Iftar Table and Paradox of Choice

Our Iftar table seems to be a manifestation of Barry Schwartz idea of paradox of choice; how having more options increases a consumer’s level of anxiety.
Think about it. Enter the typical Arab kitchen during Ramadan and ask the mother, “So what are you cooking?”
“Nothing much. Only five dishes.”
Only???
Sometimes when you look at the food on the table and look down at your stomach, there’s an incredulity that you have to fill that (stomach) with that ?
I have to say that it’s not that I am not grateful for the blessing of having a variety of food to select from. But the thing is, after the “attack”ing process, one feels really bloated and too lazy to finish taraweeh prayer.
I don’t know exactly what happens in the kitchen when something is added to the to-be-cooked list but maybe the extra cooking is just a reflection of the hunger. You know how they say, don’t shop when you’re hungry because you’ll end up buying more stuff than you actually need? So my theory is, don’t decide on what to cook when you’re hungry because the menu will just go overboard…and notice I said, “don’t decide” not “don’t cook” when you are hungry because cooking while hungry is sorta inevitable. But it’s easier to set up tomorrow’s menu after Iftar and stick to the menu while stamping on the temptation to “add that one thing” and “add that other thing”.
Isn’t this the month of curbing temptations after all?

Today’s advise; Say no to Israaf.
Have a lovely day!

Importance of Du3aa

In his lecture, “Man Yad3ooni” sheikh Mohammad Al3reify speaks about the importance of du3aa, and how we need to include it in our lives all the time.

He encourages people to ask Allah (SWT) for anything and not limit ourselves because our minds can’t figure out how we’d get our wishes granted. What we deem as “impossible” and “unimaginable” could happen. Only recently we witnessed how ex-president-of-Egypt Hosny Mubarak went from president-to-prisoner, while Mohamed Morsi went from prisoner-to-president.

Sheikh Al3reify also says that the problem with us is that we only use this tool when we want something, or we’re in trouble. When all things are going well, we refrain from making du3aa and asking Allah (SWT) to maintain our state of wellbeing. He reminds us that life can take a turn to the worse in an instant, and not to wait for that instant to start raising our hands to the sky and calling out, “Ya Rab.”

I hope you’ll enjoy the lesson which can be found here; http://ar.m.islamway.com/lesson/93386

or more directly http://download.media.islamway.net/lessons/3refi/265_Al3arefi_Yad3oni.mp3

Hadeeth of the Day

عن أبي هريرة رضي الله عنه عن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم قال: ((لا يزال يستجاب للعبد ما لم يدع بإثم أو قطيعة رحم، ما لم يستعجل)). قيل: يا رسول الله، ما الاستعجال؟ قال: يقول: قد دعوت، وقد دعوت، فلم أر يستجيب لي، فيستحسر عند ذلك، ويدع الدعاء)) – رواه مسلم في الذكر والدعاء (
2735

Abu Hurairah – رضي الله عنه – narrated that the Prophet – صلى الله عليه وسلم – said: “The invocation of anyone of you is granted if it does not involve a sin or relatives and womb relationship abandonment. And if he does not show impatience by saying, ‘I invoked Allah but my request has not been granted,’ and feels desperate and invokes no more.”

Fast and Furious During Ramadan?

As the time for iftar approaches, the roads are nearly empty. Nearly. Maybe that’s why whoever is still on the road thinks he has the right to speed and break other road rules in order to reach his Iftar table on time.
But trust me, the food isn’t going anywhere, so slow down.
I’m happy to see that adnoc has taken an active role in spreading awareness about crazy driving in Ramadan. It put up an ad that talks about the issue and announces that when it calls for maghrib athan and you’re on the road, you can drive to the closest adnoc petrol station and you’ll be given dates to break your fast with. Now that’s what I call a socially responsible petrol station.
Are you surprised the accompanying shop is called an “oasis”?

Put Together Your In’shAllah List

Now that it’s Ramadan and we have very limited time to do everything we aspire to do, the best way to stop being overwhelmed is to write up an in’shAllah list (that’s my version of a to-do list) and should include everything that you would like to do this Ramadan. Examples could be;
1) To complete the Quraan at least once during Ramadan
2) To make it to Taraweeh every night
3) To give some money for charity

Now the thing to remember about your list is that the more specific you are the better. For instance, you can change point (3) to “To give 5% of my income to feed poor orphans.”

