A R C H I V E S
Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Absolute Garbage |
|---|
| theOriginal |
| 10/10/03 at 11:42:49 |
| [slm] I have a tendency to think that my thoughts are unique and highly original, but once I express them -- be them in the form of writing, or in the form of speaking -- I realize suddenly that these are thoughts that everyone is voicing. Some people are more verbose, and some people are more effective, but in the end, the words seem too common to be my own. I resent the fact that I am as typical as human beings can get. But it is truth, and I must accept it. I think the very same thoughts: So, then, has the world gone mad? Ever since people have begun to create more elaborate descriptions of feelings, symptoms, idealogies, institutions, causes and effects, scams, and tragedy, it seems like the essence of those descriptions has been lost. The core of my understanding of human tragedy, for example, has become muddled. The simplistic instinct to eradicate it has effectively been lost. And my pain at the death of another innocent person has been reduced to the feeling of pity for the unfortunate. How unfortunate, to have lost the real pain. How unfortunate, to have forgotten how to cry. Maybe people have become accustomed to the Stalin mentality: one death being a tragedy, a million deaths being a statistic. Maybe it is just me, and it is highly presumptuous to group myself with others. So then, is it really true that everyone talks, and no one listens? It occurred to me yesterday while sitting in someone's house, that every member of their family was waiting to start off where they left off. It is easiest to pick faults in others, but I figure, since I have confirmed that I am not unique in any sense of the word, that I must have these very same faults, too. Do I listen when others speak? Do I pay attention? Do I look at them straight in the eye, and not at the air around me? Do I make uncomfirmed statements without knowing the truth? Do I make others uncomfortable with my self-righteousness? Am I, too, only waiting for my turn to speak? So, then, do I get lost like others in talking about things that I vowed as a teenager never to talk about? What about my actions? Do they reflect who I wanted to be as a child? When I say something to my mother that I shouldn't have said, shouldn't I dig myself a hole, since this event describes fully who I never wanted to be? Maybe when you get older you just realize that rebellion is indeed a phrase. You need not try to be unique, because that can never be accomplished. You must conform to casual speech: "Hi, Howayya? How was your weekend? Isn't the weather terrible? Oh my God, guess what happened to me on the subway?..." And maybe it [i]is[/i] normal to feel like everything exiting your tongue is absolute garbage. Maybe it is normal to feel like you have gone insane. Maybe it is normal to forget who you wanted to turn into. Maybe it's normal to not be me. So then, is someone really to blame? Can we really "live in the present"? What a wonderful phrase. Easy to say to anyone at any time, when they have questions, when they want to understand. "Stop living in the past, it's useless. Don't live in the future, since nothing is guaranteed. The present is now!" Isn't "now" a factor of the past and the future? Don't past tragedies keep you up at night: sweaty palms, trembling hands, moist eyes, pumping heart, and caving stomach? Is it normal? Don't future uncertainties make you want to hide in your closet: clenched fists, shaking knees, racing heart, and tensed limbs? Is [i]that[/i] normal? sigh...I wish I had the capacity to think. |
| Re: Absolute Garbage |
|---|
| lucid9 |
| 10/10/03 at 13:04:05 |
| [slm] Sis: everybody is unique, and everybody's thoughts are unique. and frankly speaking, there is nothing boring about not being unique. unique is not always appreciated or liked or that good a thing. i know for sure that i am unique, but as my recently deleted thread on males with breasts by madina admin hints -- being unique is not always such a good thing. (but it was funny, wasn't it?) what is the point of the past? if we could go back and change it, then the past would be important -- as we could tailor make our future. but life is a series of "random" events strung together as a rosary of triumphs, disasters, and events of utter tedium. we have so little control, what is the point of worrying? today some of us are rich and some poor. some very clever and some very stupid. some very healthy and some very sick. but all of that can change in a heartbeat. for example, one of my very clever friends recently had a brain injury. he