Tag: difficulty

My Own-goal

I was playing soccer one day with some friends on a crisp autumn morning. At one point, my team was defending a corner kick which basically meant the opposing team gets a free kick from the corner of the field to try and set someone up on their team to score a goal. My task was defensive – to make sure the ball didn’t end up in the goal. As the corner kick soared through the air, I found it coming straight for me. My sole purpose and focus was to make sure the ball DID NOT go into the goal. I jumped, swung my head to head the ball out, and ended up hitting the ball with the back of my head and straight into the goal.

Yikes.

Focus is typically linear – but the result can sometimes manifest the exact opposite. I focused so much on hitting the ball away that I ended up hitting the ball backwards. Just like you can study extensively for an exam and receive an A or you can study extensively for an exam and still fail. It’s frustrating because that fact makes you second guess your motivation. Why even study? Why jump to head the ball if I could potentially mess this up?

Baseball is a great example. You can swing at a ball with the best swing in the world (and yes, there are very detailed mechanics into how you swing a bat), and completely miss the ball. You were focused. You knew what to do. You did it right. But the ball and your bat didn’t connect. On the flip side, you can do everything right with your swing and knock a ball out of the park.

But you can’t even hit the ball if you don’t swing.

You’re going to fail at times at the thing you wanted and focused on the most. You’re going to fail in the worst possible scenario and it will feel devastating. Not only that, your failure (which you focused on so deeply to avoid) will define your life for some time. The own-goal I committed in my soccer game defined the game because we were losing until our team scored again.

But you will fail always if you decide to give up. You’ll feel worthless, alone, isolated, and confused because you thought the worst feeling was failure but it’s not. It’s the feeling you feel when you know it won’t get better because you don’t have the heart to try anymore.

Failure is part of life. Own goals, strike-outs, mistakes – they are the shadows that make life prominent. They provide perspective the same way the darkness of a shadow does to a picture. But it’s important to continue to strive after failure even when you feel like your biggest enemy.

The best batting advice anyone ever gave me was to forget all the mechanics and just go out there and have fun. And that goes for life like it goes for batting. Mechanics are important but so is relaxation.

Life sucks and it’s all your fault sometimes. Who cares? Don’t let any level of failure permeate into changing the person you perceive yourself to be. You are all the great qualities you have ever attained and failure doesn’t take anything away from those.

If you get back on the horse you could fall again, but if you never get back on you’ll never go anywhere.

The Painting

Imagine your life as a painting. A creation that is completely your own that encompasses the many complexities of your thoughts, emotions, fears, anxieties, goals, dreams, aspirations, etc. Every stroke, every paint color, every brush unique to the presence of your life and soul on this earth. Growing up, I didn’t understand why life became unbearably difficult at times. I didn’t understand why God would withhold something that would make you happy. Why would God not let me paint what I wanted to paint? When difficult times came, it seemed like my painting just stood there with nothing new to show even though I really wanted to add what I believed was necessary and best for my life. It was confusing and difficult.

There were days I would wake up and the only good thing to happen to me that day was so insignificant compared to the many things going wrong around me. It felt unbearable at times. It felt dark. Then I thought about how painters create such intricate masterpieces and it dawned on me why God took away my paint brush at times.

My wife and I attended a painting class one day. I was a bit nervous given my mediocre artistic abilities, but confident in enjoying a pleasant evening with my wife. We sat in the front near our instructor who proceeded to go step by step through the painting we were to paint. The drawing was a silouhette of a tree in the evening with pink and red leaves. Our first instruction was to literally paint a large white circle – which was a task even I could handle. Immediately after we painted a light blue circle around our first white circle – and then a darker blue circle around the light blue circle until our entire canvas was filled with paint. At that point, we waited for the paint to dry and went to go grab snacks. After about 10 minutes, we were instructed to draw our tree with our branches before having to wait again before drawing the leaves and the stars in the sky.

