We have all witnessed or heard of this: big farmers with vast agricultural lands had to kill their cattle with their own hands because of the drought; young businessmen who lost everything overnight in the wake of a sudden economic crisis; ordinary men and women who purchased for their small families homes on credit, then failed to pay their mortgages and then were forced out; hopeful students who took out loans too then went bankrupt even before being able to honour them; parents who lost their only child when they were so happy with it; people who were desperate for a loving partner and when they got him/her, divorce drove them apart for good. Can Mathematics solve such problems? Can the best software or AI solve such problems? Did such people get such problems because they were so dull? Or do these things need another kind of thinking?
Of course, it is very easy to dismiss out of hand any desire to philosophize about all this under the pretext that all this talk is but catastrophism and that life is by nature full of unpleasant surprises and that everyone must take responsibility for their failure, period. But isn't that really worth a moment of reflection all the same?
Journalism students learn that "when a dog bites a man, that is not news"; “Man bites dog" is news. A woman called a doctor live on a Moroccan radio programme to ask why her three-year-old daughter still sucked at her baby bottle (even if it were empty!). THAT IS NOT NEWS, one would say. And that's true. Another listener later called to advise that woman to put something bitter in the feeding bottle or on its teat to make it disgusting to the child. He said that he had tried that out on his own daughter when she was three and it worked. THAT IS NOT NEWS, either. But then the man conceded that there arose a much bigger problem. "Now my daughter is 27 years old," he explained. "She is a University professor in a foreign country and yet she still sucks her thumb!" THAT IS NEWS, isn't it? But is it odd enough to provoke wonder in everyone?
So what provokes wonder in us? A Kenyan newspaper exclaimed: "It’s a mystery: Africans can’t shoot Olympic arrows!" For the author of this article "it is puzzling that Africa doesn’t dominate archery yet no other continent uses bows and arrows for primary purposes as much."
In The Unique Necklace, Ibn Abd Rabbih (860-940) relates the story of a tabi'i (follower of the Prophet Muhammad's Companions) who was travelling with some of his students when they came across a drunken man singing a beautiful couplet in Arabic, something like: My heart has become sick with love, But there's no way to reach my love. (With rhyme, it sounds much prettier than that in Arabic.) The tabi'i then alighted from his horse and hastened to write down those lines. Amazed, his students asked, "You write down words said by a drunken man?" The tabi'i replied: "Haven't you heard the proverb that goes 'A pearl could very well be found in the garbage.' Well, this is a pearl in a garbage!"
Somebody was introduced to the Abbassid caliph Harun al-Rasheed as a man of genius who could make a hundred needles get into the eyes of each other in such a way that not a single needle would fall down. The caliph asked the man to show him how he could do that, and when the latter had done that in the most brilliant manner, the caliph turned to his men, and said: "Give this man one hundred dinars and one hundred lashes." Sstupefied, the genius man asked: "Majesty, I can understand why you give me one hundred dinars, but not why you give me one hundred lashes!" The caliph replied: "I give you a hundred dinars for your genius, and a hundred lashes because you wasted your genius on trivialities."
We are all intelligent, aren't we, but do we always put our intelligence to good use?
As a twenty-year-old student, I was once standing alone, facing our classroom, when a classmate came towards me, and said, shaking with laughter: "On my way to Faculty, a group of little children stopped me, and said, 'Tell us, if you know: does a hen urinate?’' You know what, I had never thought about that before! Now I ask you the same question: does a hen urinate?
We tend to take so many things for granted -small things, I mean. How many times have you stopped to think about the tick-tock of your watch, about that tiny insect that you sometimes find scurrying across the page when you are reading a book, about the fallen leaves in your garden or in the woods, about the human mind that made all the inventions you're using every day? Like people in antiquity, who wondered at the Seven Wonders and forgot about the million small wonders around them, we still marvel at such big things as the Pyramids and forget to give a thought to small things in ourselves and in our environment.