now has trouble with his short term memory. also, one of most fit friends recently had deep vein thrombosis and the guy who used to look like Ray Lewis has lost the use of one of his legs. Tommorrow the same might happen to me. A few years ago i was very well off. Now after the tech crash, i am dirt poor Life is so haphazard, a kaleidescope of moments of happiness and misery. All we can do is sit back, relax a bit, and have a laugh. in the end it all ends sooner or later. for in the end there is jannah (not the person). and all we have to worry about is getting there in one piece. and as for the relevence of the events of this life -- the past and present -- there is the following hadith Anas ibn Malik (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said, " Among the inmates of Hell, a person who had led the most luxurious life in this world will be brought up on the Day of Resurrection and dipped in the Fire and will be asked: `O son of Adam! Did you ever experience any comfort? Did you happen to get any luxury?' He will reply: `By Allah, no, my Lord.' And then one of the people of Jannah who had experienced extreme misery in the life of this world will be dipped in Jannah. Then he will be asked: `O son of Adam! Did you ever experience any misery? Did you ever encounter difficulty?' He will say: "By Allah, no my Lord, I neither experienced misery nor passed through hardship." [Muslim; Riyadh Saleheen, #462]. May allah bless you all and grant us all an easy path toward the wondrous of final destinations -- paradise. |
| 10/11/03 at 08:11:58 |
| lucid9 |
| Re: Absolute Garbage |
|---|
| chiq |
| 10/10/03 at 13:55:32 |
| [slm] It seems as though children are born running nowadays. Running the course, and as they run they grow scenting their fragrance in life’s fields. But the world only teaches them words that interpret that fragrance – that fitra – as the egotism of a healthy body, or a witty, gabbing tongue... So they run into adulthood ignorant of the past’s lessons, or the future’s value – all they know is a morale as firm as morality, so they harden into instruments of evil innocence. What of the Flames or Bliss to come? What of the soul? What of standing for the truth at all costs? “I have heard these words somewhere,” they murmur, their lips trembling for a moment, their eyes searching as though haunted by some vague memory that only comes to them in troubled sleep, as though they search for something they have lost. But ‘tis gone soon enough, for society gives these doubts a vague heritage in their minds. Like a spider's silken web, delicate and soon to crumble, truths branch out into ideas as people explain what they never needed to explain just to enjoy the profusion of an intellectual or social-type...and future generations are left with a confusing detritus to wade through. Sometimes they leave jewels; more often they leave bombs. Of course the world's gone mad! The world is prospering (materially, technologically, name everything that [i]ultimately[/i] doesn't matter), which means fools are the majority. As Ali (RA) said, "Were it not for the fools, this world would not have prospered." (from Imam Abdullah ibn Alawi al Haddad's "Knowledge and Wisdom") Individuality? Oh they are individual alright! The same as everyone else, only different, strapping in doubt beneath smooth, polished exteriors of fashionable attire and witty talk. Sometimes they almost hear a meaning in their noise... (sigh :( ) [i] Inna lilaahi wa inna ilayhi raji’oon. [/i] Fear everywhere. Every man knows everything...and is afraid to face stillness, silence, thought...himself. [i] Inna lilaahi wa inna ilayhi raji’oon. [/i] Of course, no one can really go anywhere if they don’t know where they came from. It’s the first thing an orienteer needs to establish if he is to utilise a map and set forth in unfamiliar terrain. [i] We know[/i] where we came from of course, don’t we? [i] Inna lilaahi wa inna ilayhi raji’oon. [/i] From Allah we came, and to Him is the return. Simple. Blindingly obvious. You have the Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet [saw] to follow, become as much like him [saw] as you can and inshallah you’re home and dry. Sort of like becoming as much like such and such a celebrity so that you’re “home and dry” here, right? No. Because the beauty of Islam is in the Prophet’s [saw] words: “All people are equal like the teeth of a comb, except for taqwa, where they differ... “If you ever become the same you will be destroyed.” (I recall these from Imam al Zarnuji’s “Instruction of the Student” – if someone could reference them for me properly I will be much obliged) My dears, have