I think that’s life. I think we sometimes want to draw various leaves in our lives before we even have a background. Or sometimes we want to draw leaves when the paint from the background is still wet. God withholds the brush from us because we aren’t meant to paint there at that given time. And this is manifested in the dark times we encounter when things go wrong in our lives. It can be frustrating but also a blessing in disguise. What we think would be best wouldn’t be best for our overall painting.Perhaps it isn’t the right time. Perhaps it isn’t the right color.

At the end of our painting class, we were to add small silver dots to represent the stars. In the grand scheme of things, the amount of paint we had to use to create the stars was very small, but the overall picture was that much more enhanced because of it. So when only one seemingly insignificant good thing is happening in your life in a sea of heartache, know that it’s still an important part of a bigger picture that will enhance your life that much more. And if it seems that nothing is going right in your life, then know that God is just allowing your paint to dry for you to paint only the very best for your life.

Your life’s painting is enormous. If paint is wet somewhere in your life preventing you from painting what you want, look around at other phases of your life that may be dry and see how you can paint into that. Your life will never be all wet paint at once. You just have the have the courage and trust in God to look away from painting where you want at any given time. In actuality, God may take away your paintbrush not to prevent you from painting – but to teach you the patience it takes to create beauty in your life.

“So endure patiently, with a beautiful patience” [70:5]

Indeed, Allah is the best of Painters.

Filling your Empty Cup

“You can’t pour from an empty cup”

Some of us have filled cups, empty cups, and even broken cups. If I’m writing about this, it’s probably because I’ve fluctuated between all three like any one of you. I’ve realized recently how important it is to focus on yourself unselfishly.

Focusing on yourself and being selfish are two entirely different things. Focusing on yourself means you’re taking care of yourself in the deepest and most fulfilling ways. If you aren’t, then you’re inevitably seeking someone or something else to fill that deep void for you. And no matter what, as long as you seek anyone or anything other than yourself to fill that deep void, you will repeatedly fall short of feeling fulfillment. In turn, you’ll turn selfish by feeling entitled to receive something to fill that void rather than seek to fill it yourself. You’ll blame external factors rather than realizing your cup is empty. And when this happens, you’ve not only skewed who or what is to blame, you’ve lost sight of any ability to refill your cup. Not only that, you risk losing a certain level of patience with yourself and breaking your cup.

The most important quality you have to offer to this world is the core of your being. Embrace it. Feed it. Society will often convince you to embrace a being that isn’t yourself. Whether it’s peer pressure or the latest fad, we often feel compelled to partake in something that we deep down don’t feel like doing or be someone who isn’t a true reflection of ourselves. And that’s a battle you must win because you have much more to offer the world than conformance.

Focusing on yourself fills you. It charges you. It allows you to give to the world – to your career, your aspirations, your dreams, your relationships – everywhere. Find out what fills you. Find out that which holds a special place in your heart and no matter how unusual or unorthodox it is, do whatever you can to make it part of your life. When this happens, your cup will fill and when your cup fills, you’re able to give to everything that holds a special place in your heart.

Sometimes though, the cup breaks. And that’s just a hard reality about life. The thing about taking care of yourself and understanding the initial quote is realizing that not only can you not pour from an empty cup — you can’t receive in a broken cup either. Meaning, if you haven’t taken care of yourself on your deepest and most basic level, then anything you try to do to fill your cup will simply leak out. Consequently, anyone who tries to fill your cup with what they are capable of pouring will leak out of your cup.

For the broken cupped, take comfort in knowing that you’re not alone and that with time, your cup will heal. I’ve been there – cup shattered – but Alhamdullilah, my cup is now intact (and likely filled with Peach Iced Tea). Seek help from Allah and seek help from whatever means necessary because fulfillment starts with an intact cup.

Allah decided that from the multitude of His creations, your presence was merited to exist in this world. Be the best you. And however your cup stands today, know that the more you strive to take care of yourself, the more you’ll fix and fill your cup.