People marveled at the Montgolfier Balloon, at the first solo nonstop transatlantic Flight in history, at the Airbus A380. They still marvel at the Great Wall of China, at the Guizeh Pyramids, at the Eiffel Tower and Lady Liberty. We still marvel at the breathtaking performances of circus animals and clowns, at the robots which might some day have feelings, at the stunning achievements of record-breaking athletes, at the extraordinary talents of our artists (that are sometimes taken for gods!). Almost every week, there's a new entry into the famous Guinness World Records.
When people think of something, they often forget something else -something more important. When we look at ourselves in the mirror, do we think of the mirror itself? When we use our computer, do we think of the mind which invented it in the first place? When we wonder at our (human) power of imagination, do we think of where the human mind came from in the first place? How many of us wonder at the fact that although we have the same father and the same mother, still, we are not identical. Even so-called "identical twins" are distinguished by their fingerprints and irises.
Sometimes you suddenly find yourself in a situation where you feel like a fool, when the most obvious things become hard to understand, when your life suddenly becomes a burden, void of any meaning. Should we wait until then to start meditating?
If exercise rids our body of its "poisons", isn't it the same for meditation? Could it not rid us of the "poisons" of our souls? Couldn't meditation on little things -those things that most people don't even think about- give us a light that most people don't have?
An American man went missing in Australia. After three months or so, he emerged from the other end of the Australian desert, wearing an ordinary shirt and a pair of trousers, with leather sandals on, and a water bottle in his hand. Asked why he had braved such a frightening desert alone and with so little equipment, the man said: "I just wanted to discover God." Personally, I couldn't believe my eyes and ears as I saw those TV pictures, having read about the times when Afghan cameleers took European settlers through the uncharted deserts of the Australian continent.
Now, do I need to go as far as the Australian desert just to mediatate? I can look up at the sun from where I am: isn't it the same sun everyone sees everywhere? Isn’t it the same moon all people all around the world know? Isn’t it the same sky, the same stars, the same earth, the same water, the same air, the same human body, the same human soul? So couldn't it be the same Creator, whoever it might be, who made all these things for us all? Shouldn't we be asyonished at the fact that people share the same things and yet worship different gods?
Is it easy to think, by the way? How could one "think" with so many images falling like an avalanche over one's mind from TV, the Web…? But how many people could go to the woods (with no cam, no Smartphone, no cigarettes), with just a mind and a heart, and two feet willing to go from place to place, and eyes willing to look at beautiful flowers -small flowers- hiding behind small rocks that few people care to glance at? Who these days would go into the woods and look at the fallen leaves, and touch them, scrutinize them; at the insects, at the migrant birds, and think about his whole life?
Who? How many? It is not easy. People will rather think about their daily lives, their declining purchasing power, their abysmal debts, their uncertain future. You have people who don't even have enough to buy something to eat. You even have medical students, who are supposed to treat us one day, who have the misfortune of dealing with burnout, depression and anxiety on a daily basis. You have people who, on top of that, live with fear in their shearts every day because they are not sure that their children will come back from school safe and sound. Under these conditions, how can one think in an upbeat mood? And yet, it is necessary to reflect. We have all seen that getting fed up with politicians will not solve problems.
There have been big farmers with vast farming lands in the times before us; there have been princes and nobility; there have been little country folk full of dreams; there have been people who were happy for some time then lost their happiness overnight. And the list is long. Maybe those people who lived before us did not have calculating machines, sophisticated computers and genius software, but they too were smart somehow. Maybe we, too, need to be doubly smart, by thinking about the big things and by meditating about the small things as well.
Take this example. We Muslims around the world have just celebrated Eed al-Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice). Does everybody enjoy eed in the same way? Well, many people sacrifice a sheep but can’t eat of its meat simply because they are ill. Other people, with healthy stomachs and bodies, can’t afford a sheep for eed. Too expensive for them. Who should envy the other: the one who can’t eat of his sheep or the one who can’t buy a sheep in the first place?
