A self-reflection on life in 2018

London, 1st January 2019.

2018 is the name of the passage of time that has vanished from our lives, a few minutes ago, forever. It has secured its place in the history book and will never come again. A New Year named 2019 has entered into our premises. 2018 has gone and with it one year of our precious life has, too. Have we kept anything from the year 2018 for us? The time that has gone from each of our lives will never come back but surely the good deeds that we have done, if any, during that year will remain with us forever and beyond, with the strength of happiness, peace and dignity.

Last night when everybody was celebrating the eve of New Year, I was trying to reflect on my gains and losses over the last year. I try my best to remember that time is the most precious commodity of my life. Once I lose it, it will be lost forever. If I spent millions of pounds, there is a chance I may get it back; whereas the millions of seconds I spent, I will never get back. 

Roy T. Bennett says in his famous book The Light in the Heart that “Top 15 Things Money Can’t buy”. They are “Time. Happiness. Inner Peace. Integrity. Love. Character. Manners. Health. Respect. Morals. Trust. Patience. Class. Common sense. Dignity.” Among those 15 precious things, I think time is the most valuable. This is because no one can get it back when it leaves from one’s possession. It is the proper and meaningful utilization of the time that can ensure securing ‘Happiness. Inner Peace. Integrity. Love. Character. Manners. Health. Respect. Morals. Trust. Patience. Class. Common sense. Dignity.’ Sadly most of us are not conscious about the value of time, hence we remain heedless.

2018 is the name of the passage of time that has vanished from our lives, a few hours ago, forever. It has secured its place in the history book and will never come again. A New Year named 2019 has entered into our premises. Keeping this reality in mind I have tried to evaluate my life over this last year.

May Almighty Allah accept all of our good deeds, forgive our sins during the year 2018 and grant us a happy and prosperous year ahead, ameen. May He keep our friends and family safe from all sorts of hardship and dhulm. May Allah protect this Ummah, in particular, and the entire humanity, in general, from all sorts of calamity and oppression, thumma ameen.

2018 was a year of excitement, grief and progress. I started the year with lots of hope and a clear vision. In many aspects I have achieved a lot that makes me happy and excited. Allah Almighty gave me the opportunity to spend almost every day of the year in serving humanity, saving lives and reducing pain from thousands of people’s lives through providing lifesaving health care, water, shelter and education programmes. I had the opportunity to travel around the world serving humanity through relief, education and guidance programmes.  During the year I traveled more than 50, 0000 miles by air and thousands of miles by road in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. The love, brotherhood and duas I received from the brothers and sisters around the world are unparalleled. The joy of friendship and brotherhood are the driving forces that encourage me to keep active on this very challenging path of humanitarian work. Many people ask me why I embrace such a tough but (monetarily) less rewarding job, leaving the very lucrative legal profession. I tell them money can give luxury but it cannot give ultimate peace of mind and happiness. When I see a little boy or girl smiling at me after his or her life-saving operation, I feel the value of my job to be more than any number of pounds. When I see a mother raise her hand to Almighty Allah to make du’a for me, I feel how close my Jannah can be, if Allah accept this mother’s du’a. When I see a hungry 97 year-old mum hug me and put her hand on my head and say you are “my son” then I feel the sweetness of human love. My legal profession could have given me a more luxurious car and house but the inner peace I enjoy through serving humanity can never be attained through anything but this. I am happy that I came back to the sector after one year’s break.

Despite all the joy it brought with it, 2018 was also a year of grief for me. This year, I have lost many close friends and relatives, in particular, I lost one of my dearest nephews. Whenever I visited Bangladesh and during the few years he resided in KSA, he used to stay by my side like shadow. The love and respect he showed me can only be compared with the love and respect that one receives from one’s own children. In my view, he was one in a million. I saw very few young men like him who were pious, responsible, professional, caring and loving. He had all the qualities of a wonderful Muslim. He passed away after suffering from cancer for almost a year. Inna lillahi wainna ilaihi rwajeoon. May Allah accept all of his good deeds and grant him Jannah al-Firdous.

During his illness he was in constant pain, but I never heard him complaining about this. Before his death, I asked him, over the phone, how are you? He replied, “I am very fine my uncle, I am grateful to Allah Almighty that He gave me such a great ni’mah (blessing). I asked him, you are suffering from such a life threatening illness, how is it a ni’mah? He said, “Uncle, Allah could have taken me with a sudden death, but he is so kind to me that he has given me ample opportunity to do tawbah (repentance) and engage in His dhikr (remembrance).” I was amazed at his level of patience, wisdom and reliance on the Merciful Lord of the World, Allah.

