A Journey Of The Heart

I now look forward to writing every weekend which has not been the case in the past. Following every post, I start thinking about what I want to share with you the coming Saturday. It’s usually something that’s been on my mind or I’ve been working through. This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with faith but there was a slight resistance, so I was thinking about a backup topic to write about. Then yesterday, I realized it will be the first day of March, Ramadan and a Saturday when I sit down to write. And while I’m not a big believer in “signs”, I am a big fan of synchrony. I’m also trying something different, allowing the Universe and my heart to guide the way forward. So today, I want to talk to you about faith, religion and God. Specifically, my journey through the years.

For context, I was raised in a religious and conservative Muslim family. There was an acceptance of modernity in our household, but the inner shell was rooted in faith and culture. Naturally, I inherited the monotheistic framework of beliefs, values and perspectives of my parents’. For the first sixteen years of my life, I did not question this framework and centered my young life around it. Of course, I was still a kid and got into plenty of trouble but most of the trouble was, how do I say this, kosher? And yes, there is non-kosher trouble, just in case you were wondering. Attending daily prayers regularly at the Masjid along with Friday prayers, learning and studying the Quran, attending lectures and gatherings focused on deepening the faith and then being a part of a youth organization that would arrange various types of events for Muslim teens.

The point being is that I was deeply religious and proud of it. Then my folks split up, the rug had been pulled from underneath me and with it my sixteen-year-old self’s entire understanding of himself and his place in the world came crashing down. To make matters worse, all the adults told the children to trust in God and things would get better. At the time, I was just furious with how events were unfolding, and I didn’t believe them one bit. Instead, it raised two questions in my mind, and I’ll share them with you. First, “If the two people that are supposed to love you unconditionally in this life chose themselves over their children, then who will ever choose us?”. And second, “Would a God that loved us put us through so much agonizing emotional pain?”. Now whether it was fair that this was my view is another matter, but these were some crazy intense emotions for some young pups to process. Granted, your teenage mind blows most things out of proportion but the abandonment we felt was overwhelming to say the least. My siblings and I dealt with it in our own ways but looking back, for me, the divorce and the extended emotional chaos that ensued after was the inflection point towards my rebellion against the religion and faith I inherited.

There you are; with no trust in yourself, no trust in your family and no trust in your God. Doesn’t it seem like a dark place to be for someone so young? The silver lining through this all were my friends; I will never stop speaking about how important they are to me. I trust they know how highly I regard them for being who they are, then and now. With them, I found camaraderie, love and belonging but spirituality, faith and religion fell by the wayside. So, my young heart focused on what felt good because how dare I be ungrateful for what I do have? Otherwise, I feared that I would lose it. As time passed, I befriended anyone remotely like-minded and some who weren’t at all. I didn’t care though. I remember enjoying getting to know people and being amongst people. That’s what college is for, right? Experimenting? In other words, not a lot of time to be alone or to assess what I believed about my experience of this world. Now even though I said I rebelled earlier; I don’t think it was intentional on my part. The older me wouldn’t blame my younger self for chasing what felt good when I was so inexperienced. Regret is pointless, don’t you think? Plus, I found some beautiful people and made some phenomenal memories along the way.

Life gets in the way, they say (For the life of me, still can’t figure out who “they” are). Graduating, moving back Stateside, grabbing my first real job and making a living all takes a considerable amount of energy and focus, you know? Who has time for God when it’s happening? Plus, I was working hard, and I was making things happen for myself in life. It was all me, responsible for the good and bad. Radical responsibility and all that good stuff. Is there a theme that’s emerging? It was my long-time obsession with doing everything I can to achieve certainty about the next step or stage in life. “If I can control this, I will be certain” is what I would think to myself. Focused on building a life, whether it was my career or marriage, I needed certainty which led to a need for control. Not in an overtly manipulative manner but it led to a lot of self-sabotaging behaviors due to my propensity to take too much on, stress out then spiral. I probably had more cortisol in my system than blood. When that’s your modus operandi then why does one need blind faith or a belief in the unknown?

How do I achieve certainty? Well, the most logical solution is to experiment. Wait, am I becoming a scientist? Well, the scientific method uses trial and error to observe and conclude on a hypothesis. Ah, this is it. This is the way for me. And oh, it worked so well, it sounded smart, and I felt like an intellectual too. Life was good! Who could argue? I grew judgmental of people who believed in a seventh century way of living. The modern world perpetuated this, and I felt validated. And before I knew it, I found that science was my God. In my opinion, here’s the pitfall in this belief, prevailing scientific thought is constantly changing upon each new discovery. Newtonian Physics being replaced with Einstein’s theory of General Relativity is just one example. No matter that there is a limit to what humans can see so that’s why we call everything we can through a telescope, “the observable universe” but it was inconvenient to explore any further and why fix something that isn’t broken?

