, volunteered or otherwise) is given, and, finally it is believed to be the source of over 90% of the happiness or sadness that a person will experience over the course of their life (this last one I believe to be true).

And this is just one. The others are also important, and also have their own changes, stresses, and problems. I am not disregarding these.

Ruminating on this has made me determined to succeed at all of my relationships. Someone has to. And as I was thinking of this, and the way of going ahead with this. I came across a tumblr-y quote:

“Fix your relationship with Allah, and He will fix your relationship with others”

Perfect, right? If anyone has a reference for this, please do let me know.

With duas

I

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Because if you’re going to begin with Twitter, you should end with Tumblr, and cut out Facebook altogether. It just makes logical sense.

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* Ghina is haraam. For definitions of what falls under Ghina, ask your Marj‘a.
** One thing that really, really disturbs me is when a newly-betrothed girl just posts lovey-dovey stuff on her social media all day long. It’s as if she doesn’t have an identity or existence outside of being part of a couple. Has this always been the case and social media has just made me aware of it? Or is this a recent phenomenon that social media has just amplified?

Major and Minor Goals for 2016

I know this post is a little late, being that we are nearly one quarter, or 25% done with the year.

However, I can say that I set my goals early on in the year, and have been sticking to them in a way that I am happy with, which I guess is better than writing them out and not doing them. I composed this post in my head in late January, and please assume that this is still the case when reading it; I will write a secondary update post soon enough (in sha Allah - God Willing, Always).

This year, I have 4 MAJOR goals. These I will keep with me, and let’s see what happens. I am sorry if you wanted to read about these, but not sorry enough that I will share them now. I may decide to share them at the end of the year. The 4 major goals have a defined endpoint; at the end of the year, I will either have achieved them, or I will not.

Around those major goals, however, I have 6 smaller goals. If you follow me on Instagram, I posted these in early and mid-January, and I see these goals as in a different way. Instead of having a defined endpoint, they are more additive. The more I do them, the more I will gain/grow, and the amount that I am able to do them is influenced by the vagaries of life such as they may be. However, if I don’t get to do that much of them, then it’s not a bad thing, because, even a little will benefit me, plus I have the main 4 goals to worry about, which are orders of magnitude more important.

In the order in which I posted them on Instagram, they are:

I - MORE TRAVEL

2012 is the point of inflection in my life as far as travel is concerned. Before 2012, the last time I left the country was way back in 2004, and that wasn’t a holiday. However, since then, I have been extremely lucky:

2012: Sweden, Wales & Iraq
2013: Morocco, Scotland
2014: Switzerland, Dubai
2015: Sweden, Iran, Layover in Dubai

Analysing the above, it seems to me that I have a pattern of going to at least one MENA (Middle East / North Africa) country and one European country a year. If I can manage that this year as well, then I will be happy. If I exceed that, I will be over the moon. I love travelling; I am happy to admit that I have a serious case of Wanderlust, and furthermore that it is a disease which I am happy to have.

II - READ 25 BOOKS

I read a lovely amount of books last year. And they were lovely books too, so a double win; quality and quantity. Some that I have read have now become firm favourites of mine that are wholeheartedly recommended.

I know that my life is becoming crazy busy from a professional point of view, and also that as I pursue the other goals that I will not have time to read much more, but I have set myself an achievable (I hope!) target of reading one book every 2 weeks, or, 25/26 books a year. If I only read 10 or 15, well, thats ok; I won’t be disappointed - as mentioned before, these are additive goals.

I’m keeping myself in check by steadfastly refusing to buy any more books until 10 from the pile I start with at the beginning of the year have not only been read, but also given away.

I also have a to-read list now spanning well over 700+ books; if I add nothing to it and only manage to read 50 books/year, I need never ask anyone else for a recommendation for 14 years!

Side note; I am really getting into Historical Islamic / Middle Eastern fiction - best examples of these being Samarkand, Alif the Unseen, Leo the African, and Alamut - I love these books so very much, and wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone.

When I clean it up enough, I will post my to-read list here. It may take a while.

III - BROADEN MY HORIZONS.

