Tag: purpose

  • Timely Rambles

    I’m tired of taking photos of places that I visit in the hope of sharing it with others in abstract. It never completes the moment. Worse still, I never feel fulfilled in having shared it, because after the click of the shutter, I’m still standing there alone with the camera.

    Business trips used to have a specific appeal for me in the past. It provided some sort of affirmation about my significance. Someone was willing to pay for my indulgence because they valued what I had to offer. That’s how it felt before. Now it feels like a chore. An obligation that needs to be fulfilled, and despite the apparent prestige of the function I fulfill at times, it doesn’t provide the comfort that I need nor does it fill the void of purpose in my life.

    It scares me when I see young people dedicating their lives to academic and professional pursuits with little or no focus on wholesome endeavours. They’re so excited about carving their niche into a world that will never fully accept them, and will only ever affirm them as long as they have something to contribute. Once they’ve passed their shelf life, they’ll be put out to pasture like everyone else in this consumption-based world, and if they haven’t secured a truly meaningful relationship by that time, it will erase the successes they enjoyed and the true meaning of ‘ephemeral’ will finally be revealed to them.

    Recently I’ve been obsessed with the realisation of how short life is when I reflect on the lives I’ve already lived. The future that awaits seems too short to achieve what I had hoped to achieve in life while the purpose of life is changing hues almost constantly these days. The swaying pendulum is catching up with me, and I sometimes feel as if it will not carry me in its swing but instead it will cut me off at the knees providing final confirmation that time was never on my side to begin with.

    Time sniggers at me. It was never a welcoming friend, but rather a saluting foe. It always pretended to be giving me more all the time, but instead it has been taking away from my treasures. But because it seemed like an inexhaustible supply, I assumed its source was other than my own vault. I was deluded. It was  feeding me from my own resources, and upon each indulgence it was my own store that was being depleted even though I assumed that that was the intended use of this scarce commodity.

    I now think of years as hours, if not minutes. What used to seem like a long 365 days is now simply a changing of the seasons without respite. The ground hogs are laughing while we’re distracting ourselves with our self-importance. Life is slipping away while I look on helplessly.

  • I’m tired. And on days like this, I feel like I’ve lived a life that’s wasted. I feel an emptiness and a void when I see posts of pain and anguish from people I admire or like (for various reasons) and I’m incapable of responding in a way to alleviate their pain, or at least give them a reason to smile.

    I’ve always wanted to be the silver lining for someone, but people usually expect sunshine without any rain. I don’t know anyone that is capable of that. Some may pretend better than others, but we all have our darkness that we’re contending with. Some darker than others. 

    I trust more easily those that expose those struggles of theirs, rather than those that live a life of pretend so that they can maintain a facade of strength and composure. If we lie about our life, how can we be trusted about anything else?

  • Thoughts on Tumblr

    In many cases, but definitely not all, Tumblr gives me a view into what really rests within a person’s heart without distracting me with societal prejudices. I’ve often been pleasantly surprised to read the thoughts and passions expressed by bloggers, forming a mental image of them, and then stumbling across a photo in their archives that reveals how stereotypical my assessment of them really was. Not negatively so. Just a few innocently incorrect assumptions. 

    Some people tend to use their Tumblr blogs to form an alternate reality for themselves, while others use it to expose a side that they’d dare not expose to anyone in real life. Yet others seem to use it to engage in a way that would otherwise not be possible because a lot of what is shared and discussed on Tumblr would probably raise more than just a curious eyebrow in real life. I think I fall largely in this group.

    There is pretty much no one in real life that I can engage with about a lot of what I share on my blog without them thinking me to be strange, superficial, pretentious, or worse. But my true joy in blogging was realised when I finally accepted that seeking affirmation for every post I wrote was not what I wanted from this. That was the most liberating realisation for me because up to that point, I realised that Tumblr was turning me into an attention whore. So more recently, my blog has become a more true reflection of me, rather than what I want others to perceive of me. 

  • In the absence of affirmation or constructive criticism, it’s extremely difficult to maintain my bearings on whether I’m heading in the right direction or not. I’m inclined to believe that despite my best efforts, I simply do not fit in with the Muslim community. This despite the fact that I am a regular musallee and those salaah that I miss in congregation I perform in the privacy of my home. I pay my zakaah, but in private of course. I fast during Ramadaan and occasionally on days recommended by the Sunnah throughout the year, but I don’t advertise it to others when I do. I have tried to obtain my visa for Hajj twice now, but both attempts being unsuccessful because of quota restrictions from the Saudi government. And most importantly, I have no doubt that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammed (SAW) is the last and final prophet and messenger of Allah.

    Yet none of this is sufficient to provide me with any level of peace or fulfillment in my engagements with the broader Muslim community. The lack of conviction to principles, the kowtowing to elitist social circles, the embellishment of kufr to make it acceptable, the condescension and rhetoric from the pulpits, the detachment of the scholars from the communities, the excess in lifestyles, not just materialistically, but also ritualistically, the condoning of suicide bombings and attacks on unarmed women and children, and so much more that just doesn’t seem to fit in with the value system that I see Islam teaching us. 

