Finding the balance in our daily struggles

We are living in an age, where challenges and responsibilities of this life are surrounding us from every direction. As rational creatures living on this planet our life should have all the dimensions that are required for our survival, as an example: we have to improve our spiritual life by strengthening our relationship with our creator, we have to achieve our career goals and objectives, we have to keep strengthening our ties of kinship, we have to stay connected with our old friends, we have to try and make new friends and it goes on and on and on…. these and many more responsibilities are waiting for us to be fulfilled. Truly, balancing these affairs is key for our success. However, bringing this balance is not an easy task. In our daily live we can encounter people who seem to have lost this balance. You will find some people who are workaholics who carry the baggage of their workload with themselves everywhere they go. Some are idler who don’t want to do anything at all. Some claim to be devotees of god and don’t want to have anything with worldly affairs. Some call themselves atheists who refuse to accept spirituality as part of their life. All these extremes are due to the fact that we forget to balance our daily affairs. We need to realize that while it is important for us to have a spiritual life we also need to earn a living and feed our family.  In fact in Islam feeding our family and spending quality time with them is also considered an act of worship.  Similarly, while working tirelessly to excel in our professional career we also need to give time to improve our relationship with our fellow human being and the creator of all worlds. 

If we fail to bring this uniformity in our daily affairs then we will either turn in to a religious monk who is always disconnected from the world or a working machine who will have no aim in this world other than satisfying his never ending greed.

Quality versus Quantity

Have you noticed how the standards of our time have changed? We are living in an age where people think more about the quantity than the quality. Unfortunately this applies to every aspect of our lives: In school students are striving to study more and more and memorize more volumes which in reality turns out to be inefficient because if such students consider quality in their studying they might not need to spend the entire day confining themselves in a library or in a study room reading or studying the number of pages which they can easily learn in an hour of quality studying.  In business, people are striving to sell or buy more, in other words they are geared toward the quantity of their transactions which undermine the quality of their product and services and in the long run causes them to loose their customer base and profit margin. In social affairs, we are concerned to make more and more friends forgetting to focus on the quality of our friendship, which in turn, causes us to loose our old friends. This imbalance of quality and quantity have even crept in to our religious believes and our relationship with our creator. If we are doing dhikr (remembrance of our creator) we are busy calculating the numbers of times we remember him forgetting the fact that our creator knows the secrets of hearts and we cant deceive him by these plain numbers, rather he loves our sincerity behind our worshipping. When we are reading our creator’s last testament (The holy Quran) we are more concerned about the number of verses or number of chapters we recite, forgetting the fact that the companions of our beloved prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) and the early generations were directed toward the quality of their recitation and understanding of the Quran, so much so that they would read ten verses and would not move forward unless and until they understood and acted upon the first ten verses that they have started. Many a time we forget the fact that the foundation of our believe and relationship with our creator is based upon our sincerity. Moreover, we are living at time where people are obsessed by the saying that “Majority has the authority” following this illogical statement people in our times are following the masses of people regardless whether they are truthful or not, again this goes against the notion of our believes where our creator mentions in numerous places in his final testament (The holy Quran) that “most of them don’t know” , “most of them don’t realize “ , etc.… the divine verses of our creator supports the minority who is upright over the majority who is corrupt and useless.

To be successful in our affairs we have to work hard to get away from the side effects of consumerism that is trying to push us to focus more on quantity, rather we should direct our energy and effort to achieve quality in all courses of our lives.

Let’s be fair and unbiased...

Today our school participated in one minute silence that was observed across the US to condemn the brutal killing of civilians in Boston that claimed the lives of 3 human beings and injured more than 180. Truly as a human being we need to strictly condemn such acts of terror. However, as rational and sympathetic human beings it is our obligation to express similar condemnation for the killings of innocent human beings in other parts of the world.  We need to realize that acts similar or even worse than Boston bombing  are happening on daily basis in Syria that claim the lives of innocent  civilians including women and children. Similarly, dozens of innocent human beings lose their lives in Afghanistan for no reason; tens and hundreds of Burmese are killed and persecuted on daily basis.  Aren’t they member of the same human society? Don’t they also deserve our sympathy and moral support? Shouldn’t we bring their killers to justice same like what we did to the perpetrators of Boston bombing?  If we all agree that all human beings are equal and all have equal rights to live on this planet , irrespective their race , religion , location , etc.. Then we need to unbiasedly express our saddened feeling for the killing of any human being in all over the world and try to stop them.

Did I finish my exams ?

Yesterday marking 21^st February 2013 was the day that I finished my last exam of my MS degree program in the US. After completing my exam I had mixed feelings, I was happy that I managed to fulfill the requirements of my degree program at the same time I was sad and disappointed that a very good chapter of my life came to its closing. While coming out of examination hall and leaving toward my apartment I took a while to look back at these eighteen months that I spent studying for my graduate degree. During this period I had moments of happiness and moments of sadness, moments of frustration and moments of fulfillment, moments of success and moments of failure, moments of stress and moments of relief, no matter what circumstances I had to face them all alone because I opted for all these challenges and I had to accept them in order to accomplish my career goals, because I knew and I believed that if there is no pain there is no gain. Deep into the past feelings of my academic life all of a sudden the silence of my thoughts and imaginations were broken by my school's clock bell and I realized that the time for mid-day prayer has arrived and I should take a moment to express my gratitude to his almighty for his blessings, no doubt without his mercy I wouldn’t have been able to achieve all what I have achieved so far. While in prostration a sudden feeling and thought came in to my mind that broke my pride and sense of accomplishments. I realized that I have still not finished my exam, oh yes the real exam; hence it is still too early to brag about the achievements and accomplishments. Now you might be wondering which exam am I talking about, well I am talking about the exam of this life, the exam that has a very just examiner who grades everything very precisely that even a small and single act won’t be missed. The exam, the result of which will really change our destiny, the exam the success of which will grant us an immense reward and the failure of which will give us a severe punishment. Yes, this exam continues until the last breath of our life and we need to work hard to succeed in it.  Please don’t take me wrong , I am not underestimating the achievements that we get from our academic and professional examinations , however all the success in these small exams prepare us to act responsibly and be more sincere toward the real and BIG exam.


Written by Tooryalai on Friday night 10:45pm.

Media and its power on masses,

Bismillah ( In the name of Allah ) as I am writing my first blog , I want to start it with the great name of the creator of the heavens and the earth , Allah (SWT).

Have you noticed how some people around us are blind folded by the media ? You might be wondering why this question came in to my mind. Actually sometimes when I hang around with my friends and  we discuss about different socio-economic , religious , and etc.. matters, I notice that their ideas and way of thinking are under the shadow of the media. They think as if whatever media produces to them is 100% authentic and true. Now I don't have any problem with the media , in fact I believe the growth in media has transformed our lives and ways of living. However, it does not mean that whatever media spits out is 100% true and unbiased.

It is weird how people now a days provide an evidence for their argument from abc or bbc or fox news. Despite the fact that these media outlets are doing an excellent job in providing us with real time updates about events from all corners of the world , but at the same time we need to realize that media is not always unbiased , this is because they have to favor the ones who are filling their pockets and covering their expenses. All I want to say is that while listening or reading the media sources , we shouldn't see the characters exactly how the media sees them. Rather our society needs authenticity which can only be acheived if we play our part in verifying the information we receive from the media before passing it over.