The actual caption I put on Instagram was this:

My good friend Dave (not his real name) is the only person who has told me I need to increase my general knowledge and broaden my horizons, and he suggested I take up reading a quality newspaper. Then, he actually gave me 6-months worth of prepaid vouchers to the “i” newspaper in a “Project Imran 2.0” envelope; thus following his advice with concrete action. I think it would be wrong of me to refuse to follow his advice now.

I don’t think there is any more to add; we shall see.

IV - CAPTURE MORE BEAUTY

I love taking photos. Genuinely, really, love it; capturing fragments of life, moments frozen in time, and looking back on them as time passes. From that point of view, Instagram is a great fit for me. I am always, always looking for a good shot; its like a second nature now.

I have been lucky to always have a good (iPhone 4) to really good (iPhone 5C) to great (iPhone 6) camera always with me from the start, and I don’t even like to use filters anymore; just the plain picture as taken will suffice. As a result, if you follow me on Instagram, (and to a lesser extent on Twitter) expect me to post more of what I find beautiful, not just freshly captured, but also from my archive as well.

V - DECLUTTER MORE

I will always be trying to do this, and I will never be 100% happy with my progress, but genuinely now I feel that whatever little I can do will benefit myself, and anything else is a bonus.

If it’s not self evident, or you do not see why this would be a goal for me, then I recommend reading Walden, by Henry David Thoreau - one of my favourite non-fiction books ever. The answer is there, implicit throughout the whole book, and explicit in some places as well.

VI - UTILISE UPSTREAM EFFECTS

The idea is that we are constantly building our future selves, and whilst we may not have everything right at this moment in time, sending the right assets, tools, habits, and strengths downstream to our future selves will be of invaluable use.

Its easy to explain, and extremely hard to implement, and I have so much I need to tackle in my life, that figuring out the best way to use this gem of insight is going to be a mission in itself. Of all of the mini goals set for this year, this is the most abstract, least specific, least measurable, and yet the one with the ability to have the most impact. Wish me luck!

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I am way, WAY behind on my self-imposed target of posting once a week. Dave (not his real name) is most disappointed in me. I will do my best to catch up, which means you may see a lot more frequency of posting, at least until I hit my goal. The good thing is that I already have 5/6 ideas that are ready to post; all I need now is the time to write them out.

Hope my handful of readers are all doing well, iA

Sophistry, Responsibility, and the Pursuit of Happiness

I need to make a point.

However, to make the point, I need to quote an extract from one of my favourite books, though I have only recently finished reading it. The book is Leo the African, by Amin Maalouf. For the extract to make sense, I will need to give a small introduction and make a small summary of one part of the book before I quote the extract.

Therefore, please read on for the introduction/summary, followed by the extract, followed by the point I wish to make.

I also promise that the book is in no way spoiled for you, the reader, and so you may, without fear, acquire and read the book in full promise of enjoyment, should you like what you read.

INTRODUCTION & SUMMARY

Muhammad the weigh-master is the father of the narrator, the young Hassan. They have just been driven out of Granada by the successful Spanish conquest many years in the making, and make their way for refuge in Fez, located in present day Morocco.

They can still live in Granada, but it is clear that the Christians will slowly, over time, make life hard for the Muslims and Jews living there, and the wise thing to do is to flee.

Muhammad has one wife, Salma, who is also his cousin, and mother of young Hassan. He also has a Christian slave-girl/concubine by the name of Warda, who has borne him a daughter.

A weird set of circumstances made Warda choose to leave Muhammad's household, even though he treated her well, and seemed to love her more than his first wife. She did not want to go, but as Spain was taken back from the Muslims by the Christians, Christian slaves were forcibly freed from their households, even those who did not want to leave.

Muhammad, who did not want to let her go, is given the choice of keeping her only if he converts to Christianity and marries Warda in a Christian ceremony. Muhammad loves her, but he will not do this, and he gives up custody of both Warda and their daughter Miriam.

He makes preparations for leaving Spain, finally feeling defeated. They will head to where the exiled Muslims who left before him have founded a new life, in Fez. The plan is to stay with Salma's brother, who left Granada a few years ago with great foresight, feeling that it was only a matter of time before the Nasrids fell to the Christian conquerors.

