Metamorphosis

To be living is to be doing. To be doing is to be changing. Are you changing by repetition or evolution?

BismiLlah and Assalamu Alaikum,

Salams And Check-In

Assalamu Alaikum wa rahmatuLlah wa barakatu, How are you doing? It has been three weeks since I wrote and a lot has happened. Seriously, a lot. “And if you should count the favor [i.e., blessings] of Allah, you could not enumerate them. Indeed, mankind is [generally] most unjust and ungrateful” (Surah Ibrahim verse 34, Saheeh International). Where do I begin? Well, saying AlhamduliLlah. That is all one can really say: for the blessings that came our way, the beautiful souls we encountered, the tests that could have been worse, the WhatsApp statuses that brought us joy, the achievers that motivate us - these three people I know, may Allah increase y’all in goodness. Aameen.

Jump Right In

Now, to the talk. Normally, before I speak or write, it is not uncommon for me to make a bullet point to keep me guided. My second English name should be “Tangent”; yeah, I have an English name that’s a comfort to the ear. Anyways, I just did it again. Took a trip to tangent land. But, isn’t that what we all do? Well, I guess “we” here is “Umar Faruq.” In a world of distractions, it would seem like the way to succeed is to be infinitely distracted from our purpose. But, it isn’t. Success comes from certainty. And to be certain is to give up doubt about what we know and ignore what we can't know.

A couple of months ago, I found out about substack and was encouraged by a big sister to write. I know that I love to write. To communicate. To speak. To code. To weave mathematics into poetry. To systemize the way lines of prose fall from the inkpot to the paper. But, my doubts are numerous about writing at all. Would it make sense? Would it be of benefit? ${Let’s renew our intention for reading. Forgot to add that at the beginning} And sometimes, these questions stop one from writing. So, I’d just write and ask the questions when I am done.

Yellow Power Ranger, Mystic Force

Backtrack to Fedacad in 2012, I had my first slam(?) book. I think it might have been called a slum book. Anyways, it was a book where you would ask questions and people would fill it. And, whenever the questions about my future career would pop up, I would delightfully fill in “Yellow Power Ranger, Mystic Force.” In retrospect, it was probably because of two reasons: a) I loved how ordinary people could change form and do so much that they would not be able to do otherwise b) community service was ingrained in my siblings and me at a very young age. Point? I knew my current state would not allow me to do the things that I wanted to do when I grew older and that I needed to morph (what Power Rangers do when they go to wear their clothes off-screen lol) into someone else who could. What I did not know? That I can reinvent myself. Make new choices. 

Source: https://depositphotos.com/portfolio-2071935.html

Butterfly Butterfly, where are you?

When I was younger, and this has not changed, I used to be obsessed with the concept of choice. If asked why I did something, I did not think of justifying my choices in any other way but saying “I wanted to.” I ate because I wanted to. I slept because I wanted to. Of course, desiring something does not make the desired thing correct. But, the thing is that choices are all we really are. We are a bunch of choices in human flesh. Allah chose to create us. Our parents chose to have us. We chose to get out of bed. We chose what we listened to yesterday. We chose what filled our stomachs. We chose what purified or tainted our hearts. In reality, instead of asking people who they are, we should be asking about the choices that they have made. What Allah willed to happen in our lives has happened, but how did we react? What Allah would want to happen in our lives would happen, what choices would we make? What is happening in our lives is a result of Allah's will, so what choices are we currently making?

Today, I saw a quote on Twitter. It reads: “every day, you have two choices; to evolve or to repeat?” To evolve is to change. And change can be achieved through evolution or repetition. Events in our lives do not exactly reoccur in some sense and they do in other ways. If the same thing as before is happening again, it is definitely at a different point in time and might be at a different place. So, repetition causes evolution. What are you repeating? How are you evolving?

