Mirza Yawar Baig – How to beat sadness
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AI: Transcript ©
The topic of my khubba is how to
beat sadness,
how to get over sadness.
Last week, I told you that Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala prohibited
sadness.
Now that sounds unreasonable, then you might say,
I don't want to I don't want to
feel sad, but I do.
So why is sadness prohibited?
We are conditioned to see emotions
as good or bad, positive or negative.
The reality is that emotions
are value neutral.
They're neither positive
nor negative.
But what we do with the emotion
can make it positive
or negative.
So while we don't have control over the
emotion itself,
we do have
complete control
over what we choose to do
thereafter after we feel that emotion.
For example, people say
don't get angry.
Now that is as unreasonable as saying don't
get hungry or don't feel thirsty.
In Ramadan,
however, we feel hungry
and thirsty,
but we choose to ignore
that to please Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Similarly, we may feel angry with someone,
but we choose to control our anger for
the same reason, for the pleasure of Allah.
Someone may come to us with gossip, or
we may have
the urge to backbite someone and slander someone.
But we stop ourselves because backbiting
is destructive.
And like all destructive things, it is haram.
In the case of sadness and grief,
to feed it shows that we are human
and that our hearts are alive.
But to allow ourselves
to get bogged down in it
is our choice.
We can equally
easily choose
to break out of it.
For example,
upon facing bereavement, when we lose a loved
1,
we can either fall into depression or despair
or we can choose to be grateful to
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala for having granted us
the company
of that friend for the duration that we
were together.
We can recall and relive the beautiful memories
of our time together and pray for them
and give charity
to benefit
them. If we lose our job,
we can choose to see it as an
opportunity
to become entrepreneurs,
which most people in jobs declare to be
their aspirational goal, but do nothing to achieve
it. Until 1 day, they find themselves
looking at the at their office building from
the outside without their passkey.
If we face a financial
loss, for example, or lose a relationship, which
is far more serious than financial loss, We
can choose to analyze what went wrong and
learn lessons
from it to prevent it happening a second
time. In all these cases and more, we
will feel sad. But what we choose
to do with that sadness
will spell spell the difference between happiness and
gaining wisdom or wasting a life opportunity.
Sadness is prohibited for 2 other reasons.
When our sadness turns morbid and is more
than is normal in a situation,
it means that we have not recognized
the truth of the matter. And the truth
of the matter is what Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala told us. Where he said
He said
And I said, whatever you have will end.
Whatever you have will perish, whatever you have
will finish,
but whatever is with Allah
is everlasting.
And we will certainly reward the steadfast
according to the best of their deeds.
Now
question to ask you, how can you grieve
or regret losing something
that didn't belong to you in the first
place? That you didn't own in the 1st
place. It was not yours.
So how can you say that you lost
it?
You were given. You had been given
that thing,
that individual, that person, that life, that life,
that experience
in trust as a gift from
for a specific period of time temporarily.
When that period ended it went back to
its real owner,
Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala who is also our owner
and to whom we will also return 1
day.
When we remember this, loss turns to gain
and sadness turns to gratitude.
You become thankful for what you had instead
of feeling sad for what you lost.
The second bigger problem with prolonged sadness is
that it takes away the desire to go
forward in life.
If you allow yourself to fall into that
trap, you become morose,
withdrawn
and depressed.
This is unique to sadness.
With other emotions which are considered negative, it
doesn't happen.
Anger, for example, can can energize you to
solve a problem
or to ensure that a criminal is punished.
Fear is a universal motivator to greater effort
and to and in the right dose,
it brings the world around you alive.
I recall with great happiness my wanderings in
Indian and South America and jungles,
home to tigers and leopards and bears and
elephants and jaguars and anacondas and other highly
dangerous animals. But being in the forest always
made me feel more alive and aware and
appreciate my surroundings and gave me tremendous confidence
in my own ability to survive.
As you can see, I did.
The presence of danger is a great motivator
because your life is at stake. You will
never have that feeling when you look at
the same animal in a zoo.
This is what motivates entrepreneurs for example to
take risks.
It also motivates
people who do what are called extreme sports.
It's the actual physical
possibility of dying
and the way that you have to fit
your body
and your mind
against the odds
of the environment, against the odds of whatever
you're doing in order to survive. That's the
biggest threat.
Entrepreneurs also take risks and this these risks
are are motivated. 1 of the principal factors
is fear. It's the possibility of loss which
paradoxically motivates a person to put himself or
herself in a situation where it can become
real.
It is a race against odds which is
so heady and exciting.
And anyone who is about to start a
very difficult and potentially life threatening climb up
a mountain.
Ask them if they feel any fear.
