utopia of thoughts

“You have dug your soul out of the dark, you have fought to be here; do not go back to what buried you.”

“At the beginning of the storm, you lose yourself, and in the middle of the storm, you find yourself. Chaos is your genius.”

“I crave space. It charges my batteries. It helps me breathe. Being around people can be so exhausting, because most of them love to take and barely know how to give. Except for a rare few.”

Life of Crocodile

Y'all, it gets better. She found out.

It’s human to love. And it’s human to want the gifts we love. But our problem begins when we put the gift in our heart, and God in our hand. Ironically, we believe that we can live without God—but if we were to lose a gift, we crumble and can’t go on. As a result, we can easily put God aside, but our heart cannot live without the gift. In fact, we can even put God aside for the sake of the gift. So it becomes easy for us to delay or miss a prayer, but just don’t deprive me of my work meeting, my movie, my outing, my shopping, my class, my party, or my basketball game. It’s easy to take interest bearing loans or sell alcohol, just don’t deprive me of my profit margin and prestigious career. Just don’t deprive me of my brand new car, and over-the-top home. It’s easy to have a haram relationship or date, but just don’t deprive me of the one I ‘love’. It’s easy to take off, or not wear hijab—just don’t deprive me of my beauty, my looks, my marriage proposals, or my image in front of people. It’s easy to put aside the modesty that God says is beautiful, but don’t deprive me of my skinny jeans—because society told me that’s beauty. This happens because the gift is in our heart, while Allah is in our hand. And what is in the hand can be put aside easily. What is in the heart, we cannot live without—and would sacrifice anything to have. But sooner or later we need to ask ourselves what it is that we really worship: The gift or the Giver? The beauty or the Source and Definition of Beauty? The provision or the Provider? The Creation or the Creator?

‘People aren’t souvenirs,’ I keep reminding myself. You cannot store them endlessly and expect them to stay the same when you finally revisit them. They will change, as will you. You will look back on a memory with a different pair of eyes as the years add age to those recollections. You will see the past differently, you will see you differently, and you will finally understand that the moment is to be cherished when it is still alive and in front of you.