When a tragedy befalls us in some way, it forces us to reexamine every aspect of our lives. Neither my own near-death experience nor my little brother’s passing (his name was Zayd Mustafa, and he was a beautifully flawed human, and I miss him every frickin’ day) led to a full-on autopsy of my belief system. Sure, we are all stardust and return to the universe. And it isn’t to say I didn’t grieve or reflect and come out of that experience a different person. It’s to say, I was still operating within the same framework of beliefs. The problem with chasing certainty is that when something unexplainable and uncontrollable happens, you’ve got nothing in your bag to deal with it. Oh, things just happen randomly? Sounds chaotic to me. So, you are telling me that everything is happening at random? Then why hasn’t the earth been hit by a fucking meteorite as big as the one that ended the dinosaurs? (Had to bring a dinosaur reference in this piece, Zaydu loved dinosaurs). Because the universe has calmed down, some will say. Sounds like another theory to me, another veil for false certainty. Yet I wasn’t ready to dig deeper back then, so I focused on what was in front of me and what I had to do to regain a sense of normalcy.

Obviously, my partner was there for me in the aftermath of Zayd’s passing, and I am grateful. She gave me certainty and it had all the hallmarks of a noble pursuit. So, I decided to focus on my career and my marriage. Don’t get me wrong, these are honorable and beautiful things to focus on but, in my opinion, aren’t foundational belief frameworks for a way of life. One can lose a job. A marriage can end. If these things become the sole focus of our life, then we are attaching meaning to perishable concepts. At least that’s what I did. Friction in both aspects of my focus with increasing responsibility for my ageing parents led me to slip. And I tripped up bad. I won’t go into too much detail because that’s a story for another time. What I will say there was a time where I didn’t even recognize myself. Not to say that I didn’t course correct which was a massive personal effort in and of itself. Despite that, inadequacy persisted. I was burnt out, depressed and my marriage was on the rocks. Sure, the demise of a relationship typically isn’t one-sided but I’m focusing on myself, so you won’t hear me speak ill of someone else here. Disclaimer, I say this with the benefit of hindsight and a crap load of emotional processing.

More importantly, I found myself in a state of unfulfillment, dissatisfied and lonely. Have you ever found yourself feeling something similar? Worst of all, I was faced with the daunting prospect of prolonged uncertainty and the outcomes I desired were totally out of my control. My framework was being stress tested and, frankly, was on the verge of being blown into smithereens. For a long time, I let logic run rampant but if it brought me to this point, one ought to try a different approach? After two decades of rationalized and logical decision making, I finally allowed my heart to have a louder voice in the decision-making and life building process. I finally asked myself, “what feels right for me?” instead of “what makes sense?”. This was a revelatory change in perspective for me. Every day, for months, I asked myself what feels right for not just my mind but my body and heart then did exactly that. This can be difficult if you have endured trauma in life (who hasn’t, right?). If so, working in a safe space like therapy is absolutely vital and would highly recommend it.

The scientific method is crucial in understanding certain things about our world. I’m still a full-on nerd and love anything that has to do with planets, stars, the observable universe and quantum physics (even though I barely understand that). In my opinion, the answers it provides glorify the insignificance of our existence in an incomprehensibly gigantic universe. Perhaps those answers may satisfy some but, for me, seem out of sync with the vibrations of my heart and soul. Achievements like a successful career sound nice and are important, especially if you are passionate about it, which can add to the meaning of your life. It can be the reason we are excited to jump out of bed every day. But it can be lost, right? Think about how many amazing athletes have had career-ending injuries. Sure, we are resilient beings so are able to find an alternative but not without significant emotional and physical effort. If a pivot can be made, can it truly be a belief that’s foundational and everlasting? People, I like most people and love a few. I’m fascinated by how different we are, how special we are yet how similar we all are. Yet making certain people our emotional and spiritual centers is bound to lead to further suffering. The one thing that holds true is that we are all destined to die. But what if the person you’ve chosen is perfect? Trick question, no one is!

If it’s not prevailing scientific thought, a career, a passion, love of another person then what is it that is constant? Well, perhaps the universe itself? Don’t you know that the universe will expand so far and wide with all the stars eventually burning out that there will only be an eerie emptiness, an everlasting void? Are you comfortable making that your core belief? Perhaps. That too, does not help with the uneasiness my heart feels. But you know what I am a fan of? Synchrony. Isn’t it magnificent that the natural order of the universe is what it is? The combination of precision and dynamism. There’s a congruence of different processes that create our very own reality. Brian Cox, one of my favorite physicists to listen to and read once said, “We are the cosmos made conscious, and life is the means by which the universe understands itself”. It stuck with me because it captures our temporal existence along with our unity with the universe. As grand and glorious the universe is, it isn’t a constant though, is it? It isn’t eternal. Then maybe the question I need to ask myself, “what is?” or rather, “who is?”.

Have a great weekend! Much love.