You can make up your own list and add as many things as possible. Your in’shAllah list could include special duaa’s that you want to remember whenever you pray at night. The idea is that if you actually take the time out to make up such a list, it’s more likely that you will not forget illa an yashaa2 Allah.

You can also have so many things that you would like to do but of course time could be a limiting factor so it helps if you actually divide your In’shAllah list into different sections and deciding which ones are high-priority, which ones are low-priority, and then focus on the high-priority tasks first.

Overall dream big. It’s better to aim for the moon and land among the stars than reach for the lamp-post and hit your head against it. This is a blessed month and so we should always make duaa that Allah (SWT) will bless our time so we would be able to fill it with good deeds.

Last but not least, remember to keep your intentions pure for Allah’s sake.

عن أمير المؤمنين أبي حفص عمر بن الخطاب رضي الله عنه ، قال : سمعت رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم يقول : ( إنما الأعمال بالنيّات ، وإنما لكل امريء مانوى ، فمن كانت هجرته إلى الله ورسوله ، فهجرته إلى الله ورسوله ، ومن كانت هجرته لدنيا يصيبها ، أو امرأة ينكحها ، فهجرته إلى ما هاجر إليه ) رواه البخاري ومسلم في صحيحهما .

Narrated: Umar bin Al-Khattab
who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (SAW), say: “Actions are (judged) by motives (niyyah), so each man will have what he intended. Thus, he whose migration (hijrah) was to Allah and His Messenger, his migration is to Allah and His Messenger; but he whose migration was for some worldly thing he might gain, or for a wife he might marry, his migration is to that for which he migrated.” [Al-Bukhari and Muslim]

اللهم بارك لنا في أعمارنا وأوقاتنا أرزاقنا

Image taken from flickr wwarby’s photostream

Charging Your Imaan

Have you ever counted how many chargers you have? Maybe you have a phone charger, a camera charger, an ipad charger…and that’s just at home. How many chargers do you keep in your car? Have you ever gone to a friend’s house and felt an itch to leave the moment your phone ran out of charge and there’s no suitable charger in their house?

Maybe your bundle of wires looks like this…

For the record, these wires contain earphones as well…but you get the picture!

The thing is, we have become so depended on technology nowadays that we constantly need some charger around or we start feeling empty inside. Question is, how many of us tend to feel empty inside despite the availability of technology? Let’s say we switch off every device we have, close the door to our room and interact with no living soul. How many of us hear voices in our heads asking us about where we’re headed in this life? Where we’re headed after this life?

With all of life’s glamorous distractions unfortunately we tend to forget about our mission in this life and that is to worship Allah (SWT) as best as we can. However, every year comes a month when we get a chance to elevate our spiritual being and that is the month of Ramadan. Muslims worldwide engage in various forms of worship from fasting to giving charity to taraweeh prayers as it is a blessed month.

It was narrated in the Hadeeth by Abu Huraira that Allah’s Messenger ( صلى الله عليه وسلم) said, “When the month of Ramadan starts, the gates of the heaven are opened and the gates of Hell are closed and the devils are chained.“ [Volume 31 from Sahih Al Bukhari]

So it is only wise for us to make the best use of this blessed month, and not waste time in idle talk, tv and internet-surfing. Maybe it would help if we stay away from our phone chargers for a while and concentrate instead on our soul chargers.

