بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

At the beginning, this wasn't even on my radar. Before this year, I'd never thought deeply on Hajj, never considered it more than a distant afterthought of something to do far later in life. It wasn't a personal goal or wish of mine, "just" a worship I accepted as part of my deen.

With this as the backdrop, enter 2018. My two best friends invite me to go with them on their own Hajj, and there was no reason for me to say no. I had the time and resources, and amazingly, I could not have asked for better companions to be going with alhamdulillah.

At this point, one has to understand a few major things to grasp how Hajj relates to me and how I relate to Hajj: it was never a goal of mine, it is not my own accomplishment, there is absolutely no credit that I can claim as my own from it. The entire experience, from its inception to conclusion, was arranged entirely 100% by Allah. He put the circumstances in place, aspects I did not see to myself, He gave me the ability to accept the offer, He provided me the financial and logistical means to make it completely feasible without my own intending to do so at the start of it. He wanted me to go there, and thus I went as He willed, and I have to say that it makes me ecstatic beyond measure to be in such a position as to be part of His qadr for such obedience and acceptance. Which slave would not love to be one that His Creator chooses for him such a road, facilitates all of it, and then permits him to take from it good and continue in gratitude despite its difficulty? There will never be enough for me to repay Him with, because it seems to me that blessings from Him simply continue to increase at a pace which I cannot measure and only have the remotest peripheral grasp of. It's like watching a constellation being created, from the birth of its first star to the formation of its planets from gaseous clouds, but at the distance of so many millions of light-years away that the observer (me) can only get a very rough sense of the awe involved in what's happening before his eyes. Perhaps iA I can find always telescopes in life to see into His infinite mercy and gifts, that I may always be an awestruck 'abd.

In short, Hajj is simply a gift my Rabb allowed me to undertake. It was a challenge without which there is much I could not have appreciated, a way of refining my submission to Him in ways that can never be described by words or understood by people, especially myself. While still there are things to add of my experience, for the opening, it suffices to say that I would change nothing and I hope He permits me to be a grateful and hopeful slave of His always, ameen.