Islam- The art of Positive Living

Islam- The art of positive living

I have always found Islam as a way of life that generates immense amount of positivity in one's life. It gives no room or scope for anything negative. When you look at it, Allah demands a lot of things from His slaves. But brooding over anything just isn't one of them. Of course Islam gives room for emotions, in fact Islam recognizes and respects humanly emotions. However, what it does not leave any room for is brooding. Now What is brooding? Brooding is a negative emotion which does not do any good to you in any way whatsoever. It is something that eats up your productivity, your life as a whole, puts you down, freezes you from making yourself useful, and doesn't take you anywhere but downhill. Islam being the "good news" has not only not left any room for this but also opens every possible door for an escape from this. Its just amazing if you think about this, Allah commands you to stay away from sins. He warns you of His strictness in punishment if you disobey Him and encourages you to stay away from them by giving you glad tidings about the rewards. A lot of stress and focus have been given to staying away from sins. Yet, no where in the whole quran or in any hadeeth of the Prophet SAW can you find a command from Allah which goes like "Do not commit any mistakes whatsoever".Instead, you may find verses that tells you that Allah recognizes your weaknesses and understands them. Like for eg: surah nisa Allah says, "...man has been created weak". And in a hadeeth in tirmidhi it is narated that Rasool SAW said "every son of Adam sins, and the best of those who sin, are those who repent". So, as much as Allah hates sins, He does not expect you to brood over EVEN your sins. SubhanAllah! Isn't this enough to understand that islam doesn't have any place for anything thats negative and unbeneficial? Yes, Allah expects us to be embarrassed about our sins, shed tears of sincerity over them. BECAUSE your embarrassment about your sins and your tears would ONLY lead u to something thats beneficial and productive. Namely repentance and getting closer to Him through it. He says in one of the verses in the Quran,"Oh my slaves who have wronged their souls, do not despair of Allah's mercy" He does not expect us to feel doomed or lose our self respect because of our sins, instead all He wants us to do is repent sincerely, resolve to never go back to it and then...get going, kahalas, back to work...

 If this is Islam's perspective on your sins which you are responsible for, then you can only imagine its perspective on other things in life which you have no control over. We human beings are by nature ungrateful beings who are ready to get depressed at the drop of a hat even if our blessings are too many to count. Islam recognizes this very nature of man and you would be amazed to see how it deals with it, how it helps its followers to get over it and move on. 

It struck me so deep a few months back through a couple of small but interesting incidents. When I was looking at myself in the mirror,I noticed a grey hair right where anyone could notice the 1st thing they see me. I was shocked! And felt disgusted. It made me look like an old woman already. Every time I tried to forget about it, another visit to the mirror would naturally remind me of it and I would feel disgusted again. Meanwhile I was radomly browsing the internet and you wont believe it, I came accross a hadith purely accidentally. And the hadith was The Messenger (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said, “Grey hair is the light of a Muslim (on the Day of Resurrection). No Muslim turns grey in Islam but for every grey hair he will  receive one reward and his status will be raised by one degree .” Al-Baihaqee.  Imagine my joy when I saw this!! Forget about feeling disgusted, I started feeling like I just got a rare gift! Just look at how Islam transforms a negative emotion to a highly positive one in a jiffy. SubhanAllah! 

Then just a few days after this, I woke up in the morning with a fever. And I felt really mentally down because I had many plans for the day and I knew now they weren't gonna go as I'd planned. I felt so weak in my body that I had to lie down most of the time, and so the only thing that I could do while on bed was surfing the net for any beneficial videos or articles. So as I was doing so, again, purely accidental, I came across another hadith, Narrated 'Abdullah: I visited the Prophet during his ailments and he was suffering from a high fever. I said, "You have a high fever. Is it because you will have a double reward for it?" He said, "Yes, for no Muslim is afflicted with any harm but that Allah will remove his sins as the leaves of a tree fall down." Allahu akbar! Just look at how amazingly gentle and loving Allah is .... Al-Lateef and Al-Wadood!... Not only that he is kind enough to deem  these small matters to be a blessing for us but He is also kind and gentle to tell us about it. Now why do u think Allah also lets us KNOW about these seemingly small or not so significant things as rewarding? Well, the reason that I can think of is that, we simply do not have time to waste worrying or brooding over such things in life... our time on this earth is our ONLY chance we'll ever get to try and make it to jannah. Every bit of it is precious AND it's running out. So perhaps, He wants to pep us up, help us get over worrying about such trivial things coz there's really no time for all that. Perhaps He's helping us turn even those dull moments into beneficial ones for our aakhira by making it positive... because there's simply no time for negativity and one 1st needs to feel positive to be productive. Time's running out faster than we know it... and who else would know how little time we have better than the One who created both - us and time...