    We’re living the signs of the hour, yet we’re still looking outwardly to judge others for their contribution to these signs? I need to find the middle path in all this…Ya Allah, please guide me to the path of moderation and sincerity in all this. Please save me from myself, and save me from the allures of social acceptance when that acceptance demands insincerity and hypocrisy. 

  • I always admire those that chose Islam later in life more than those that were born with it, not because I’m ungrateful for the blessing that Allah has bestowed on me by raising me in a Muslim home, but because there’s a wisdom and a value in making a conscious choice that I may never realise.

    To me, being born in a Muslim home was like receiving the gift of Islam. And like most gifts that are treasured, they’re seldom questioned, or appreciated for more than just being gifts. So the inherent value of the gift often escapes most of us. Islam is more a blessing than it is a gift. And blessings, to be appreciated, has to be understood and valued based on the realisation of what life would be like without such a blessing.

    Someone that was previously employed and now has no work to earn a living can relate to this. That job when it was available, no matter how tedious or trying, was a blessing. But the realisation of how much a blessing it was only dawns when it is no longer there.

    I think it’s the same with Islam. When we’ve had it with us all of our lives, it’s easy to take it for granted. And given how insular the Muslim community has become, it’s nearly impossible to witness the gravity of this blessing unless we venture outside our communities and engage with those that are godless. Witness the lack of purpose, the hopelessness, the depression and the destitution of a life without meaning, and then realising the true beauty and blessing of the gift of Islam becomes a tangible reality rather than a just a gift that we received but didn’t earn.

  • Sometimes, like right now, I stare at my Tumblr dashboard and realise that it’s a painful reflection of the emptiness of my life. It’s supposed to be an escape, an outlet, a form of creative expression or mental ejaculation, but instead it only reinforces the very same realisations that I try to ignore. I’m reminded of all the people that tell me that I just don’t get it, I don’t get them, I’m missing the point, or I don’t understand women. But the logic of how much I get it stares blankly at me saying, ‘wtf?’

    Then I look at my post editor telling me that I already asked two questions today so I can only ask another one tomorrow and I wonder if it gives a shit about the fact that most of my questions go unanswered anyway? Now I’m talking to my post editor, which makes me almost as shallow a douche bag as the ones I despise.

    Pathetically unique, or uniquely pathetic? Looking for meaning in the wrong places, or doomed to be insignificant? Fighting my true nature, or simply in denial? What does it matter? Asking these questions doesn’t change what is, it only reaffirms what is not. I should be asleep right now, but I’m averse to getting into bed again. 

    Nothing gives you quite a mind fuck like betrayal…it’s the wine of the heathens! 

  • Living with hope is infinitely better than living with expectation. When I live with expectation, I erroneously convince myself that I’m entitled to so much. When I expect things from people, I assume that I’m significant enough to have such an expectation. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Maybe they just owe me because of what I may have done for them, but then that would taint my original intentions of being selfless. So I can’t maintain such an expectation because it makes me feel insincere. And I despise insincerity. I despise selfishness. I despise people that are oblivious and complacent. They’re oxygen thieves and probably the biggest contributors to that big hole in the sky. Social liabilities.

    Hope, for me, is believing that it can be better…not necessarily that it will get better, but the realisation that it can be better seems to offer some comfort. Some hope. A distant altered reality that’s always within reach but just out of my grasp…but even if just a mirage, it gives me purpose, I think?

  • On Atheism and Theism

    This is a subject that has fascinated me for a long time, and will continue to do so for an even longer time. So when I came across this in a book that I’m reading (which is extremely rare for me, to read a book that is), I just couldn’t help myself but share it because of the eloquence in how it explains my perspective on the subject.

    “…the parable of the feeble-minded person who thinks that the light of the sun is the result of its rising, is like the parable of an ant which as it happened upon the surface of a sheet of paper, was endowed with reason and thereupon watched the movement in the process of writing, only to think that it was the work of the pen, but would not go beyond that to see the fingers, and behind the fingers the hand, and behind the hand the will which moves it, and behind the will a deliberate and an able scribe, and behind all, the Creator of the hand, and the ability, and the will. Most people do not look beyond the nearby and earthly causes and never arrive at the Cause of all causes.” ~ Imam Al-Ghazzali (The Book of Knowledge)

    The reason I’m so positively incensed about this is because recently I’ve been plagued with the arguments of science and religion on so many blogs. And the one thought that always lingers in my mind is that science will always be on the back foot because it is always an observation of what has been. Never will it be able to advise on what is to be, or why, only how. It will always be an observation after the fact, and never before, since it is aimed at establishing the knowledge of how everything relates to everything else.

    Anything before the fact is considered mere theory and therefore subject to change, interpretation or perspective. This does not imply that our ability to predict future events based on established relationships between different events or forces is not part of science. It is, but it is also entirely dependent on what is known, and will therefore always be a work in progress. Weather forecasting is a typical example of this.

    Therefore, in my mind at least, the belief in science as the ultimate pursuit of knowledge to define the purpose of our existence is inherently flawed. But this is just my opinion, and I suspect that I may be blissfully unaware of numerous refutations that have already been compiled in defense of science and atheism, of which I have no knowledge because of my aversion to read lengthy discourses about the philosophies of others.

    Am I naive, or perhaps ignorant? Am I over-simplifying a complex issue? Or does this perspective hold some merit?