The question was a personal one, but it seemed clear why that question was chosen for me. I was one to get attached.
Ever since I was a child this temperament was clear. While other children in pre school could easily recover once their parents left, I could not. My tears once set into motion did not stop easily. As I grew up, I learned to become attach to everything around me. From the time I was in the first grade, I needed a best friend. As I got older, any fall out with a friend shattered me. People, places, events, photographs, moments, even outcomes became objects of strong attachment.
I was devastated. Once let down I never fully recovered. I could never forget and the break never mended. Like a glass vase that you placed on the edge of a table, once broken, the pieces never quite fit again.
The problem was that I kept putting them on the edge of tables. Through my attachments I was depending on my relationship to fulfill my needs. I allow those relationships to define my happiness or my sadness, my fulfillment or my emptiness, my security and even my self-worth.
One disappointment, one break after another. But the people who broke me were not to blame, any more than gravity can be blamed for breaking the vase. Through my attachments, I was dependent on my relationships to fulfill my needs.
I allowed those relationships to define my happiness or my sadness, my fulfillment or my emptiness, my security, and even my self-worth. And so, like the vase placed where it will inevitably fall, through those dependencies I set myself up for disappointment. I set myself up to be broken. But the people who broke me were not to blame any more than gravity can be blamed for breaking the vase.
The twig was never created to carry us. Our weight was only meant to be carried by God. And God hears and knows all things. There is a crucial lesson in this verse: that there is only one handhold that never breaks.
There is only one place where we can lay our dependencies. There is only one relationship that should define our self-worth and only one source from which to seek our ultimate happiness, fulfillment, and security. That place is God. But this world is all about seeking those things everywhere else. Some of us seek it in our careers, some seek it in wealth, some in status. Some, like me, seek it in our relationships.
She describes moving in and out of relationships, and even traveling the globe in search of this fulfillment. She seeks that fulfillment—unsuccessfully—in her relationships, in meditation, even in food.
So it was no wonder that the little girl in my dream asked me this question. It was a question about loss, about disappointment. It was a question about being let down. A question about seeking something and coming back empty handed. It was about what happens when you try to dig in concrete with your bare hands: not only do you come back with nothing—you break your fingers in the process. And I learned this not by reading it, not by hearing it from a wise sage.
I learned it by trying it again, and again, and again. Ultimately, the question was about the nature of the dunya as a place of fleeting moments and temporary attachments. As a place where people are with you today, and leave or die tomorrow. But this reality hurts our very being because it goes against our nature. We, as humans, are made to seek, love, and strive for what is perfect and what is permanent. We seek this because we were not made for this life.
Our first and true home was Paradise: a land that is both perfect and eternal. So the yearning for that type of life is a part of our being. The problem is that we try to find that here. And so we create ageless creams and cosmetic surgery in a desperate attempt to hold on—in an attempt to mold this world into what it is not, and will never be. It is because the definition of dunya , as something temporary and imperfect, goes against everything we are made to yearn for.
Allah put a yearning in us that can only be fulfilled by what is eternal and perfect. By trying to find fulfillment in what is fleeting, we are running after a hologram…a mirage. We are digging into concrete with our bare hands. Seeking to turn what is by its very nature temporary into something eternal is like trying to extract from fire, water. You just get burned. Only when we stop putting our hopes in dunya , only when we stop trying to make the dunya into what it is not—and was never meant to be jannah —will this life finally stop breaking our hearts.
We must also realize that nothing happens without a purpose. Not even broken hearts. Not even pain. That broken heart and that pain are lessons and signs for us. They are warnings that something is wrong. They are warnings that we need to make a change. Just like the pain of being burned is what warns us to remove our hand from the fire, emotional pain warns us that we need to make an internal change. That we need to detach. Pain is a form of forced detachment.
Like the loved one who hurts you again and again and again, the more dunya hurts us, the more we inevitably detach from it. The more we inevitably stop loving it. And pain is a pointer to our attachments. That which makes us cry, that which causes us most pain is where our false attachments lie. And it is those things which we are attached to as we should only be attached to Allah which become barriers on our path to God. But the pain itself is what makes the false attachment evident.
After years of falling into the same pattern of disappointments and heartbreak, I finally began to realize something profound. I had always thought that love of dunya meant being attached to material things. And I was not attached to material things. I was attached to people. I was attached to moments. I was attached to emotions. So I thought that the love of dunya just did not apply to me.
As soon as I began to have that realization, a veil was lifted from my eyes. I started to see what my problem was. I was expecting this life to be what it is not, and was never meant to be: perfect. And being the idealist that I am, I was struggling with every cell in my body to make it so. It had to be perfect.
And I would not stop until it was. I gave my blood, sweat, and tears to this endeavor: making the dunya into jannah. This meant expecting people around me to be perfect. Expecting my relationships to be perfect. Expecting so much from those around me and from this life. And if there is one recipe for unhappiness it is that: expectations. But herein lay my fatal mistake. My mistake was not in having expectations; as humans, we should never lose hope.
