Our hidden power of patience
Rarely do we believe that our emotional stamina gets stronger every season of disappointment and despair.
It is cliché to regurgitate the undeniable fact that our life as Earthers is miserable and hard due to many manmade reasons, which play a major role in catapulting us into the trap of sadness and blackness. Personally, I am, to some extent, against the common piece of advice that encourages us to look at life through a rose-tinted glass and ignore any sign that exposes the level of manmade misery in the world.
Not that I am pessimistic or hopeless, but we have to analyse and scrutinize the underlying causes of our collective human suffering with our two eyes wide open, so that we can deal with them and solve them step by step. But how on Earth can we be ready for the stage of acknowledging the existence of our problems and searching for workable and doable solutions for them if we never cease to complain about everything in our surroundings? Well, we cannot be ready unless we master the art of putting up with things that plague us, instead of ignoring them or overreacting to their provocative gritty details.
But trying to be patient in the face of the vicissitudes of life may not be easy or effortless, for sometimes we emotionally collapse when we are subjected to a heartbreaking event or faint at the prospect of summoning up the power to face up to our problems. We are just too weak to ponder our plan for a prosperous future, let alone to mull the set of facts available over in order to facilitate the process of untangling the well-knit fabric of our afflictions and ordeals.
Hence, it is important that we learn how to be patient and keep levelheaded so as to be able to measure the scale of the problem at hand and therefore orchestrate the right strategies to break it down and address it once and for all. Patience, in my opinion, is one of the most underrated qualities that most people overlook because they prioritize other qualities like authenticity, decisiveness, and assertiveness. Of course, the aforementioned qualities are valuable and indispensable due to their positive impact on many aspects of our lives.
Nevertheless, the importance of patience lies in its powerful ability to pave the way for other good traits to develop. When our minds are preoccupied with negative thoughts and fears resulting from a certain unpleasant event, we cannot think clearly or critically of better ways to bootstrap ourselves out of it. Depression sets in and hopelessness steals over us as a direct result of being stuck in a self-perpetuating circle of self-doubt and self-flagellation, which stealthily grows in our inner world because we think that we are not adequate enough to attend to the challenges that we are confronted with.
Here comes the beauty of patience and its effectiveness when it comes to grounding us and embracing the notion of acceptance_ accept God's decree and your destiny. Some tend to take the edge off what agonizes their lives by implementing the ineffective strategy of neglecting the problem, whereas others prefer to exaggerate the negative effects of their predicament on their lives. In both cases, psychological pain eats away at their inner peace and ability to find an effective solution to their problems.
A nice message to my lovely readers:
Thank you for reading my words. Thank you for supporting me. Initially, I had decided to publish a piece on nostalgia, given how nostalgic I used to be. Then, I told myself that, “ Oh, Marwa, is it logical to talk about nostalgia while your people are being starved to death? Of course no. Then, I tried to edit a piece titled “ On Redefining Victory in Islam”, it was a bit longer. It is 3400 words. I couldn't edit it because I was engulfed by depression. I rushed to my Notion in search of a piece that could bring peace to my trembling heart. I found it. And here it is. I am barely keeping my sanity and holding my composure these days due to the tragedy unfolding in the land of prophets_Palestine. I hope you like the piece. I am praying for my people. Ya Rab don't let them alone!
“And be patient, for indeed, Allah does not allow to be lost the reward of those who do good”. (Surah Hud:115).
With love, Marwa 🌹 ✨