English Column: Do I need a PhD to have a heart?

“Koreans . . . when we are busy admiring their cute dramas”

 

There are times in life when you start to wonder if this life you are living in, is just a routine you adhere to. Prescribed for you, depending on the choices you make earlier, are sets upon sets of instructions that you follow, making sure they start… and finish… as they always do the day before.

There are times that it struck to you that life is never random.  At least, being human, the minimum routine that you stick to is biological. The need to breathe, load some energy (and burn it), detoxify and rest are the most basic ones.

For you the same applies to the job you are doing, or the studies you are taking. The issue remains whether you are indulged in it or not. The uniform you wear dictates where your thoughts, sweat and blood will go for.

Some people lost their passion of living, echoing that it’s merely a routine before they die. Everything seems, looks and sounds the same. Even worse, everything feels the same.

The job that you used to love, the one that you dreamt all your life doing, felt mechanical. The joy felt no longer there. The excitement felt like despair. The hobby that you used to indulge in, felt special no more. Whatever news that come to you became just another life drama, “Oh, people do this, people get that”. You become robots of programmed chores or even worse, zombies with no feelings.

A friend of mine told me that once you began to have these feelings, then it’s the time for you to have a spouse..a life partner. Well I’m not sure myself whether he was literally joking, but I’m pretty confident that he talked about ‘the other missing half’ or something.

His thought actually made me thinking. Coz what came to my mind was totally different. I thought about  a dying heart. Not at all of a husband or wife. OK, I’m not romantic, I know.

I instantly thought of this verse from the Holy Quran,

“and surely, we have created many of the jinns and mankind for Hell. they have hearts wherewith they understand not, they have eyes wherewith they see not, and they have ears wherewith they hear not (the truth). they are like cattle, Nay even more astray; those! they are the heedless ones”

(Al-A’raf : 179)

I began to fear if I myself am losing my heart and my senses. I began to worry if I had become too simple-minded to think that everything that happened..are just meant to happen, and that there’s nothing for or from me in it. I began to think if what I see and hear from my surroundings affect me in any way.

I began to tremble if my heart has lost its touch with its Creator. What’s the use of having one if it doesn’t work as it should?

Perhaps this is what is described Sir Ken Robinson, that our education today is increasingly focused on the waist up, stops at the head and gives weight on one side.

And the heart gets lost in space.

Say, I became a heartless human being who feels nothing when I missed my Fajr prayer. I felt the solah is a mechanical routine with no attachment of the heart, so missing one is also mechanical. Do I get a life partner to solve this problem?

Say, I saw an obvious sin happening in front of me and I did nothing, or felt nothing in my heart. “That’s normal…so that you know that the shaytaan is working”, I said to my kids.

Say, I read about the violence and killings on my Muslim brothers in Gaza, or Syria and Myanmar and choose to close one eye. “Kids, don’t look at it. I don’t want you to get nightmares at night. Besides, people die and babies get born every day.”

Say, I heard that the money I spend goes to the regime who murdered thousands of innocent lives, many of them children and babies. A burger for me, a rocket to blow them.  I tell myself reassuringly, that I’m just one man. Come on, what harm can it do?

Say, people tell me that not buying from so and so companies can avoid me from helping a ruthless regime. That I can change to alternative products, one that my own people produce. “Now, now, don’t be silly. Think of the people who will lose jobs if you stop their business from running. Use your head, bro. Besides, tell me where can I get burgers as good as this..huh?huh?”

Na’uzubillah min zaalik.

I remembered reading a quote from Ibnu Qayyim al Jauziyyah,

 “There are three reasons for a person to commit sins and disobedience from God – arrogance, ignorance and sheer heedlessness”

I pray to Allah that arrogance should never possess me, that He will protect me from choosing to be blinded and deafened from the obvious truth and crystal clear signs elevated upon me. I pray to Allah that I shall never be fooled by and for something that I don’t know, and that I bid whatever I have for the sake of knowing Him and be acknowledged of His creed. I pray and I pray that I shall always take heed of the littlest warnings and reminders He laid upon me, be it obvious or for me to dig deeply.

I pray for Palestine and my oppressed brothers everywhere. I pray that I can see them, hear them, and feel them.

I speak, write and act for them for I know that I am capable of doing it.

I put aside my savings for them for I know that I have more than enough to keep on breathing.

So that one day they will not claim me for being no better than zombies…or cattle.

 

 

Brothers, let’s show that we still have a heart. It doesn’t need a PhD to know this. Channel your donations to :

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