I lost another good friend of mine towards the end of the year. He, too, had suffered from cancer for a few months before he passed away. His patience, wisdom and reliance upon Allah was exemplary as well. I have also lost a few other close relatives who were very close to Almighy Allah in all aspects of their lives. I am really grateful for their love and affection. Every single death left enormous lessons for me. May Allah accept all of their good deeds and grant them Jannat al-Firdous, ameen.

Unfortunately the year has finished with an unimaginable shock and pain. The last two days of the year witnessed the devastating end of democracy in my birth land, Bangladesh. It was sad to see the state sponsored rigging in the election that has thrown the country into a dangerous era of political bitterness and social unrest.

In addition to the joy and grief I have mentioned so far, the life in 2018 witnessed lots of encouraging successes and motivating challenges, some of which are yet to be overcome. I took on many challenges whilst keeping in mind that challenges always come with opportunities. In this one year’s journey we, through team work, have overcome many challenges with the joy of success while many more still remain with obstacles and lessons to be learned. One thing however, became very clear to me throughout this year: nobody is too old to learn lessons from his or her life. Life is an ongoing school; its best teachers are your actions; and a passionate student can benefit from this school every moment, day in and day out. The lessons I have learned from my life journey in 2018 can be summarized as the 5Ps, (Plan, Patience, Perseverance, Progress and Protect)

1.     Plan: Planning is the pillar of success. Allah Almighty has imbued us with all sorts of potential to win the challenges we come across in and around our lives. But to access and make full use of our potential, it is imperative that we plan. It is true that if you don’t have your own plan, you will become captive to someone else’s plan and that may not always be helpful for your own growth and success. Therefore, before falling into other’s plan, it is better to have your own plan with the right vision and strategy.

2.     Patience: We must remember that patience is the most powerful warrior in our life. If we lose it, we will lose the battle. Most people rush to achieve their visions. But we must know that no vision can be achieved without following its natural course. Therefore, in achieving our life goals and visions, we must adopt the pace of nature and without patience it is impossible to stay with the pace of nature. As Joyce Meyer said “Patience is not simply the ability to wait - it's how we behave while we're waiting”. To be successful we must achieve excellence in Patience. Allah (SWT) says in Sura Al-Imran: “O you who have believed, Be patient and attain excellence in patience,,,”

3.     Perseverance: Patience is not enough to attain success in life. Success never comes overnight. It requires lots of hard work and consistent hard work. Many of us have a tendency to give up in the middle of the journey, telling ourselves, ‘I have done enough hard work but I don’t see any successes.’ We must remember that perseverance is the hard work that we do after becoming tired of doing hard work. So we should not stop our journey until we reach the destination. Great achievements were not by chance encounter or through miracles but through hard work and perseverance.

4.     Progress: If we adopt the above three Ps in our life journey we will definitely start seeing progress. We must not be complacent upon seeing the first few steps of progress, we should continue doing hard work until progress attains sustainability. Progress without sustained impact is not progress but an eye-wash. We should carefully assess if our progress has brought any change in our lives. The biggest change should be the change in our mindset. If progress does not have any positive change in our mindset it cannot bring any meaningful change in our lives. Therefore, we need to make sure that our efforts make real progress.

5.     Protect: Progress without protection is not progress but unguarded success. We should be cautious that success always comes by defeating its associated enemies. Defeated enemies always try to avenge their opponents and after defeat they become arrogant. Therefore, we have to ensure that our progress is guarded with protection. I have learned a good lesson from the following quotation of Michael Bassey Johnson. He said,   “Protect your good image from the eyes of negative viewers, who may look at your good appearance with an ugly fiendish eye, and ruin your positive qualities with their chemical infested tongues.” The best protection is to not become complacent in the face of success. Success does not have any end, it requires constant improvement. Therefore, after success, we must start the next journey of improvement which will subsequently lead us to innovation. In short, the best way forward is to keep the book of knowledge open, and to keep our eyes open and cautious.

Finally, we have to learn and master the art of controlling our anger. Anger is our enemy and Shaytan’s weapon to destroy our success. I learn from the success story of Nelson Mandela who one said, “Your anger is hot but cannot cook”, hence anger is useless.

We have to be strong to protect our success. Our beloved Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “The strong-man is not one who wrestles well but the strong man is one who controls himself when he is in a fit of rage.”

I wish and pray that may Almighty Allah grant us a happy and prosperous life for the days and years ahead, ameen.

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