A Car Ride to London  

Anyone who knew me before 2019 would for sure note the huge difference in my communication skills and thought patterns. Super economical with words, the easiest way to share my thoughts would be through telepathy - well, those thoughts that were not running on background threads or tabs in my head. Well, 2019 happened and I was a second-year uni student. Succeeding at that stage of my life demanded that I learned to enunciate my words very clearly and present my thoughts in a coherent manner. In a few months, I had to cover up on what I had not been doing all my life. Well, AlhamduliLlah. The quote that comes to mind? Wetin carry you reach airport no go carry you reach London. Cars are for road trips and airplanes are for flights. Are you in the right means of transport? What do you need to do to help you succeed in the next stage of your life? What brought you to this stage might not take you to the next stage. So, it is compulsory for the one who wants to succeed to introspect, rectify, and evolve as needed.

Success demands evolution through making the same or different choices. Sometimes, we find that we have gotten into a routine. We want something different. Life is getting increasingly boring. What to do? At these points in time, it would be critical to note that success does not always come with change. It could be a result of repetition. To persist in what we have been doing that we know would lead to success. Getting the job done does not require changing the job to an easier job. It could necessitate changing perspective on the same job and getting it done more effectively. 

Changing Perspectives

Last three weeks, AlhamduliLlah, I wrote on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). A form of therapy that entails helping the subject to change mindset and behavior when presented with similar circumstances that caused them to act in certain ways in the past. For a Muslim, CBT needs to work within the framework of Islam, so Allah comes first on the list of those we want to make happy. A question I have been thinking of recently goes: “if you have to choose between Islam and your sanity, which would you pick?” If you pick your sanity and you lose Islam, you are likely to be doomed for eternity. On the other hand, picking Islam and losing your sanity entails you not being “Muslim,” for submitting to Allah’s will requires sanity. Well, let’s change perspective on this in a classic Taymiyyan manner (following the way Imam Ibn Taymiyyah rh does things). If choosing to lose Islam is not sane and losing sanity is weird because we need sanity to submit to Allah, then we could conclude that there is no sanity without Islam and there is no Islam without sanity. Well, the answer? Sanity comes with Islam. Islam is the source of sanity.

What did we just do? We changed our perspective from a mutually exclusive lens to a more encompassing one. When things keep on going funny - funny does not have a good meaning in this sentence - and we are fed up, there is something we should be doing that we are not doing. It does not have to be an action. It could be the intention behind the action. We are “why we do things” and not “the things that we do.” Actions do not define us as much as our choices that lead to those actions do. So, as you literally make yourself, what choices would you make? What are you optimizing for in those choices? What choices are the good choices?

Dynamic Programming

One of the reasons that I love programming is that one can learn very serious life lessons from solving problems computationally. Yes, the world is mathematical, but we might not have access to the function or the input variables. All we have is the ability to choose. Anyways, back to our programming chain of thought. 

Dynamic Programming (DP) is an algorithm design technique that helps programmers to pick the best solution to problems by not solving the same problem more than once. Its hallmark is the fact that there are recurring subproblems that overlap. Human life is very similar. The problems that we face are not new. They have existed in other times, places, and with different people. So, it would be wise for us to learn from those situations. Islam provides solutions to all our problems and what we really have to do is apply the solution instead of trying to reinvent the wheel or change the deen. 

The End?

I pray this newsletter makes sense. It is just thoughts all over the place. In shaa Allah, I would write a more coherent newsletter on decision making and succeeding through changing perspectives. May Allah accept this from me and make it easy to write the next one sooner than later. Aameen. This newsletter was not planned, so I do not know how to end it exactly. Please make dua that Allah forgives you and me. Whatever I have said that is correct is from Allah and His Messenger, and Allah and His Messenger are free from my mistakes. Also, I want to request that you make Dua for my brother in Islam, Dyar (pronounced Dee-yar) Ahmad, and his family. Please say “may Allah grant Dyar and his family the best of this world and the next, Aameen.” Thank you very much for saying that. 

“As we have learned something new, we should try to see that this knowledge sparks transformation and action. My Amma does not relent as she reiterates this! May Allah grant us beneficial knowledge and accepted deeds. Aameen. Sharing beneficial knowledge is one of the greatest ways to earn rewards while we are alive and after we have passed, so let us make the right intentions and share the lessons we learned with those around us. May Allah help us to rectify our intentions and accept from us. Aameen.”

Wassalamu Alaikum wa rahmatuLlah wa barakatu.

-- Abu Fadlah, November 14th, 2021