They do. They said, Yes, we do feel
but we do feel the fear.
But that not only
motivates them but keeps them safe.
Those who have no fear die.
This will suffice to show how different so
called negative emotions have
positive
effects.
The exception
is sadness.
Sadness, if you allow it,
drags you down into a spiral of anxiety
and depression and despair. If you read the
seerah of
depression. If you read the seerah of Rasulullah
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, you can see places where
Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was sad. He was
very sad, but he was never depressed and
never despaired.
He always had hope in Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala's mercy and looked forward to Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala help which always came.
You must remember that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
promised to help and his promise is always
true.
Allah never lets you down.
The timing of the help, however, is according
to Allah
knowledge which is superior to ours.
That is why we must do our best
and trust Allah
to do the rest.
The finest example of this sequence of Sabar
and Tawakkul
is the actions
of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
before the battle of Badr. A battle which
was potentially a differentiator
between survival of the nation's Muslim community
and its annihilation.
Rasool SAW Salam made all preparations
for the battle with limited resources that he
had.
Then he stood in salah and begged Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala for his help.
He was not complacent
about preparing his material resources
to face the lethal conflict. He did not
rely simply on prayer,
neither did he allow his material
preparations to make him feel overconfident.
He put a situation before Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala, who knows and who can see.
But it is the position of the Abd,
of the slave
to beg his Rabb, Jalajalahu
and so he did. The rest is history
and father became the foundation
of success.
Tests are not unusual. Allah Subhana Wa Taala
promised to test us. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
said,
Allah
said,
do you think
that you will be admitted into Jannah without
being tested like those before you?
They were afflicted with suffering and adversity
and were so violently
shaken that even the messenger and believers with
him cried out, when will the help of
Allah come? Mataanasubu
Allah. Indeed, and this is Allah answering, indeed
Allah's help is always near.
In a beautiful
hadith narrated by Khabab ibn al Aarat He
said, We complained to Rasool Allah
sallam about the persecution
inflicted on us
while he was sitting sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
in the shade of the Kaaba leaning over
his burub, his covering his his mishla.
We said to him, would you seek
help for us? Please make dua for us.
Please bring for us. He said, among the
nations before you,
a believing
man would be put in a ditch
that was dug for him and a saw
would be placed over his head and he
would be cut into 2 pieces.
Yet that torture
would not make him give up his religion.
His body would be combed with iron combs
that would remove his flesh from the bones
and nerves,
yet that would not make him abandon his
religion. By Allah, this religion, that is Islam,
will prevail
until a traveler
from San'a, which is in Yemen,
to Hadermaut
will fear none but Allah
or a wolf regarding
his sheep. But you people are hasty,
This Kaaba
was 1 of the
first
of the Sahaba
along
the who was a beautiful of the Quran
whose recitation
Sayyidina Muhammad Al Khattab
heard in the house of his sister Fatima
and accepted his son. We understand from this
that tests and difficulties and trials
are a part of life. Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala comforted us and taught us how to
deal with difficulties.
He said,
Allah
Allah Subhanahu wa'ala said in Zoon Tabaa which
means it does not matter. He's addressing
the people, the the believers, the believers, Muslim
and Muslims.
He says it does not matter if you
believers do not support him.
Because Allah
did in fact support him already
when the disbelievers drove him out of Makkah,
and he was only 1 of 2.
The second 1 was
is mentioning 1 of 2 Yani, the other
1 is also mentioned in this ayat.
He was only
1 of 2. While they both were in
the cave, he reassured his companion,
Do not worry
for Allah is certainly with us. Do not
worry, do not feel sad. Laatazan
Inaba hamana. So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala sent
down his
and
made the word of the
disbelievers that is his enemies
lowest
while the word of Allah is supreme and
Allah
is Almighty All Wise. In this Ayatul Kareema
Allah
referred to the time of Rasulullah
and Abu Bakr Rasulullah
were together in the
the cave of being
persuaded being pursued
by the enemy.
The Quraysh came right up to the mouth
of the cave such that Abu Bakr as
Siddhi Fadir Anhu could see their
feet. He said, You Rasulullah
if they only look down they will see
us.
And Rasulullah
replied,
have no fear or sadness.
Truly Allah is with us.
Was content.
The rest is history.
The passing away of Rasulullah Salaam and the
wars of Ridha,
people asked
asked
how he could be so calm and serene
when literally
the survival of Islam was at stake.
He said, after that night in the Garif
Sow,
after that night in the Garif Sow, I
have never been afraid or sad.
The lesson we learn, my brothers and sisters,
is that when faced with loss or the
fear of loss, we do what is most
natural and logical which is to turn to
the only 1 who can help us and
who is not affected
by that situation.