Muhammad delays the departure until the final possible moment, spending all his money and doing his utmost to trace Warda and Miriam before he leaves, and he is successful. The family is reunited on the galley boat that leaves the coast of Spain for Fez.

Muhammad and Warda are speechless, Hassan and Miriam are overjoyed to see each other, being only children, and Salma weeps quietly behind her veil, knowing that Muhammad's impulsive, emotional decision will cause trouble for the family down the line.

Salma is proven right, with a cold welcome by her brother causing a split in the family that takes many years to mend, with one consequence being that Salma and Muhammad also divorce for a few years.

Hassan is too young to understand all this. He lives out his childhood, and he pieces together what happened as he grows up, talking to his mother, his uncle, and his father; between these he pieces together the full story. He lives out his adult life, and has plenty of adventures. At the age of 40, he casts his mind back, and starts writing his memoirs to pass on to his son.

He writes the following about this particular episode:

EXTRACT:

Muhammad the weigh-master, at once so serene and so uncontrolled! It so happened that I lost him in my youth, only to find him again in my maturer years, when he was no longer there. And I had to await my first white hairs, my first regrets, before becoming convinced that every man, including my father, had the right to take the wrong road if he believed he way pursuing happiness. From that time, I began to cherish his erring ways, just as I hope that you will cherish mine, my son. I wish that you too will sometimes get lost in your turn. And I hope that, like him, you will love to the point of tyranny, and that you will long remain receptive to the noble temptations of life.”

FINALLY

And now the point I wish to make.

First, I acknowledge that the extract is a beautiful piece of sophistry. Genuinely something that makes you pause and wonder if Hassan, now all grown up, with the dual benefit of a life rich in experience, and clear hindsight, may actually have a point.

And I can genuinely say that this was the case for me. As I was reading the book (I think I was on a train at the time), I closed it and wondered if maybe I should change my outlook on life, morality, and ethics, to harmonise with this.

Sometimes, you just have to ask yourself the right questions for the answers to come flooding to you instantly, and that is what happened to me then.

In a word, no.

As appealing as the view is, the language that it is couched in makes me distinctly uncomfortable, to the point where I can not in good conscience look on it favourably.

A phrase like “receptive to the noble temptations of life” may be excused, but  “right to take the wrong road”, or “love to the point of tyranny” indicate a wilful lack of concern about ethics that concerns me. Taken to its extreme, it leads to a self-centred outlook that I believe is beginning to slowly corrupt and corrode the liberal Western governments that influence the world today.

However, what I could find myself agreeing with, is a modified version of the above, which places certain restrictions. Something like; as long as it doesn’t interfere with commitments, and obligations, both to the people and to God, and as long as you are not harming or hurting someone else, people should be free to pursue whatever pleases them.

Now that; that I can get fully support.

I apologise; this feels like a sort of anti-climax to me, and maybe to you reading as well; after all that, maybe what I said was so obvious that it didn’t need 1,000 words of exposition.

Khayr. At the time, this is what I wanted to do; which in itself is enough of a proof of what I have just written.

Until the next time, in sha Allah

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Please do read Leo the African, by Amin Maalouf. I like it a lot, and really, really recommend it. I like even more the book Samarkand by the same author.

My good friend Dave (not his real name) has expressed his disappointment with me that I have yet to write significantly this year, so I have assured him that I will try to make sure that I hit 52 posts this year; one for every week. Even if I fail and only manage 40, this is enough for me; though I am grateful for the constant pushing.

On Giving Advice, and Following Advice

I do not know by what skill I am able to give good advice. It’s a blessing for sure. I just wish I could follow my own advice more often.

— ا (@th_mnmlst) December 27, 2015

The preceding tweet followed a meeting with one of my best friends, which lasted three hours. We covered a substantial amount of topics, digressions, and debated multiple points of view (and had more than a few cups of mint tea). There are some people who I yearn to spend time with, and he is one of those. 3 hours of just talk wasn't enough. For meetings like these, even when a lot of time is spent, it always feels, when we part ways, that there was so much more to be covered, and we were just getting started. I am so grateful for this and a few other friendships. It almost makes the various traumas of my early and mid-twenties worth it if the end result will be relationships like these on the other side.

