Mirza Yawar Baig – The 5 Truths
AI: Summary ©
The importance of suffering from 2 types of pain, discipline and regret, and focus and choice is emphasized. The need for effective communication and investing in children is also emphasized. The importance of writing to inform one's own values and connect with people who have lived long before them is emphasized, particularly in light of the Magtah and teacher in a rubble examples. The importance of writing to inform one's own accomplishments and empower people to pursue their ideas is emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
My brothers and sisters,
I want to tell you 5 things,
5 truths about life.
The first truth is
we must all we must all suffer
from 2 kinds of pain,
The pain of discipline or the pain of
regret.
All of us,
we must suffer from 2 kinds of pain.
The pain of discipline or the pain of
regret.
The pain
of discipline is painful
but regret is tragic.
The pain of discipline ends
and converts to pleasure.
The pain of regret is permanent.
Number 2,
everything is possible.
Everything.
Whatever you dream of is possible,
but everything has a price.
You will pay the price
when the price looks like an investment,
not when it looks like a cost.
Perspective,
whether it looks like investment or cost depends
on your perspective and perspective is a function
of position,
So change your position.
Number 3,
it is a myth
that there is not enough time.
We all have enough time.
What we don't have enough of
is focus.
Focus
is the art of ignoring fluff.
Focus is the art of ignoring fluff.
What is fluff
and what is essential
depends on what you want to achieve in
life.
If you don't have a life goal,
you can never have direction
because you have no goal, no direction
and you can never succeed
in reaching that goal.
Number 4,
choices
determine success
and failure,
where we choose to spend our time and
energy,
who we choose as friends,
who we marry,
what we choose to read,
who and what we give importance to,
and even more,
who and what
we choose to ignore,
what we choose to respond to
and what we choose not to respond to,
who we respect
and why,
what we are thankful for
and what we complain about,
Whether our TV is bigger than our bookshelf.
All of these
are markers
of success or failure.
Finally,
it is true
that it's never too late
but equally true is that options
reduce
and the cost of change increases with time.
The more you delay,
the more costly and painful
change becomes
until you reach a point where you will
not change
because it's too costly and too painful even
though you know you must change.
Quick decision making or speed
is a competitive advantage.
So the sooner we start, the better.
Remember
that it is our life
and only we have control over it.
And that is why
only we are accountable for it.
To do all these things, these 5 things,
you need 3 things.
1,
the ability to concentrate,
which means a long attention span,
not a short one. The ability to concentrate.
2,
the ability to conceptualize
your experience.
And 3 is the ability
to communicate
communicate effectively and powerfully.
That means
concentrating on one thing
without allowing anything else to distract you,
reading extensively
and widely to develop a varied
and rich vocabulary,
and learning to get along with people.
That last one,
learning to get along with people
is the enabler for the other 2
Because without people,
you cannot achieve anything in life.
If there was
somebody who could
possibly position himself
as being in a position where he did
not need anybody,
that was the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
He could have said, I get waheem from
Allah. I don't need you.
But Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave him people.
And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala commanded him and
said,
What do they know that I don't know?
By definition, He is the Rasul,
so He will know more than them.
But Allah is saying
For what?
Because you need people.
Without people, you cannot achieve anything.
But the interesting thing is that people do
things for their reasons,
not for yours.
So effective communication, therefore, is the ability to
help them to see
what is in it for them
in what you want them to do for
you.
Effective communication
is the ability to help them to see
what is in it for them
in what you want them
to do for you.
Everyone listens to one station. What's that station?
Wiiifm.
What's in it for me?
This is not about fooling people. This is
not about telling some spiel. No. This is
truthfully
explaining to them how they can benefit. Meaning,
you are concerned for their benefit.
So monitor yourself on these parameters,
and you can tell if you will be
successful or not.
How long can you concentrate on a task
without looking at your phone? These are the
parameters to monitor yourself on. Right?
How long can you concentrate on a task
without looking at your phone?
How long
how many books
do you read every month?
How many of your sentences begin with
and or so
or I was like this. I was like
that
because you have no words.
All these mean that your vocabulary is deficient.
