11.11.2017

- in the name of Allah -


In describing myself to another as regards to life, a very fitting metaphor came recently to mind.

Life, the perspectives it tries to engender in people, the attitudes it wants to elicit from people, how entrapped it makes one's vision, all of these things to me make it seem like a bubble. I find myself outside of this bubble, like floating in space around a planet, while people in general are inside this bubble, on the planet's surface. 

When I try to describe what I see or feel from that vantage point, I often find little agreement or understanding or resonance. It is a point of view that confuses more often than clarifies. Ironically though, it occurs to me that death would be like when the bubble is popped, and so the veil from life itself suddenly shatters and the reality of things I'd seen comes to pass for others.

What perspectives does life try to engender in people, what attitudes, how does it entrap? To describe it as an illusion would do a disservice to the strength of its lure. Life as it appears, wants people to engage in it, then wants people to become consumed in it, and ultimately be drawn into only its own concern. It is as some wise person has said, the mirage of water in a desert, or like death in the visage of a woman chased unwittingly by men until she strikes, leading them to dust and ruin. 

Interestingly, this point of view I learned not from a book, nor taught by a teacher, nor picked up anywhere along the way. It is simply a perspective from within me, from my earliest days of recollection. It does more than strike a chord with my fitrah, it is part of it. Part of my dislike of social convention is rooted somewhere along this same axis, that of permanent reluctance to mesh into a bubble that I wish not to belong in. Ironic, the bubbles of sociality should overlap to me with those of life itself.

Where ends the aim for such a bubble-less one? It's why I pursue Firdaus. In seeking a place of belonging, I find nothing better than the pinnacle of peaks, though its caveat is daunting to say the least: the knowledge that I will never be worthy of its entrance myself, that elevation to its selection is based on the hisaab of Allah Who will sort and judge me with knowledge and comprehension that is impossible for me to grasp. Knowing my weaknesses, my failings, my inability to hold 'perfection' in my self from an 'abd's point of view, there is no guarantee that I will find my chosen destination. 

It isn't about guarantees, however. Submission doesn't work based on that. A slave, once accepting of his own servitude, has no more to do with the matter once he has submitted. Even if that submission is imperfect, as it's bound to be, even if his knowledge and grasp are limited, inevitably so, the overall tasleem remains intact so long as his Rabb allows it to be so. Such is the other unknowable caveat: pursuing the will of Allah, even though its scope will not always be apparent, and even though human weakness prevents perfection in obedience. Alhamdulillah though, we were not created as machines but as beings with free will to enable seeking of His forgiveness, such that though falls may happen, in general the state of repentance is a continual one that aims to overshadow one's failings. 

If one was inside the bubble, and sought to get free of it, then what would be the recourse? I would say simply the constant internal reminder that all material and physical things must fade to dust, would suffice. Not only will every human face death, but our physical legacies of buildings and societies and constructs, those will turn to dust too. This life was made to end, in its DNA is a reminder of its fragility and temporal nature, not so that we seek to be submerged by it in its short years we have, but rather so we look up from the soapy scum, and see that there is something after it, something outside of it, something beyond that must be sought, if for no other reason than what comes after is for ever.


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