Musings of a Servant of Allah
Verily in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest. (13:28)Archive for August, 2007
An ode to patients
Ordinarily, my path would never cross with the men and women whom I’ve had the privilege of speaking to, up on the hospital wards. Each of us live such different lives: diverse cultural backgrounds, faiths, socioeconomic class….and even if we did meet, it would be on a neutral grounds. Teacher/student. Neighbours. Colleagues.
Yet death, sickness and grief unite us. And the rawness of human vulnerability confronts me, each time, with every single patient I’ve met.
These patients have taught me the importance of strength in the face of adversity. Their ability to laugh amidst a sea of incredible pain. The love and concern of their family.
Mr X up on bed 25 in Ward C isn’t just a disease. He’s a human being. A person, like you and I, with hopes, fears and dreams for the future. Who has children, a wife, and parents who frustrate yet delight him, in turn. Just like you and I. A man who has experienced the richness and fullness of life, before being suddenly being struck down. Here, in hospital, he is stripped bare of his credentials, and often, his very dignity.
And when I sit there, with him, and routinely ask him the questions which I’ve been taught: history of his presenting illness, past medical history, social history, family history…..I see him at his most vulnerable.
He’s scheduled for surgery, and the surgeons are hoping to remove the cancer in his rectum, but every operation carries its risks. I ask him if he had ever consulted his GP about the blood in his stool….he slowly shakes his head, looks away, and says, softly, “I guess I should have.”
While I sit there with my pen and notepad, asking him these questions, I glean a snapshot of his life – yet how can I fathom how he truly feels? Words can only convey so much. Words are sterile and safe. Words describe the symptoms, signs and disease processes, but words can never encapsulate the terror, fear, shock and grief he may be feeling. I can describe to you, in wonderous detail, the colour, consistency, and odour of his faeces, yet I am not trained for anything beyond that. His agony is his own. I grieve over that distance.
He looks tired. I stop, thank him for his time, and leave the ward, wondering if he’ll manage to return to his family. For all I know, that could be the one of the final medical histories he is able to give.
Being in medical school has placed me at the interface between life and death.
Humanity at its most vulnerable.
Thoughts
You only get one shot at this life.
Just like salaat is a bridge from the finite to the Infinite…..our good acts are ways to reach Allah, insha’Allah.
Purify your intentions (i.e. do x y z for Allah’s sake alone) and write up a check-list for your Hereafter. So many of us have to-do lists for the dunya, when this world is temporary. Let’s change our focus and look ahead, to the real primary reality of the Afterlife.
Sample list of things to do:
- pray on time
- read Quran every day
- fast 3 days every month
- sponsor an orphan
- go to umrah
- go to Hajj
- be kinder to humanity in general!
- get rid of one blameworthy trait, replace it with a praiseworthy one
Sometimes we may think..oh *groan* lofty ideals, I’ll never be able to reach that on my own….well, that’s precisely the point. We can’t do this alone. This is why we look at our own human frailties, and glorify the Perfection of Allah. Ask Him for help, ask Him for strength, ask Him for constancy in your acts of good. There’s a point to doing these things – to reach the Divine, inshaAllah.
A scholar said: …”…the words ‘amal soleh’ have been translated into ‘good deeds’, when they really should be translated into ‘restorative deeds’.”
Think about it. We don’t know which one of our acts of worship are accepted by Allah. We won’t know until the Day of Judgement – and by that stage, it’s too late.
So, diversify! Branch out and do acts of worship which you’ve been putting off. Gaining Allah’s pleasure is the only thing really worth living for. Everything else is temporary.
And their Lord has accepted of them, and answered them: “Never will I suffer to be lost the work of any of you, be he male or female: You are members, one of another: Those who have left their homes, or been driven out therefrom, or suffered harm in My Cause, or fought or been slain, verily, I will blot out from them their iniquities, and admit them into Gardens with rivers flowing beneath, a reward from the presence of God, and from His presence is the best of rewards.” (Surah Al Imran 3:195)
The fallibility of being human
The fallibility of being human.
That’s all that needs to be said, but as usual, I feel compelled to explore the issue.
All it takes is a infarct in the right artery, and we’re toast, yet we all walk around like we own the place. Hilarious, ridiculous, and humbling, all at once.
Think about it. A knowledgeable man once said, “We live, so to speak, continually on the brink of annihilation, and yet are enabled to carry on our complex existences in comparative immunity.” We all wake up, albeit blearily, and mentally run-off an entire list of to-do’s for the day. To-do’s that inevitably flow on to tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. Our continued existence seems assured – whether or not we’ll live long enough to complete x y z is never at the forefront of our minds. It’s only whether or not we’ll manage to accomplish those tasks – this consumes our fleeting existence. All it takes is a misstep, misjudgement, or somebody else’s misdemeanor, and we could be wheeled into the Emergency Ward of the nearest hospital. On a more macro level, imagine the havoc should a meteor strike! Or what would happen when plant Earth is inevitably sucked dry of her resources at the rate we’re going.
