- in the name of Allah -



Among the things which life has slowly taught me over the years, I had a recent first: there was a small predicament, whose solution or possible reaction presented itself with two different scenarios to its conclusion. Ordinarily this should be nothing new, but when I explored each option, I found something I cannot recall discovering: there was a wisdom for both paths, a wisdom valid each in its own right. The first door presented said to accept what had happened (an event of very minor consequence) and simply leave it alone and move on; the gist being perhaps that some things are not 'meant' for one to be had and so should be left alone lest their fruitless pursuit brings one into needless difficulty or even misguidance. The second door said to challenge what had happened, to not simply leave alone the outcome but to give it another effort, with more resilience and patience than I had on the first few tries; the gist of this being that though we know not where the end of our efforts may lie, whether in wandering or finding, we should still pursue them, should challenge the apparent decree of fate and try again to overcome it, expending from ourselves whatever we can, excluding only that which would stray from guidance. 

What a quandary is this? Even for an event so miniscule as what prompted it, I cannot help but draw the parallels with many events prior in my life, mostly being of times which I had let go of things because their memory or the endeavor itself proved too painful to bear. At a glance, one may call this cowardice, and I am not sure I could disprove the notion. Trying to see the truth as much as I can and often as sight allows, I discount no possibilities, especially those concerning what my whole truth may be, both past and present. There was a time I felt that nothing on this Earth, nothing in life could call me to melt from within my iceberg of inertia, but that was not entirely accurate: there was one thing (love) on this plane I might move for, one thing to stir me from my hibernation and give rise to my actualized truth. How much could I give from myself, how much could I sacrifice to pursue this, how could my approach change? Should I resolve to let the tides of fate and circumstance blow and drift where they will, or should I put forth some resistance against these tides, to flow even against the current should it leave me elsewhere stranded? 

My gut, maybe my heart as well, seem to understand that the risk (of divesting from one's self) must be taken, again and again, even if loss carries my only tune to the winds, that efforts must be made, in no matter how small or menial a task, such that maybe the smallest of steps might lead, in some way, to change on the bigger and biggest of steps. There is no denying I may be wrong here, that the choice to leave it be and let it go may be the 'wiser' course of action, but I feel that is something I have done for far too long, leaving things as they are without giving again the challenge, without unearthing my own will that it might find its own way instead of the way of pain or isolation fate seems to offer. Maybe this is how human beings were "meant" to deal with fate? That is, to not simply accept it for it appeared to be but to challenge it, even on the most basic of levels, that we may possibly forge from it something worthwhile, on the rarest of occasions even a thing approaching the miraculous: to shift the sands of time and give lasting shape to our ideals, that even as our bodies will die, perchance we might take these ideals with us to our graves as symbols of our will and effort and stubborn refusal to 'let things be as they are'. It might be in this very notion where we, where I, can find my salvation.