It was at the end of the talk where I was able to give him some concrete advice. And we covered the ways in which people give advice, and they ways in which the said advice is received, if it is ever acted upon, and the innate problems of such.

I shared a few insights with him, and this is the reason, I am writing this post. I am writing these for myself to refer back to, because I know I will forget these insights soon. If anyone else benefits from these, then this is a bonus, and I am grateful for it.

They are as follows:

• As a rule, people make decisions emotionally, and then post-justify them logically. This has been proven enough times by behavioural economists*. The ramifications of this are many, and I do not remember them all, but this then leads to the following conclusions:
• Humans are less logical than they think when it comes to decision making, and, therefore...
• We actually have very influence in the day-to-day, brick-by-brick shaping of our lives, because we do not think every choice through logically.
• Amongst the human race, the pure logicians, who make and follow every decision logically, are rare.
• The basic underpinnings of economics and economies as the aggregate effects of millions of rational decision-makers seems like a not-so-stable foundation upon which elegant theories are built upon.
• For the majority of the choices that we make in our daily lives, there is often very little difference in choice A and choice B. What I mean is that, if most decisions can be post-justified after the fact, then really most decisions aren't really worth agonising over, and we can use that to our advantage.
• If the above is true for most of us, then what we should do is build good habits that run on autopilot and take us to where we want to go. This is the only thing that trumps emotional decision-making in the moment - again this is also proved by behavioural psychologists.
• Do not try to understand humans as logical, clear-thinking human beings. This is the ideal, it is the pinnacle of the complete human being, but I do not think anyone who is fallible is there yet. Those that are, well, I am rarely in contact with, so again the rule holds true.
• If I do not try to understand human beings as logical, clear-thinking types, then I must try to understand them as emotional beings who occasionally can think and make logical decisions. If I try to do that, then I will look and see people differently, approach them differently, and try to understand their needs and wants and motivations before anything else.
• Intuition is important. I cannot count how many times I have ignored my gut feeling and regretted it later. Therefore, for the big decisions of your life, make both your heart happy, and your brain happy.
  
• The ego is an invisible and powerful obstacle to humbling yourself and accepting good advice. We are always good lawyers for ourselves and harsh judges for others. This is because we innately, emotionally, and by default value ourselves as worth more than the people around us. I can see that the instinct for self-preservation may have it's benefits on occasion, but beyond that, there is also a need for us to believe that we have some worth in the story of our own lives. If we believe that we are the central character, and that the other characters are bit-part players or even major players but not the central hero, then we are still always going to have some bias towards ourselves.
• The trick, then, to accepting good advice, and to knowing what good advice is, is to remove yourself (and your ego) from the equation.
• The way that I have found that works is to imagine that a very close (yet generic) friend is going through the exact same problem or dilemma that you are going through. You haven't assigned a name or a face to this "friend" so you don't know his/her nuances of character or emotional feelings. You are not involved directly, so your ego can take a back seat. Furthermore, you genuinely want to help, so you will give the best advice as you see fit, and this is part of the innate goodness that exists in the soul, to want to help others. That this is just a logical exercise with no effort involved makes it easier still.
• These conditions create the best, clearest, most logical advice, and when you then apply that advice to your own situation, you will find yourself making emotional excuses as to why this indeed is very good advice, but you can't apply it to your situation because of Excuse X or Rationalisation Y. The fact remains, however, that you gave the best advice when your ego was not involved. 
• This then ties in with the default ability of humans to make decisions emotionally, and then post-justify them rationally after. And to be fair, I am sure that Reason X has some validity, and Rationalisation Y has very good merit, but, once you know that you are not following the best decision, it is hoped that you will put these aside and actually follow your own advice.

I say that it is hoped, because, as good as I am at giving advice, I still, knowing all the above, struggle to follow it myself, and verge on self-sabotage more often than not. Maybe this year will be the start of a change.

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* The book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely is a very good starting point if you're interested further in irrationality and behavioural economics.

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Wishing my handful of followers a 2016 full of growth to realise the God-given potential you know you innately have. 

My good friend Hasanali (aka Dave, and not the friend I met for 3 hours at the start of this post) has encouraged me to start writing more, so I will try. I'm going to try to post every Sunday, so maybe Mondays will be a good day to visit the blog.