Taken from southernmuslimah.wordpress.com 

When The Head Hurts

Basically it’s when there are so many people around just like now. The kemeni social scene never fails to amaze me. How three conversations occur simultaneously and you get a headache try to figure out what is saying who. Explains why I am blogging.
Yesterday my mother was invited somewhere and she tried to grab me but I refused. I thought I’d be the only one ditching, but my uncle was also ditching another gathering. So we hung out together and had a nice heart-to-heart conversation that reminded me of the (very) old times when we used to watch cartoons together Sunday mornings.
Our discussions encompassed topics such as how society doesn’t accept that a person can change to the positive, how people can easily misinterpret what someone said let alone what they thought that someone said because they heard it third-hand in Chinese-whisper-style. Basically we discussed the main reasons why we tend to ditch social gatherings. After all, these are the main reasons why ours heads hurt.
One thing you would notice in some houses is that someone would visit and Host&Guest would talk as though they were best of friends. The moment the guest leaves, the host starts saying stuff like, “That person is really so stupid because…”
Wow!
A secret grudge.
So I sit and think, how many people meet each other with secret grudges, going to each other’s house with the main goal of collecting scandals and spreading them afterwards, how many double-faced people are walking among our friends and families.
But one thing that made me think, is how easy would life be if people sat together and decided to be brutally honest with each other. If they knew that the other person would not take it personally and would not be angered and would not carry hatred, how easy would it be if people could just say what is inside their hearts. How easy would it be to air things out instead of carrying secret grudges, and keeping feuds for years (or maybe generations).
How easy would it be if our emotions were bared without any embarrassments or hard feelings afterwards.
But that’s the thing, being open might life easier but the tasks themselves aren’t easy.
And that’s why they are worth doing.
So ask yourself today, if you have a friend you’ve fallen off with, is your pride worth more than the relationship? Can you be brutally honest with others?

Drive by Daniel Pink

The book drive is all about motivation, not the act of turning the steering wheel in your hand to control a car. I enjoyed reading the book even though it was just a detailed version of his TED video (I.e. You could watch the video and get the gist of the book). The rest of the book acts as a sort of filler ( aka ma7shi) where he argues that people are internally motivated through autonomy, mastery and sense of purpose or contributing to a better good.
He says that the old carrot-stick philosophy of getting more work out of people through perks such as money or parking space can work when the tasks are routine and straight forward (“according to the procedure” style). But when the tasks deal more with creativity to increase productivity then the best way to get the most out of employees is to pay them enough to take the concept of money off the table and then produce an environment where employees are given autonomy and are encouraged to pursue mastery as well making then feel a great sense of purpose.
The book talks about how management is so last-century. That in our current fast-changing world, we need to move towards self-direction, where “ex-managers” provide the correct environments so that their employees are self-motivated and don’t need someone watching over their shoulders with a bamboo stick waiting for them to log onto Facebook.
The research done in the book was great (so great that I’ve added some of his references to my wishlist). And his book reminded me of a book I read two years ago called “seven-day weekend” by Ricardo Semler where he talks about how he built a successful company out of a total state of chaos, no mission statements, no hierarchy, no perks…his book was a sort of implementation of the psychology that Daniel Pink discusses. I remember when I read Semler’s book I was a bit disappointed because he spoke about all the weird (lack-of-)rules that worked without actually saying how they worked. Maybe now if I re-read it with Pink’s book in mind I’ll understand the psychology better.
I personally enjoyed reading Drive and would give it a 4/5 only because I was hoping for many more examples than his TED videos but was disappointed in that aspect.

Why This Blog’s Stats Will Continue Struggling

So recently I have been pondering on my Blog’s statistics and how it seems to be making turtle-like progress, remaining as nothing but a speck in the blogosphere. The fact that I write out of passion and not out of an attempt at popularity helps keep this thing alive, because if it comes to the statistics, they pretty much need CPR every once in a while.

Upon reading a summary on The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, it pretty much helps me contemplate on why this blog will continue lurking in the shadows, evading popularity as much as I do. Malcolm argues that one of there are three main factors to determine whether an idea will tip the balance and become exponentially popular is known as Law of the Few.

The Law of the Few says that an idea can become widely popular when it is endorsed by a few important types of people. Gladwell describes these types as Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. The main thing about these people is they have the charisma, the connections and the trusted position to spread the idea across several fields.

So the fact that I’m an introvert who feels more comfortable expressing myself behind a screen, a username and a password doesn’t exactly help much. I spent the better part of my life trying to extend beyond my comfort zone when it comes to people and friends but the only thing I got was pain from both “family and friends”. And since it’s really hard for me to forget considering I keep a detailed diary of just about everything, I came to the conclusion that I’m tired of holding acidic memories in the vase of my heart because I am the only one who gets hurt (or who remembers the pain) so my natural inclination is to avoid people as a preemptive measure to avoid creating more acidic memories in the first place.