You need more words.
Then let me ask you a question. Do
you like
watching a documentary more
or TikTok
and shorts?
Which?
Do you like to spend time with yourself?
Like to?
Or do you find loneliness to be a
problem?
Do you like to introspect?
Like to.
Or
do you need to be surrounded by talking
faces all the time? Jack. Jack. Jack. Jack.
Jack.
Finally,
how much time do you give to something
worthwhile
versus
shopping for things you don't need
and watching sports.
I won't mention the other thing because they
are haram anyway.
Monitor yourself on these things.
Ask yourself,
what is it that you are investing? Those
of you who have children and some of
you are Inshallah,
grant you
beautiful children.
What are you investing on those children?
By investing, I don't mean
some fancy school which you are spending a
fortune
to sell them to or how many gadgets?
What is the does your son or daughter
have the latest iPhone? I'm not talking about
that.
I'm talking about investment in their akhlaq,
investment in their.
It's about investment in
making them
capable of succeeding in life.
For example, in this masjid we have a
Magtah
4 days a week, 2 week, 2 days,
2 2 hours a day, 4 days a
week after school.
How many of you send your children to
the Magdal?
If you are not sending, why are you
not sending?
It's not a money business. Believe me. I've
I've I've said this many times before. No
child will be turned away because the parents
cannot pay the fees. No child.
So if your child is not studying the
Maktah, it's not because of money. So
why is your child not studying the?
You have time to take your child for
soccer practice and for this practice and for
football practice and for God knows what practice.
He wants the time to teach them judo
and karate and God knows what? But you
don't have the time to take, bring them
to the to learn about Allah
to learn about Rasulullah
How will you answer Allah? Especially when Allah
said for us
a Huja.
What is the name of that Huja?
A huja.
A
huja
is
huja.
Because in that same Gaza,
they have flattened everything. They have bombed everything
to rubble. They have no homes. They have
nothing.
But in that rubble, in the middle of
that pile of stones,
there is a teacher and there are children
who are studying from that teacher. They're teaching
them about Allah
They're teaching them about Rasulullah
They're teaching teaching them and teaching them and
these children have just been bombed out of
their house.
Now if they have the time and if
they have the concern
to take their children and that they should
not be disconnected from the deed, What is
your excuse?
What is your excuse?
Finally,
write.
Learn to write and write well because writing
is crucial.
Because that is what distinguishes us from animals
and enables us to build on the work
of previous generations.
All creatures have languages.
Birds talk to one another. Animals talk to
one another. All creatures have languages.
They communicate.
They experience things. They remember things. Some of
them for a very long time. They even
teach some of them to their offspring. That's
how predators teach
their cubs to hunt. The tigress teach teaches
young cubs how to hunt. The leopardist teaches
her her, cubs how to hunt. So they
do all of that.
But none of them have the critical tool
to transcend the time and generational
barrier
where their experience can be recalled,
relived and learned from
by generations
long after they've gone. They don't have that.
And that tool
is writing.
It's not speaking. It is writing.
In the 300000
years
that our species, the Homo sapiens, have existed
on the earth,
we pass over centuries like you would pass
over days
and come to our 5000 years out of
300,000
when we find the first writing.
Mesopotamian
cuneiform script
invented in Sumer,
which is in present day Iraq
in about
3,200
BCE, which is about 5000 years ago.
And that can be traced
without a break to the present current day
phonetic alphabet.
Incidentally,
that was the period in which Ibrahim alaihis
salam lived
in the same place, Mesopotamia.
Thanks to writing, we have countless works of
literature and poetry
and science and technology and history
that color the tapestry of documented human history,
that inspire and light the fires of idealism,
and encourage us to great enterprise
a 1000 years after they were written.
Words
that bring tears to the eyes
and light up our lives.
Writing is the thread that connects us to
those who lived long before us
but because of whom
we are who we are.
Those who write
are remembered.
Those who
don't disappear.
So learn
to write well.
Ask Allah
to enable
us
to live our lives in a way that
pleases His majesty and grace.
And where we will be
a means of for
ourselves and for generations which come after us.