Mirza Yawar Baig – Resilience is the test of faith
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Inna alhamdulillahi wassalatu wassalamu ala rasulillahi waba'id
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said to Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam in the Quran, Fasbir
kama sabara ulul azmi minal rusul Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala said, Have sabr the way
the great messengers, the steadfast ones, the ulul
azm minal rusul have sabr the way they
had sabr.
And we know the ulul azm minal rusul
is Nuh sallallahu alaihi wasallam himself, Ibrahim alaihi
wasallam, Musa alaihi wasallam, Nuh alaihi wasallam, and
Isa alaihi wasallam.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is saying to
the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, Have sabr like
they had sabr.
Now what is this sabr?
Sabr is what we know as resilience.
Resilience is the ability to come back from
a disaster.
The ability to come back from stress.
When you measure somebody's fitness, you don't measure
it by what he can do.
You measure it by how quickly his heart
beat and his breathing comes back to normal
after stress.
When they do the cardiac stress tests and
all that.
They don't measure how fast the machine was
running.
They make you run on the treadmill and
then they measure how quickly you come back
to your normal state.
And that's the way of looking at resilience.
Resilience is how soon you can come back
to your normal state after having been through
stress.
How soon can you recover from disaster?
I have a ground rule.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala keep us
safe from all disasters and all tragedies inshallah.
But the ground rule that I have, meaning
from whatever I've read of history, is that
if you find yourself alive at the end
of that situation, then it means that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala has chosen you to
change the situation.
If you were not meant to change the
situation, you would have perished.
If you did not perish, if you were
alive at the end of that...
Whatever the situation was.
If Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala kept you
alive at the end of that situation, then
it means that he has chosen you to
change that situation.
Now how can we do that?
There are three steps to resilience and we'll
talk about that in three days.
The first and most important step in being
resilient is to recognize reality, is to accept
the facts, is to look at the situation
clearly, not through tinted glasses, but through clear
glasses and to recognize the situation as it
is without any sugarcoating, without any pretensions, without
any, you know, excuses, without any exporting of
blame to somebody else and so on.
Is to recognize the situation that you are
in and to say that this is the
reality of my situation and this applies whether
it is at a personal level, if you
are looking at yourself, your own life, whatever
you are going through or if we are
looking collectively at what the Ummah of Muhammad
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is going through or if
any country is looking at what their people
are going through and so on and so
forth.
So the same rule applies whether you are
analyzing the situation at a personal level or
at a collective level and the first step
is recognize the reality.
Don't fool yourself, don't try to pretend, don't
try to say, no, no, it is not
really so bad, don't try to say, well,
you see, after all, it is not my
fault.
No, it's not a question of fault, it's
a question of owning and accepting responsibility for
whatever is going on.
And the rule is that if it happened
to you, then you were part of the
reason it happened.
If you were not part of the reason
it happened, then it would not have happened
to you.
So if it happened to you, it means
that you contributed to it one way or
another.
And that is the fact.
For example, if you take something like global
warming, I mean, this is a macro level
issue and thanks to that, we are seeing
all kinds of changes of climate and so
on and so forth, most of which are
negative, if not all.
Now, one can argue that I, as a
personal, at a personal level, I did not
do anything to create global warming or to
accelerate it.
But collectively, we are all responsible.
So either you did something or you are
doing something directly or you are keeping quiet
as a result of which whatever is happening
is happening.
So therefore, there is a collective responsibility.
So in resilience, first step is to recognize
that reality, to accept fact and to accept
your own contribution in those facts and to
accept that, yes, I am responsible.
I may not be responsible for the whole
thing.
I may not be responsible for everything entirely
from beginning to end, but definitely I am
part of the reason why this thing happened.
Why was to do that?
You must do that because that is the
only way that the solution will be given
into your hands.
The reality of problem solving is that you
cannot solve a problem that does not belong
to you.
You can only solve problems which belong to
you.
This is the reality of life.
I cannot sell something that doesn't belong to
me.
I cannot, you know, do anything to something
which I don't own.
I have control over only that which I
own.
So if I don't own the problem, then
I have no solution for this problem.
So the only way of solving a problem
is to accept ownership for this problem.
I say this is my problem.
Whether it is a domestic problem between husband
and wife, whether it's a problem of the
raising of children, whether it's a problem which
is a question of financial difficulties in your
business, whether it's a problem in terms of
government and administration and governance, whether it's a
problem at a micro or macro level, we
first have to admit that this problem is
mine.
It belongs to me.
If you are looking at becoming overweight, if
you want to lose weight, what must you
do?
You must do what...
No, even before exercise, you have to own
one thing.
I was in Seattle and I was driving
somewhere and somebody was driving me and this
lady who was driving me was, MashaAllah, very
large.
And then she pulled out, she told me,
I lost 200 pounds.
I said, you lost 200 pounds?
She said, yes, I lost 200 pounds.
I said, what did you look like before
that?
She said, I'll show you.
And she pulled out, she kept a picture
of herself in the dashboard.
She pulled out this picture and MashaAllah, she
was like a house.
And she lost 200 pounds.
So I was very impressed.
Anyone who loses 200 pounds, believe me, I'm
impressed.
So I said, how did you lose 200
pounds?
And she made a statement, MashaAllah.
She said, you know, I realized that this
is my mouth.
It's simple as that.
She said, I realized that this is my
mouth, that I cannot put on weight unless
I put something into this mouth.
This is not rocket science, but this is
the absolute truth.
This is my mouth.
You cannot put on weight unless you eat.
And none of us, nobody has tied our
hands up and shoving food down our throat.
Nobody is force-feeding us.
If we are putting on weight, it's because
we decide to eat.
That's it.
So owning the problem is the root of
owning the solution.
The day the lady said, this is my
mouth, she stopped eating.
She decided, I'm going to actively choose what
to eat.
And she lost 200 pounds.
Can you imagine 200 pounds?
She lost 200 pounds.
So I love you.
So the point I'm saying is that the
first step in resilience, whether it is losing
weight, whether it is our Iman, whether it
is Hushu in Salah, whether it is business,
whatever it is, if you are suffering and
I am suffering from a problem, if it
is causing me some level of taqlif, more
or less, what is the first step to
solving it?
Own it.
It is my problem.
It is not somebody else's problem.
This is not happening to me because of
this one, that one, that one.
Forget all of that.
Because if you say that, then the solution
lies in the hand of this one and
that one.
That one and this one is causing you
the problem.
Why will they solve it for you?
Tell me.
So that means you are condemning yourself to
living in that taqlif forever, to living in
that problem and pain forever.
Don't do that to yourself.
You say, this is mine.
I own it.
The moment you own it, the solution is
also given in your hands.