At the end of the day, my hope and expectations were not being placed in God. My hope and expectations were in people, relationships, means. Ultimately, my hope was in this dunya rather than Allah. And so I came to realize a very deep Truth. An ayah began to cross my mind. By thinking that I can have everything here, my hope was not in my meeting with God. My hope was in dunya. But what does it mean to place your hope in dunya? How can this be avoided? Depend on God. Seek the help of people—but realize that it is not the people or even your own self that can save you.
Only Allah can do these things. The people are only tools, a means used by God. But they are not the source of help, aid, or salvation of any kind. Only God is. The people cannot even create the wing of a fly And so, even while you interact with people externally, turn your heart towards God. But how does Prophet Ibrahim as describe his journey to that point?
He studies the moon, the sun and the stars and realizes that they are not perfect. They set. So Prophet Ibrahim as was thereby led to face Allah alone. Like him, we need to put our full hope, trust, and dependency on God.
And God alone. And if we do that, we will learn what it means to finally find peace and stability of heart.
Only then will the roller coaster that once defined our lives finally come to an end. Our first and true home was paradise: a land that is both perfect and eternal. So the yearning for that type of life is a part of our being. The problem is that we try to find that here. And so we create ageless creams and cosmetic surgery in a desperate attempt to hold on—attempt to mold this world into what is not, and will never be.
The Watty Awards. Try Premium. Log in Sign Up. Why do people have to leave each other? People Leave, but do they return?
Part I. People leave, but do they return? Part II. New Reading List. Send to Friend. Story continues below. Promoted stories. You'll also like. Where stories live. Discover now. It was a problem. Because what was happening is that through my attachments, I was dependent on my relationships to fulfill my needs. So I allowed those relationships to define me. They defined my happiness, my sadness, my fulfillment, or my emptiness, they define my security and even sometimes my self worth and so on.
Just like those vases, they that, you know, if you put there, they'll inevitably fall through my dependencies, I was really setting myself up for disappointment. And I set myself up to be broken.
And that's exactly what happened. And that's what I found, it was one disappointment, and one break after another. But here's the key point here. And that is that the people who broke me we're not to blame any more than you can blame gravity. Because the vase broke, right? We can't blame the laws of physics when we hold on to a twig.
And then it snaps because we held onto it to support us, because that twig itself was never created to carry our weight. Our weights can only be carried by Allah subhanaw taala. And we're told in the Quran, Allah subhanaw taala tells us in certain bahara, and this is verse , of tillbaka chapter, which is chapter two, whoever rejects evil and believes in God has held on to the most trust, worthy handhold that never breaks.
And God hears and knows all things. So there's a really crucial lesson in this verse. And that's that there's only one handhold that never breaks, there's only one place. And there's only one relationship that really should define our self worth. And there's only one source where we can really seek our ultimate happiness, fulfillment and security. And that one place is God. But here's the problem. This world is all about seeking these things. Everywhere else, we look everywhere, but in God for these things, we look everywhere.
But God for our happiness, our fulfilment, our security, our self worth. And, you know, some of us will seek it in our careers. Some of us seek it is seek it in wealth, some of us seek it in status.
And some like myself, seek it in our relationships. And, for example, in her book, Eat, Pray, Love. Elizabeth Gilbert, this is you know, bestseller.
She talks about she describes her own quest for this type of this, this happiness. And she describes like moving in and out of relationships, and even traveling the globe in search of this type of fulfillment.
And that's exactly where I spent much of my life trying to seek this inner void. So it was really no wonder that the little girl asked me this question in my dream, because really, the question was a question of loss of disappointment. It was a question about being let down a question about seeking something and coming back empty handed, it was about what happens when you try to dig into concrete with your bare hands. Not only do you come back with nothing, you break your fingers in the process.
And I learned this lesson. I didn't learn this lesson by hearing it in a lecture, I didn't hear this lesson. I didn't learn this lesson by hearing it from a wise person. I learned this lesson by trying. And so that little girl in the dream was essentially my own question, being asked to my own self. Ultimately, the question was really about the nature of this life, as a place of fleeting moments and temporary attachments. But see, the problem is that this reality, it hurts our very being, because it goes against our nature.
The thing is that we as human beings are made to seek and love and strive for what is permanent and what is perfect.
We're made to seek what is eternal. But we seek this, if you think about it, we seek this because we weren't actually made for this life.
If you remember our first and true home was Jen was paradise. And Jenna is a land that is both perfect and eternal. And so this yearning that we have inside of us is a type is something that's very natural. And it's it's you know, this is something that, that that Allah subhanaw taala put in us because really, we were not created for this life we were created for Jenna. But the problem is that we try to find that here. And so what we do is we try to make this dunya into a paradise right?
We try to fulfill that that need that we have inside of us that yearning we have inside for us inside of us for what's perfect and what is forever. And so as a result, we create angels.
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