Ammar Alshukry – Isha Khaitrah 13-07-2024
AI: Summary ©
The speaker shares a stance on how young people should learn to be themselves. He gives advice on how to handle one's wits and feelings, emphasizing the importance of staying true to oneself and not giving up on one's hopes. He also gives a framework on how to handle one's success and challenges, emphasizing the importance of finding one's own success and finding one's own success in life.
AI: Summary ©
Can I do something else? Is it okay?
So I see a lot of young people
here, Masha'Allah. Young
young men.
And so,
I'll share with you guys a poem that
I love.
That is one of the very few English
poems that I've come across
that I would wish for young men to
learn.
And it's a poem by Rudyard Kipling, who's
famously the owner or the author of The
Jungle Book,
and it's called If, and it's a it's
a poem that I would encourage you to
go home
to Google,
and if you have any young men in
your life, that you share it with them.
And it goes like this.
It's advice that he gave to a young
man.
And so he says, if you can keep
your wits when all about you are losing
theirs
and blaming it on you,
if you can trust yourself when all men
doubt you, then make allowance for their doubting,
too,
If you can wait and not be tired
of waiting,
or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
or being hated, not give way to hating,
nor look too good, nor talk too wise.
So he's basically saying,
if you can wait, if you can have
sabr,
and not be tired of waiting,
and if you can interact with people and
recognize that sometimes they're gonna treat you badly,
being hated, not give way to hating,
Nor look too good, nor talk too wise.
Don't be a smart aleck.
Don't look too good. Now,
I always like,
Americans, we don't have a problem with looking
too good, but he was British.
And the Brits hate when a person is
like, you know, like a show off. A
guy has a flashy car.
Americans will say, that's really cool. Masha'Allah, Marrook
on the red Ferrari. But the Brits will
be like, who does this person think he
is? Right? So at the end of the
day, you can't remove the author from his
context.
But he says,
if you can dream
and not make dreams your master,
if you can think and not make thoughts
your aim,
if you can meet with triumph and disaster
and treat both impostors just the same. Assalam.
It's beautiful.
If you can dream and not make dreams
your master, like, yes, have vision, but don't
live in the world of dreams.
You got to come back to reality. You
got to do work.
If you can think,
but your goal should not be to think.
Your goal should be to think for the
purpose of action.
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
and treat both impostors just the same, don't
let
your triumphs get to your head,
and don't let your failures get to your
heart.
Recognize that they're both impostors. Be even keeled.
He said, if you can take
one heap of all your winnings,
and
toss it, or turn it, and lose it
in one heap of toss,
And lose and start again at your beginnings,
and never breathe a word about your loss.
He's talking about the idea of of loss.
You might take risks and you might lose,
but don't be that person who's complaining to
everybody
about when you lose.
He says,
if you can
walk with kings,
if you can speak to crowds and not
lose your virtue,
and walk with kings and not lose the
common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt
you,
if all men count with you, but none
too much.
If you can talk to crowds and keep
your virtue,
that's not easy to do.
You know, a lot of people you see
this on social media now, that when they
want to get larger followings, they have to
be controversial.
You have to lose your virtue.
So he says, if you can talk to
crowds
and keep your virtue, that you keep your
integrity,
even as you're getting to bigger and bigger
audiences,
and if you can walk with kings
and not lose the common touch,
if neither
foes, your enemies, nor loving friends can hurt
you, but all men count with you. All
men count with you, but none too much.
Ali ibn
Abi Talib says that love moderately
and hate moderately
because your situation with this person might change.
That person that you aided yesterday, they might
accept Islam.
And then you have to love them. Right?
So so love and hate moderately.
He says, all men count with you, but
none too much. Let all men count with
you.
I respect and I love this person, but
I don't make this person my iman is
attached to this person.
He says, Whoever of you seeking to follow
the path of somebody, follow the path of
those who lived before you because the living,
you don't know if they're going to survive
their tests.
And so I'm not going to let the
downfall of somebody who fails their tests, or
someone who
who has a scandal, or what have you.
I'm not going to let that affect my
iman. He says, let all men count with
you. I respect everyone.
But nobody counts so much that
my confidence is attached to this person. My
faith is attached to this person, other than
obviously the prophet
And then he says, if you can fill
the unforgiving minute
with 60 seconds of long distance run,
Yours is the world and everything that's in
it.
And what's more, you'll be a man, my
son.
If you can fill the unforgiving minute,
life is a it's just a minute. It's
just a it's just a
it's a minute and passes. If you can
fill that minute with 60 seconds and
the
And the
prophet says, no one was given anything more
better and more comprehensive than patience. If you
can fill those 60 seconds with that long
distance run and have that endurance, yours is
the world and everything that's in it. And
what's more,
you'll be a man, my son.
Anyway, so that's if by Rudyard Kipling.
And with that,
I
gave you guys a weird khata ra today.
Jazakamu lakher for your attentive listening.