you ever been blessed with a moment in your life where you felt [i]yourself[/i] for once? Something that’s [i] only[/i] you and [i] nobody else[/i]? Like you reached a place of truth deep inside [i] your[/i] heart, and thereby became “at one with” the earth that bore you? If you have, you’ll know it’s too deep for paltry words to explain adequately, but I’m going to try anywayz ;D Long ago, I dreamed of a river and valleys and trees. One morning, a mist covered the beauty I had seen, and even as I was staring at it, it suddenly shifted, swelled and solidified into a grey heron flying out and up, up towards me. Out of from those white obscuring wraiths it came, past the rise on which I stood staring in wonder, up towards the morning sun. A perfect flight from a nothing I knew was there to a future I had to believe in. Such was the state of my heart when I, for a moment at least, acted true. (Note: I’m sure that “vision” is the residue of some poem or tale I read working its way onto the grey horse of my dreams...doesn’t sound like me, but inshallah ‘tis appropriate enough for the occasion :) ) Now think: no two birds have the same flight. And no single bird makes the same flight twice. Yet there may be many times – and therefore many ways – that the bird may “fly true” like that heron, in a pattern and identity all its own. How many times have we heard the analogy of being given a wing for life to free us of the need to crawl? I’ve met veeery few people who understand the truth of small things – that truth being (as one of them put it), not that God is glowing in the dewdrops, but that everything is praising Him, [i] belongs[/i] to Him, and therefore is a means to fulfil our purpose, our destiny. Those people [i] are[/i] unique, for they are able to see not a pretty flower but a full-time worshipper, not a sunset but a reminder that they, too, are ephemeral, not another human being but...a person alone before the Almighty, the Merciful, the Just, who may help them come closer to Him (either by helping or being helped), or not. The wisdom of those people, that ordinary strugglers like ourselves laud so much, was to trust Allah, remembering Him as the past from which they came, and the future to which they will return joyfully, or in disgrace. Depending on how much they remember Him now. My love, JustOne, if “normal” means that it happens to many, then yes, what you have described is certainly normal. Now we need to change that “normality” into fulfillment and success. [quote]May allah bless you all and grant us all an easy path toward the wondrous of final destinations -- paradise. [/quote] Ameen. Wasalaam A rambling kali choti moti Punjaban :-) |
| 10/10/03 at 19:46:15 |
| chiq |
| Re: Absolute Garbage |
|---|
| chiq |
| 10/10/03 at 14:01:39 |
| [slm] I was going to post this journal entry somewhere, at one point in the "I feel guilty" thread...sort of as a don't-feel-down-tooo-long-'cause-it-has-disastrous-consequences sort of theme. If the Mods feel it should go somewhere else then please move it...else consider it a postscript :) And I [i]will[/i] shut up now inshallah ;D Wasalaam ********************** Guilt I am in a long tunnel, open to sleet and an angry black night sky. Weak as a baby, my limbs tremble, my eyes shimmer with tears as I try to move forward. I see people rushing by me every day as brief flickering images, like a faultily projected film. Fear stabs me as I see how assured they all look... I drop my keys somewhere; no, I have lost them. Stress mounts, and I want to give up and sob curled up in a corner. [i]I’ve been bad again, should have been more organized, more sensible, more…[/i] But the tunnel is bending. I brush away my tears angrily – I can’t explain them, I have no reason to cry, and I’m too old to burst into random sobs, [i]especially[/i] when I am painfully aware of the privileged existence I lead... “Such small things!” I scold myself, ashamed. The tunnel is bending. I fail a series of simple assignments, my speech is slurred, I stumble. Tears again, and mortification, and the stabbing pain of youth, inexperience and impotency when I am too old to have accomplished so little. Still the tunnel is bending. Again guilt pushes my hot tears aside as I turn, providing logical solutions to my tiny problems... ...and the tunnel is bending. But wait. I recognize this place; my still-torn heart and all-too-familiar tears tell me I have been here before. I realize I am standing within a godless circle of guilt carved into the barren earth – imprisoned. [i]How do I break out?[/i] |
| 10/10/03 at 14:02:21 |
| chiq |
Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board |