As far as people are concerned…the make-up, the hair straightening/curling/rebonding…who are we trying to kid? Ourselves? What are we trying to hide? The innate humanness that we can’t run away from? At the end of the day, no matter how glamorous you look, you have to go to the toilet at least twice a day to urinate, and to defecate. How sanitized…the
words we use to convey the icky reality of being finite. Of being human. Of having a body that is aging, as we speak. Every breath that we take signals a moment that will never return. We’re all on countdown.
Don’t even get me started on the superficiality of human relations. The endless ego games. The constant one-upping. The implicit
I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine. The hanging out with the ‘it’ crowd. The subtle (or not so subtle) put-downs when one is not part of the air-brushed ‘elite’.
It never ends, til we end.
What does a soulless society have to offer the soul? Absolutely nothing. Left, right and center, we’re bombarded by message of buy buy buy, try try try, and never of we’ll all die die die – anyone who reeks of our inescapable mortality is shipped off to a nursing home, hidden away behind curtains. Living next to graveyards makes real estate prices drop. Nobody likes to be reminded that one day, that’ll be you. We deal with death so poorly, it’s a relief the dead can’t speak.
The mass media has become the most powerful weapon of mass distraction. Forget David Copperfield, the illusion is right here, before us. Turn on the idiot box, and buy into the 21st century’s biggest myth – that consumerism will make you happy. House isn’t big enough? Get another one. Car isn’t fast enough? Get another one. Wife isn’t pretty enough? Get another one. Husband
isn’t rich enough? Get another one.
There has to be more than this. This finite world. This temporary existence where too many people are wronged. We were all dealt different cards, and our lives unfold accordingly as a result of our choices, stemming from the circumstances we find ourselves in.
Spare me the small talk. Especially when it comes to relationships. Once, I would be the sad little girl who would pine endlessly when someone I knew got engaged/married. Now, I thank God for my freedom, and for the safety and comfort of my family. For the starry-eyed girls who are engaged, I wish them the best, and hope that they have enough patience to tide them over the
inevitable hardships. Two egos under one roof? How it ever works is beyond me. I pity the girl whose sole purpose in life is to find a man and have children. It’s a noble goal, but bump into the wrong man when you’re not strong enough to say no, and you’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of slavery in every sense of the word. Body, mind and soul. The children you bring into the world grow up witnessing the agony of two people who should never have married. People let you down. God, by virtue of His Perfection, will never let you down. His is the handhold that will never break.
For the girls who mould their self-worth according to the current guy they’re with….I offer them my deepest condolences. Honey, men come and go, but you stay. There’s no running away from you. Wherever you run to, you follow. Be used and abused, that’s your decision, but know that there is a better path. A harder one, only because it’s one you’re not familiar with.The path of self-hate, worthlessness and temporary gratification may be well-trodden, but it’s still bad for you. Find it in yourself to aspire for
higher things. You don’t need a man to sweep you off your feet. Pick the wrong one, and after the whirlwind courtship, be prepared for him to pulverize you into bloody pieces, all over the kitchen floor. Stand on your own two feet, meet the world on your own terms. You’re strong enough. You just don’t know it yet. Choose the shorter path to God.
The quintessential problem of the empath – not having clear enough boundaries. Last year was rocky. Plagued by my own paralyzing self-doubt, I lost myself, and moulded myself around all the wrong people. What others thought of me dictated what I thought of myself. I could not be alone, because being alone involved confronting the one thing I feared the most – my own self, and the consequences of my actions on my voiceless soul.
The opinions of others used to bother me, but not anymore. Liberating is the most appropriate word.
Cynical? Perhaps. Grounded? More so. Wiser? Definitely.
On a more positive note, through the generosity of God, the world is my oyster. I take this moment into my own hands, and mould it into the next building block of a promising future. I look forward to gaining my financial independence, to dreaming big about places to go and scholars to meet. I have no time for silly girls who pine for their Prince Charming. There is no Prince Charming. There is only Life, and we seize it by the day, roll with the punches, and do the best with what we have. Good moments spent productively unfold into good days, weeks, months, years…and I want to look back to a lifetime spent in wholesome, good, and spiritual pursuits. Mistakes are the best lessons, and part of the ebb and flow of the river of life.
One day, this stream of mine will come to an end, and I hope that the lives I have touched have sparked off their own sparkling tributaries. To those who have touched mine: I seek forgiveness from you in case I have wronged you, wish you the best in this life and the next, and hope to meet you in the presence of the Divine, where humanity will finally live in unending
bliss.
