Falling

When I moved down to Cambridge in 1995 to work as a software tester for an IT company, I encountered a programmer who said he was quitting IT, heading off to work for the National Trust instead. The new-fangled email system and nascent internet were loading too many pressures on his shoulders and he could not wait to get out, to drive a tractor or something. The world has completely changed since then—in the course of my career I have only known this always-online world—but I can appreciate his sentiments perfectly. I often wish I could just turn off and disconnect. I sometimes think I might survive those old dreams of mine to disappear into the hills to live a subsistence lifestyle.

I mentioned my current feeling about the internet to my colleagues the other day and they all looked at me somewhat stunned. I have just got myself a job as a web application developer. 'Don't you think you might have chosen the wrong career path then?' they asked me. Quite possibly.. I had just told them that I often think about cancelling my broadband internet connection, except that my wife now benefits from it greatly for staying in touch with family and friends overseas. 'Okay, put it another way,' I said, 'I use the internet all the time, and that's the problem.' It wastes my time and worse.

I remember that feeling of relief we had after we disposed of our television six years ago. I can imagine such relief returning for me personally if I unplugged from this giant network. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with television: there is good in it as well as bad. The same is true of the internet. I am not condemning it as the ultimate source of evil. I am just saying I could live better without it, I think.

Today my heart is weighing heavy in my chest and I feel like I am burning up inside, and a memory keeps on recurring in my mind's eye. A few years ago my wife and I holidayed in south Wales. One morning we were driving down hill along a private road. For a split second we freewheeled and I quickly lost control of the car. We hit a sharp rock and ripped one of the front tyres open. I managed to get the car back into gear, slow it down and regain control. But a minute on down the road, just round the bend, came a walker, rambling up the slope. I realised in that instant that I could have killed that man. The past few weeks I have been free wheeling (or free falling) just like that in my life. And now I see that walker, standing in my path. I think this pain in my chest is going to accompany me for a while now. I want to head for the hills and disappear.

Help Yourself

The only good thing about an egotist, say some, is that they don't talk about other people, but this is not entirely true. The devoted egotist will talk about everyone in an effort to blame every ill on someone or something else. The true egotist is an expert in the art of self-pity. They will not necessarily express a high opinion of themselves, but their conduct indicates that self-regard is their dominating underlying characteristic.

Fifteen years ago I had low self-esteem to a horrendous extreme. When I started at college my personal tutor referred me to a mentor who tried her best to lift me out of my negative morass, but there was nothing anybody could do to help me because I was not prepared to help myself. Whenever my mentor suggested a solution to a problem I would dismiss it, for they were not actually obstacles, just excuses. Hearing my lamentations about my solitary existence, my mentor would remind me that I had a bicycle that could carry me far and wide, only for me to respond that I was always getting punctures; I had an answer for everything. My mentor went as far as identifying for me puncture resistant tyres, but she was wasting her time. I was not ready to help myself, preferring to wallow in self-pity, for I found it easier to blame others than to take myself to account.

I was reminded of that period of my life yesterday when I received a phone call from a friend which irritated me immensely. As soon as I had heard what he had to say, I was somehow recalling those tyres of mine and that period in my mid-teens when no solution to a problem would ever satisfy me because I refused to help myself. Thinking back to all those mostly repetitive conversations we had had over at least five years, I was suddenly reminded of a famous Qur’anic verse: "God does not change the condition of a people until..." I think we have reached that stage my mentor once arrived at after working with me for over a year: there is nothing I can do for him except pray. If a person does not want to help him/herself, no external force will have any effect.

A couple of years after I became Muslim a close friend of mine travelled 430 miles north from London to give me advice that I didn't want to hear. Over the preceding months he had witnessed my struggles in my new faith, whether in my emails or telephone calls from Scotland. One afternoon, although he had a phobia for heights, we ascended Myreton Hill rising to 387 metres above sea level in the Ochil Hills of Clackmannanshire and began to discuss what was holding me back. There came his advice for me: God had done his part in guiding me to faith. Now it was my turn to repay Him. It was not advice I wanted to hear, but I have treasured it ever since. I may have wanted sympathy at that moment in time, but what would I gain from that? Sometimes we need to receive uncomfortable advice. Sometimes we need to be pushed out of our comfort zone. Sometimes we need to be told to help ourselves. If you find that something is holding you back, look inward: "Is the obstacle actually me?"

Individual personal accountability is central to our faith. I only started making progress in life when I realised that I had to help myself and thus acted accordingly. There is no aid for one who will not help him/herself, who prefers to wallow in self-pity, blaming others rather than taking him/herself to account. This applies to individuals, communities and nations. If you want to get on in life, help yourself.

NB: This post has been edited.

Lamentations

Although my wife often reminds me that believers do not grieve over the past nor worry for the future, I often find myself lamenting the many mistakes I made over the years of my life and the numerous opportunities that passed me by. Sometimes it looks like it might subsume me as I begin to dwell on those experiences that caused me pain or regret. A decade has passed since I set out as a student in London, but sometimes it feels as if it was just yesterday. Sometimes the wounds still feel raw. Those "poems" that some were so keen that I restore arose from a dark period of my life. It is true that light came after darkness, but trouble still followed me.

This May it will be ten years since I embraced Islam, since I embarked upon this journey, and over three thousand days have passed since then--and eighteen thousand prayers. Yet it still hurts that a person I had immense respect for--whose character had been silent dawah for me--came to view my decision to embrace Islam with suspicion and went on to warn my fellow students not to trust me. It still hurts that my landlord accused me of a serious crime after learning that I had become a Muslim. It still bothers me that my closest friends turned their backs on me.

It is seven years since I left my first job after graduation, but it still irritates me that my managers asked me if I mistreated my wife because they learned that she wears hijab. It still annoys me that my colleague sent me the harrowing surviver's account of an escape from the twin towers of the World Trade Centre shortly before they collapsed--telling me that this would help me understand.

And so I sit here often, lamenting that I did not respond, that I was polite and patient, refraining from asserting myself. I lament that my shyness prevented me from confronting them head on. I regret that things worked out the way they did.

Today, however, I am saying "Alhamdulilah"; today, however, I am grateful. On my return from a meeting this morning I tuned into Vanessa Feltz's phone-in programme on BBC Radio London, which I was able to pick up all the way until I reached the outskirts of Aylesbury, where the signal died. Amongst the topics being discussed was whether listeners would be truthful to their partners concerning the number of "lovers" they had had in the past, prompted by the case of an eighteen year old girl who claimed she had had intimate relations with at least 50 men in two years which came to light in a BBC programme entitled "Sex... With Mum and Dad". As people rang in to talk about their sex lives--or rather their past lives--I started to feel incredibly grateful.

Though things have not always gone as I wanted in life, I have to say, "Alhamdulilah". Alhamdulilah that I was this shy character. Alhamdulilah that I feared my parents. Alhamdulilah that whatever errors I made in my life, they really were of little significance. When I married my wife, she was my first, my only. Alhamdulilah. Over the preceding years many laughed at me, mocked and scoffed, but today I can say "Alhamdulilah" for I saved myself for one person absolutely, and I am not of those people who today lament, "I wish I had saved myself for you." Alhamdulilah.

Looking back, should I really lament the path that led me here? Should I be subsumed in sorrow? I know the answer now. It is as my wife frequently reminds me: believers do not grieve over the past nor worry for the future.

Alhamdulilah.