I haven't written for a good two weeks. Naughty me. However, this pause is justified - I've been super busy and working super hard. This hasn't been academic work but extracurricular work. Its taken up most my evenings - in fact may days I would return home just before midnight without having done a jot of medicine all day.

Anyway, all this work was in preparation for a big day. Weeks of blood, sweat and tears (Ed: definitely a lot of sweat - no not from gym either) all hinging upon a few hours. Sounds much like an exam - but it not. The rewards if your hard work pays off is the best feeling in the world; but if it doesn't work out - you can feel like a complete failure. Unfortunately this time, my hard work didnt pay off as well as I expected.

Afterwards, I felt frustrated, angry and disappointed. This might be understandable, but I think with reflection a bit of patience may have not gone amiss - a strong man is not he who can lift heavy objects but one who can control his anger. How can one feel frustrated, with the knowledge that Allah will give copious reward in return for efforts to please Him? I think is a indicator that I'm very much orientated towards worldly results and still view them instinctively as what matters - as opposed to the Hereafter as what matters. I pray that Allah will keep the knowledge of the Hereafter consistently in mind when carrying out all actions and that he blesses us with more and more patience.

Look back to navigate the future

Yesterday was bit of a reminder. First I went to a talk by Sheikh Muhummad al Yaqoubi organized by Imperial Isoc (Islamic society) – and although not as informative as I would have liked it was most certainly inspirational and an excellent reminder. Perhaps I knew much of the factual content of his talk already however he brought these things to the forefront of my mind – no less useful than learning something new.

Its almost part of human nature to forget and without regular reminders of what we already know, one can tend to drift. We have regular reminders throughout the day of our purpose to worship Allah (SWT) but I myself have a tendency to forget the deeper meaning behind all of these – e.g each time I make wudu I understand that I’m purifying myself for the sake of Allah but I don’t go much deeper. Failure to contemplate properly and think before, during and after our acts of worship can lead to a ritualistic approach– which does not glean the full of benefit of ‘ibadah and thus lead to spiritual unrest and perhaps weak iman.

However, reminding ourselves of Allah (SWT) just at prayer time isn’t sufficient – we need to continue to remind ourselves of Him throughout our day. Pondering isn’t even a thing that time needs to be set aside for as such, we can do it whilst we are ironing, washing up, before going to sleep etc. and if we clarify to ourselves the purpose of our actions and trying to relate them to serving our Lord we can thus increase our general day-to-day awareness of Allah(SWT). Insha’Allah by this we can try to improve our characters and strengthen our iman with it.