Monday, August 22, 2011

Gratitude / Twenty Second Juz

As salaam alaikum,

Does ginger make one sleepy? I thought it was supposed to give on energy, but here I am falling asleep on myself...

"[It is] they who [truly] follow God's revelation, and are constant in prayer, and spend on others, secretly and openly, out of what We provide for them as sustenance--it is they who may look forward to a bargain that can never fail, since He will grant them with their just rewards, and give them yet more out of His bounty for, verily, He is much-forgiving, ever-responsive to gratitude." (35:29-30)

I liked this concept of gratitude that I've been reading throughout the Qur'an, a concept that I will use to reshape my life and the way that I look at things.

As a teenager, I suffered from depression. I was depressed because I saw myself as victim of some cosmic injustice. My unhappiness and seeming inability to get a prayer answered were in fact signs that I was one whose heart God had sealed. I was born destined for hell and there was in fact nothing I could do about it. Not sure why I believed that, but thus is the teenage brain and the effects of having a slowly developing frontal lobe...

However, these days, I look at my "depression" as ingratitude. Some would say it was a disease, and then a Muslim would say, yes, a disease of the heart. I would argue in my specific case that I could trace my feelings to specific events or facts in my life. I didn't realize all that I had...

...and we're smart enough people, especially us who are supposed to be believers, that we should able to try to approximate the blessings that God has bestowed upon us. I should have been even happier as a teenager than I am now, but alas...

I was not a victim as one who was depressed. I was like an unbeliever, ungrateful for all that God had given me in this life. By not realizing how much I had, I prayed less and I gave less, because I thought I had less to be thankful for and less to give. Ingratitude gets you at all levels. Allowing myself to wallow in sadness when something doesn't go my way is showing ingratitude to my sustainer, who has given me everything else...

So I will try to be more grateful. And in that way, everything else will fall into place, and I'll be where I need to be...

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