The problem is, feelings and emotions are sometimes stronger than knowledge and convictions. It’s not easy for anybody to deal with the feeling that his boss or superior is less qualified than him. It’s not easy for a handsome man to understand why his beautiful beloved should marry an “ugly” man. It’s not easy for a woman of colour to understand why she should be so, if that is a problem for her, or for a successful engineer to understand why his only son should be handicapped. Scientists can’t explain, for example, why a married couple should fail to have a child, despite all imaginable and unimaginable efforts. But they can evidently explain the physiological/pathological, thing that prevented the couple from begetting a child. Scientists don’t have problems with the physical world. That’s why they have been so kind as to make our physical world so easy : they developed for us wonderful transportation means, fairy-tale telecommunication means, unhoped-for medical services. Our kitchens, our living-rooms, our offices, our bags are full of technology gadgets that we owe to our venerable scientists. But scientists are like us, like you and me. They too have feelings and emotions. A scientist may remain disgusted all his life if one of his scientific discoveries or contributions is attributed to someone else. You and I are aware of the sufferings of so many medical personnel around the world during the current pandemic. And so on and so forth.
Scientists can easily come up with revolutionary techniques, treat human bodies and improve agriculture, etc, but could not prevent death, drought or floods. Scientists can send humans onto Mars but cannot ward off earthquakes or hurricanes, which do cause more destruction in a few hours than science can build in years and years. It’s again a problem of emotions. You can’t explain anything to a widow sitting in front of her home destroyed by flooding or to parents who have just lost their only son to Covid. What can you say to a person who can’t find an ICU bed or Oxygen to save his mother or daughter?
What about Faith? Some people believe in it. They cling to it in normal times
and in times of crisis. They find therein explanations that can help them
overcome a loss, a breakup, a weakness or a personal drama. This explanation is
not fortuitous or trivial. It implies a commitment. If we ask a god for help,
we should reasonably expect to have to give thanks in some way. This is the
demarcation line between faith and unbelief. Some people can in no way accept
the idea of being dependent on anybody or obedient to anybody. They see
themselves as entirely self-made, self-dependent, self-sufficing, and that they
don’t owe anything to anybody, to any deity. They have nothing to thank God
for: because if they accept the idea of being much obliged to a deity, they
fear they might be asked to behave according to that deity’s wishes, not as
they see fit.
In reality, even the Quran, for example, does not say that if you do not believe in God and the Hereafter you will fail in this world. Worldly success is open to all. The problem is, when you fail, for any objective reasons, you may find it hard to explain your failure objectively to yourself. Because it’s human nature that man tends to blame others for his failures and to be arrogant in times of success.
Now, where does our arrogance come from? It comes from our desire to show off. We want to show people around us that we are self-dependent, we are the best. We want the world to know that we got our job because, as they say, "one Scotsman's worth 3 Englishmen". The same goes for one's spouse, one's children, one's fortune. It's all the fruit of our ambition. It's all a matter of merit.
This is also due to the fact that, most of the time, we think about one moment in our life. Or do we always take all our life into account? Do we think of the time when we grow old, when we can’t sing and dance, when we can’t play golf or tennis, when we can’t swim or even walk, when we can’t eat with a knife and fork, when we are put away in a nursing home, abandoned by both our children and the staff of our nursing home?
Many people divorce after retirement. This moment that they were looking forward to in order to rest and enjoy life suddenly becomes hell because of the spouse, the children or whatever. If we are not prepared for this, what’s the use of our brain?
Yes, I imagine a bit of History, a bit of philosophy, a bit of spirituality, a bit of "free" tourism (just a short trip on foot or by bike around our place of living), a bit of meditation -all that may be just priceless. We all know that many people have good insurance and yet are unhappy. Many people with the best retirement pensions are unhappy too. There are definitely other things in life that are just as important.
