A matter of starting

It's one of those lessons that I seem to learn and forget and keep having to learn again...

There's some big task that I need to do and I find myself procrastinating. 

It might be my taxes, some piece of writing, or the work that goes into coordinating a community event.

And as I procrastinate, the thought of that task weighs on my mind constantly.  I may be doing something else or nothing at all (I've learned to procrastinate in different ways :p) yet I'm constantly thinking that I need to do this thing.  It can go on for weeks.  A constant level of stress and anxiety about something I'm not doing but should be doing.

The funny thing is, after all this stress, there's always a way out.  And it's not even that hard.

I just have to start.

Instead of thinking about the whole task in all its complexity, I just need to do the first thing.  The tiniest little first step of the whole process.  It might be picking up a pen and opening my notebook and starting a checklist.  Or looking up some information or sending an email..  Or dialing a number and asking a question.  It's never anything extraordinary or complicated.  Just a single action, which often naturally leads to another action, and another.  And sometimes that's all it takes to get the whole thing done.  And if not, I will at least feel so much better for having started.

And then I just need to do the first little thing to get started on the next part.

Finding God... at Work

Transcribed from a short talk by Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad:

Often, Muslims working in a contemporary, fast-moving, turbo-capitalistic-world workplace, feel guilty and uncertain and think that perhaps they're selling out.

In fact, ours is not a worldly religion, but a religion that teaches us to be at ease in the world. 

And our founder, the Holy Prophet, salla Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam, was in the world. 

He was not a monk or a nun.  He was part of his society.  He fully participated in the political and economical and social and marital life of his culture. 

He was an economic actor.

So when we look at issues like this, we find that we're able to go right back to the fountain head of the religion to see what he, himself, had to say about issues that are very contemporary, but in fact are part of the timeless language of human ethics. 

This is about issues that are eternal -- issues of charity, issues of empathy, issues of justice.  This is not a new innovation.

What I want to do, is consider a hadith -- a well know saying of the Holy Prophet, salla Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam.  It's narrated by Jabir bin Abdullah and it's in the collection of Al Bukhari, so it's rigorously authenticated.  And he says, sallaAllahu 'alaihi wa sallam,

Rahima Allahu imra'an
sahla al-bay'ee
sahla ash-shiraa'ee
sahla al-qadaa'ee
sahla al-iqtidaa'ee

It's one of those pithy, syncopated, rhyming statements that we often find in the hadith. 

What it means is,

May God have mercy upon a person
who is easy in his buying,
and in his selling,
and in his taking of money in a loan,
and in his reclaiming of money that is owed to him.

Not a very elegant English translation, I'm afraid.  Even if you don't know Arabic, you'll know how zippy is the original.

And it's a prayer from the Prophet, that God should have mercy on these people.

This may come as some kind of culture-shock, because we tend to assume nowadays--Muslims, like everybody else -- that religion, spirituality, personal transformation, the "Hotline to God", are things that happen in a beautiful sacred place, a little quiet backwater, perhaps a retreat centre, perhaps a place we go to on Friday or Saturday or Sunday, and the real world is out there, where we accumulate all kinds of bad vibes, which we then purge at a place of worship.

Sometimes we treat a place of worship as a kind of spa, where we go to decontaminate.

That's a very unhealthy way of looking at what we do 5 or 6 days a week.

The Muslim vision is that of a totality. 

Everything is to be incorporated into the Fundamental Human Project, which has to be, for Islam, as for all other religions, turning away from the self, towards the other -- the Other with the big 'O' and also the other with the little 'o'. 

Turning away from our lower selfishness toward something that, in some strange but convincing way persuades us that it is what we really are, underneath.

The fundamental turning, which the Qur'an calls Tawbah, which we translate as repentance, means turning, turning away, and turning away from sin to righteousness, which is another way of expressing turning away from the rubbish within, to what is beautiful that God has placed within the soul.

So, when the Holy Prophet salla Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam, is speaking about economic matters, and matters of business ethics, this doesn't surprise us because everywhere belongs to God.  And everywhere is a place where God is to be celebrated -- even the computer terminal in the estate agent or wherever it is that you work.  Muslims are invited to find a way of sanctifying every moment of those experiences.

Imam Al Ghazali, one of the great ethical thinkers of Islam used to say that humanity basically exists in three categories:

Rajulun shaghalathu dunyaahu 'an ukhraahu, fa huwa min al halikeen

Category number one is the person whose worldly concerns distract him from his otherworldy concerns, and he is of the lost.

Wa rajulun shaghalthu ukhraahu 'an dunyaahu, fa huwa inshaAllah min al faa-izeen

And a man who is distracted by his otherworldly concerns from his worldly concerns and he is, God willing, one of the successful

wa rajulun a'aanat-hu ukhraahu 'ala dunyaahu wa dunyaahu 'alaa ukhraahu fa huwa min al muqarrabeen

And a man whose worldly concerns help him in his otherworldly concerns and he is of those brought near to God.

So we move close to God, not by skirting the realities of the world but rather going through them.  And that takes some doing.  Particularly in the modern world, where it is fair to say that the average contemporary workplace is not primarily geared up for fostering the spiritual life of its employees.

But in any case, whether we're Muslims or not, if we have any interest in what we call spirituality, it's something we're going to want to think carefully about.

---end of transcript---

So it's not about choosing this world or the next, it's about using this world for the next.

Someone else's game

Every game has rules and objectives.  Do this, don't do that.  When you get this, you win. 

Professions also have their rules and objectives.  Work overtime.  Get a raise.  Publish papers.  Apply for grants.  Whoever gets the most money / publications / funding wins.

But what if you don't need that much money or that many publications or that much funding?  Maybe this isn't the game for you. 

You don't have to play someone else's game.

People fuel

Have you ever seen people contribute enthusiastically towards a project and then lose that enthusiasm until they're only doing the bare minimum to get by?  It's like they had tons of fuel and then it ran out, making any further progress painful and slow.  Previously enthusiastic team members start resenting the project and, sometimes, even each other.

I watched this unfold recently and I started wondering what happened?  What went wrong?  How can someone who is normally so helpful and generous become so reluctant and stingy?

My theory: people need fuel to work.  In particular, they need respect and appreciation.  Imagine working in a group where people are disrespecting you and ignoring your contributions.  How much extra work are you going to contribute?

It's not hard to give respect and appreciation.  It's a matter of listening to people's opinions and giving them due consideration.  It's giving people responsibilities commensurate with their abilities and resources.  It's answering emails -- even if the answer is 'I don't know'.  It's trusting people and not second-guessing them or asking them to defend every single decision they make.  It's thank you's and recognition of their contributions.  It's amazing how far people can go with a little fuel -- and how difficult it is to move forward when that fuel is missing.

The carpet merchants

I once heard about a group of carpet merchants whose shops are all next to each other in the marketplace.  Individually, they don't keep regular hours.  As soon as one of them makes the amount he wants for the day, he'll close up shop and leave the rest of the day's business to the others.

When I first heard about them, I thought, "Don't they know how to do business?"  Then I thought, "Wow!  How altruistic!  Instead of competing, they're sharing the business."  Now, I see it differently.

They're just choosing how to spend their time.  Once they have the money that they need, they move on with the rest of their day and do other things.  Instead of living to make money, these merchants making money to live.

Your Life or Your Money

If someone put a gun to your head and asked you to choose between keeping your life or keeping your money, you would surely keep your life and give away your money. But every day, millions of people go to work, to jobs that they hate. Thereby, in effect, giving up their lives in exchange for money. Every day.