But I digress. Going back to the statistics, I’m happy with whatever statistics I have got because if there’s one thing that I have learnt as an introvert it’s to appreciate the quality of a relationship and not the quantity. And I like the fact that I actually know many of my readers.

According to Dr Wikipedia, As of Feb 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence. Among that much noise, it’s very easy to completely disappear, for after all this is just one speck in the blogosphere, one drop in the ocean or just one brick in the wall.

It’s actually a privilege to have people take some time out of their busy schedules to actually read what you have to say.

So if you’ve read this far.

Thank you.

When The Heart Hurts

Funny thing about the heart, is how its name in English sounds like “hurt” as though that is its natural state of affairs; as though that is the state of equilibrium it goes to after a series of instabilities. They say the greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to hurt. And that makes sense because the people who hurt you the most are the ones you actually care about.
Problem is, hurting others has become so easy for us nowadays. As easy as saying “I love you” when you don’t mean it.
I was reading S’s post on love and disappointments that states that people who use the L word do so when they are emotionally unstable. And it strikes me as true. Because after three or four years of marriage when the emotional instability starts to disperse with the increase in responsibilities and strain/stress levels, it’s easy to see people “fall out of love with each other”. It’s like they were using drugs before and suddenly they got sober and things started to clear up. In other words, they start becoming emotionally stable.
Another way to hurt people is to take them for granted, and this happens especially among family members. People always say that blood is thicker than water so it’s easier to take family members for granted and neglect them, since after all, they’re family, people who -it’s assumed -will always be there in the background. But you see, people get tired of being thrown in the background, sorta like 3absi from the 90′s cartoon 3adnan Wa Leena. They get tired of broken promises and lies, they get tired of being stood up, of being thrown lines with hope as the bait so they will hang on to the end of the line, and struggle. One day they’ll break free and those responsible will start asking, “What happened?”
And finally the worse way of getting hurt is when the pain is self-imposed. When we hurt ourselves with a combination of the above; an imaginary love story that exists only in our minds or promises that we don’t keep to ourselves.
But if you think about it, we cannot stop people from hurting us unless we learn to freeze our emotions and stop feeling the good and the bad. Hurting is part of being alive. The pain can also be a great motivator for after all they say,
“Don’t break a girl’s heart because she’ll probably write a bestselling novel about you.”

Love yourself and forgive someone today. Maybe they never meant to hurt you because they were also hurt by someone sometime.

Image from graphicshunt.com

P.S.
(Love and disappointments
Love and Disappointments

As much as we were happy during graduation

I remember one of my persons that I spoke about in a previous note “Who Is Your Person?” used to say something like 2ad ma fre7na yom ilta55aruj 2ad ma z3elna ba3do. She meant that as much as we were happy during graduation we became miserable after it. It’s been 4 years since I left AUS. 4 years 1 month and 2 days to be exact, but I still carry a lot of memories from that place; whether happy or sad, it doesn’t matter. They are just memories.
Maybe her explanation was the reason why graduating from Masdar didn’t make me feel so elated. Maybe I thought that the happiness would just be temporary, so it might as well be nonexistent.
I don’t know. All I know is that I am still reading posts on the death of Dr Sadek, Allah yir7amo and I find my mind going back to AUS. Back then, registering for the correct courses was such a big deal to us kids who were trapped in the bubble called AUS. Of course now in retrospect we realize it wasn’t worth worrying over much because most people don’t care which courses we took anyway. Despite it being not-a-big-deal to those who were not students, Dr Sadek dealt with it like it was a big deal because it was a big deal to the students. And now think of the hundreds and thousands are remembering him in their duaa’s for that thing that might have seemed like no-big-deal to other faculty and staff.
The power of how small stuff can make such an impact in one’s life.
A lot of people say that some of the people you graduate with are going to be your best friends for life. They are going to be next to you during your wedding, they’ll be next to you with tissue papers when you’re crying over one of life’s many trials.
However there are others who go onto separate paths without looking back. Maybe they’ll remember you, maybe they’ll not.
Maybe you’ll find yourself comparing your life with theirs and see how they’ve advanced so much while you’re stuck in just about the same place, especially if you’re stuck in academics.
But that’s how life is. You might want to spare yourself the pain and just jump to the last step of grief; Accept it.