Whose Story is This Anyways?

By: Shaista Khurshid, Calgary Alberta

We humans are emotional beings. Any birth gives us hope and joy, while death gives us grief and a sense of loss. In our lifespan we feel hopefulness and hopelessness many times.

لَتَرْكَبُنَّ طَبَقًا عَن طَبَقٍ

[That] you will surely embark upon [i.e., experience] state after state. (84:191)

وَأَنَّهُۥ هُوَ أَضْحَكَ وَأَبْكَىٰ

And that it is He who makes [one] laugh and weep (53:431)

And at various times, we may go through existential crises. We might think about our purpose of being here. Am I fulfilling my purpose? Or do I have a unique purpose in life?

I wonder this more often than not these days. Am I a pessimist looking for some higher purpose in my life? Maybe I am designed to be just a filler. Not unique, nothing special, just ordinary folk, whose purpose is to be and do chores designed by the roles culture has designed. A supporting character, or more so, an extra in the play where you hold the background fabric of society so others can perform crucial and purposeful tasks.

Or is this my pessimistic fallacy?

Maybe I have a greater purpose I do not know about, and I am working on it unknowingly. My question is: are supporting staff lesser than main characters? Maybe in the eyes of the director or producer who is looking forward to the buzz a performance generates. But for our Creator who made us all equal, this approach does not cut it. My question is: who knows what the storyline of this world is? No-one other than the Creator. No-one knows the story, and no-one knows who the real main characters are? Every culture, and people invents ideas or make guesses about the story line and the character placements, but He is Allah who knows the real purpose and story. He knows our function; He knows where we perform our best. It is Him who does all that.

We are all small pieces of a huge puzzle where all of us have our own purpose and work. We are born, we do our work and serve our purpose. And when time comes, we leave our world. This creates the huge fabric of this world where constantly people come, and people go. Different people do different things. People live differently, speak different languages, and think differently. For a layman these might be colossal differences, but for the Creator it is part of the beauty of this giant and versatile fabric. Any attempt to change the fabric of this world could end up in disasters and massacres.

We as Muslim believe that this place earth, which we call home, is a temporary abode. A test center where we all are being tested to claim the prize of the next life - the permanent abode. And all of us have purpose and are unique pieces of puzzle designs and placed by Allah to serve an external and internal purpose.

The original question arises then - whose story is this anyway? Not ours, not yours, not our historians’, philosophers’, or scientists’, as they are just one piece of this giant puzzle designed by Allah. Every soul created and given life has a right to live peacefully without being affected by the malice of others. Every soul has its own story, woven together into the huge and intricate fabric of our global story.

How does anyone know what Allah has designed? Did they travel through all the universe, dive into the deepest of the ocean, and grasp the full complexity of this universe? So then why do we think that some on earth get to decide what the story is, who is winning, and who is losing, who is living well, and who is not, and who is succeeding and who has failed to achieve in this life? Why is there a hierarchy within humans? Why do we treat some better than we treat others, often those wealthy, successful, and privileged? We all are created by the same Creator. Fashioned and placed by Him. He decided who we would be and where we would be. So, when we associate ideas and dogma to the individual and masses which have nothing to do with what Allah wants, we are trying to speak on the behalf of Allah without his approval. It is His idea, His design. Our job is to follow this divine path. If we try to disturb this delicate weave of fabric, then we should be careful as to whom we are trying to fool or please. Because whatever we try, we cannot fool God.

1 Saheeh International

Photo by Enmanuel Betances Santos on Unsplash