Steps towards a decent man
The first step is to confess that I need to learn. Ignorance will always remain my truest trait. Knowledge and ignorance are relative terms for human being. Only Allah has absolute ‘knowledge’ and He is ignorant of nothing.
I do not know about English, but Arabic has two terms that might seems synonymous, however they are not: “Alem” and “Aaref”. Alem means a knowledgeable. Aref means an informed person who was ignorant on a subject before being informed.
Knowledge is power and light. Ignorance is darkness and weakness.
Life is struggle. At individual level, I am in continuous struggle with my enemies. The deadliest of my enemy is unfortunately an invisible one. He is Satan. Satan knows very well that the best weapon he has against me is the levers of knowledge and ignorance. He would always want me to stay in darkness, feel weak, and hit the wall all the time. I need to combat him by getting sources of light. In the process, I don’t mind falling down and stumbling upon obstacles. After all, failures are steps towards success, only when I am able to take lessons after each failure and do not repeat the cause of first failure in subsequent failures.
If Satan sees me a person passionate about seeking knowledge, he brings in another card of deception: to open me doors of non-beneficial knowledge. He would encourage me to quench my thirst for knowledge and fill my stomach with knowledge that is more harmful than being ignorant.
In Islam, the concept of ‘Tawbah’ or repentance is amazing. It recognizes the weakness of man against Satan and allows learning from mistakes as long as one corrects the course and proceeds towards success. I can make 100 mistakes a day as long as after each mistake I make ‘Tawbah’ sincerely and return back to my journey on the right path.
Let us be the tree whose branches bend but not break. Don’t feel sad from the first mistake and break. Have the resilience to come back and start the journey from where you left. In this regard, the faith is the decree of Allah or ‘Taqdeer’ is very helpful. In the face of hardship, whenever I know that this life is 70 years vs. 70 trillion years (actually it is infinity) then my perspective would change. When I go under the shade of patience and prayer and say “To Allah I belong, and to Him I would return” then a fresh air would blow inside me and I will turn all negatives to positives.
Be humble. Don’t deny mistakes or stay on the defensive side. If it is a mistake, confess and correct course. Satan made the mistake of not listening to Allah when he was asked to prostrate of Adam. He further reinforced his mistake with defensiveness, even worse with arrogance. Adam later also made mistake, but he took the opposite strategy of confession, repentance and change of course. So, let us follow the father and not the enemy.
Value behavior over money, spiritual over material. It is better to win a heart with a smile than win a temporary moment with money. In other words, do not give up your principles cheap for few dollars, or for that matter, thousands of dollars. It is attributed to George Bernard Shaw the following joke:
A man asks a woman if she would be willing to sleep with him if he pays her an exorbitant sum. She replies affirmatively. He then names a paltry amount and asks if she would still be willing to sleep with him for the revised fee. The woman is greatly offended and replies, “What kind of woman do you think I am?”. The man in reply: “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”