Morad Awad – Hostage to your Choices
AI: Summary ©
The speaker describes a man named Mike who uses a tool to cut trees and create traffic, but also uses it to avoid touching him. He describes his past experiences and hopes to avoid the future. He goes on a train and describes his thoughts on relaxing and avoiding stress, but also had aference to take the first time his partner saw him on the train.
AI: Summary ©
So I wanted to talk about something
interesting. There was an area that I wanted to live with today.
Allah subhanaw taala. He said,
Could Lunasin be Marchesa Batra? Hina. Every soul
is a hostage to the actions that it does, and what it attains in
what it accrues. Right? We're all what What did Allah use? He used
the word a Hina.
Hina means a hostage, meaning whatever you do, the moment you do
it, you become a hostage to the action that you did.
You become a hostage to the action that you did. And there's no story
Subhanallah you know, sometimes you read something. And
something, Danny from your past comes up, there was a story that
came to my mind when I read this idea.
And that story is from, you know, back in the day more than 10 years
ago, I was.
I was in a job.
I was an engineer, civil engineer at the time. And I'm still a civil
engineer, but I'm not practicing it. But that was my first job as a
civil engineer was a jaw. It was like a bridge,
New York City. And I had to go do like a pre construction,
inspection, make sure everything's okay. Outside in the site. And you
know, in New York City, under the bridges, what do you find? There's
certain things that you see, under the bridges, there's graffiti, and
sometimes there's people that are homeless, and so on, so forth. So
I had to go and disturb their, their pleasant lunch. Tell them
guys, you got to relocate, because we're tearing this bridge down.
And we need to build another one. Right. So I was going and I saw I
saw something shaking in the bushes. And I'm like, What is
what's going on? Because, you know, it was like, kind of dark
and loose. Panola the city is one thing on top of the bridge, but
under the bridge, it's a whole different beast. Right? I've never
seen anything like it. So I went under there. And I see the bushes
shaking. And I'm like, What is going on? Who is is that a person
in there? Is that like a and I thought was like a dog or
something? And subhanAllah a person comes out when I get close.
I'm like, Hey, anybody there? Some dude just jumps up and
just starts running.
And then he comes back. I find them the next day. In the same
place. I'm like, Hey, what's your name? You know, he told me his
name. I forgot. I think it was like David or something. You know,
he looked like a middle aged guy. But 45 years old. So on, but from
the way he looked, is all scruffy looks like he's been sleeping in
the streets for like a year. Doesn't smell good, very raggedy
clothes. And when I looked at his arms, he had like, you know, those
puffy veins and stuff like that looked like he had surgery and
cuts all over his arms and stuff.
And I'm like, Man, this guy doesn't look right. Okay, David.
So I sat down, you know, I was there. And you know, I'm like,
man, what do you do out here? He's like, Oh, this is my home. I'm
looking around like, we're, he's like that. I'm like, You mean the
electric room under the bridge? I'm like, that's locked. Only the
city has the keys. There's like, no, no, we hope. We hope we've
been sleeping there for years. I'm like, Okay, that's cool. That's
fine. But we got to change that up now, because we're about to move
in a lot of heavy equipment. So I'll make but what's your story,
man, you seem like a pretty decent guy. Like he was talking. Normal.
And, you know, he kept scratching and acting weird and twitchy
sometimes, but, but he was for the most part. Yeah. And his brain was
working fine. Right? So I told him, how do you make a living? He
like, well,
I'm like, You're a pretty smart guy. What do you do to make a
living? He's like, you know, I just beg I hold one of those signs
up.
And people donate. But I get creative with it. I'm like, how
creative do you get? Like, how much can you possibly make
collecting change?
He's like, No, I said, you know, when you guys you're off on
weekends, Mike. Yeah. He said, I use your cones to make lane
closures. So he would close two lanes coming out of the George
Washington Bridge going into New York. Right, you know, the Cross
Bronx Expressway for those New Yorkers out here. He would
literally close two lanes out of a three lane Park highway. And then
he'd stand there at the bottleneck and put a sign up like a very
creative sign. Donate, you know, I knew that like some something
funny, and people would actually donate so he'll create the traffic
and he'll get
Like, I'm like, How much do you possibly make doing this? And he
told me I make about $200 a day on average. And on weekends, when
there's a Yankees game, I make 450. I'm like, Wow, this. This is
on top. This is back in like 2010 11.
So Mike man, David here, pretty creative. So that brain is not
going away. So you're actually using it, but not the right way.
Because I'm always wondering where these cones go when we come back
the next week. So
just the point of the story.
I told him, what do you do with all that money? He said, I spend
all of it on one thing. And one thing only, Mike what he said, See
those needles that you find on the floor here, that's all I just keep
injecting myself with this stuff. It's like morphine, heroin,
whatever it is, I don't want to mention like the stuff but he has
his own little, you know, laboratory where he makes this
stuff, right. Him and his little buddies. So and he would, he would
basically inject themselves. And I told him where you put this stuff.
And look, he's like, Well, I started with this arm. And then
the vein bursted and I was gushing blood. I start with this arm. And
then I started putting it in my the back of my knee behind, you
know, my legs and stuff like that. And he showed me everything. I'm
like, Man, you look. So that's disgusting. Why would you do this?
He's like, you know,
looking back at it, I only can change one thing.
I'm like, what is it? He's like, that first time my I actually
accepted to take this. He's like, that's the only time he actually
had a choice. After that, he never had a choice. Again. He said it
was just rolling down the hill. He said that first time, he had a
friend that told him Hey, man, you want to relax, you want to, you
know, you feel those stress, hey, try this stuff, if they give it in
the hospitals and so on. So just check it out. He's like, Nah, man,
he kept brushing it off, tried it, boom, boom, one thing led to
another every week, became twice a week, three times a week fired
from his job, his life ended his wife and kids kicked them out of
the house, because they couldn't put up with him anymore. He had a
decent life. He was a professional, he worked as an
arbor, he would like cut trees and, you know, like, like big
trees go to Canada, big forests. And he was a professional tree
cutter. Right? And he had a degree for it. It's falling, he made good
amounts of money.
Oh, God. He's like, No, I live on the street. And it's been like
that, for God knows how many years like 10 years or something.
But the only choice he had was what he said he's like that first
time was when he had the most strength to say no. And every time
after that, he had less and less of a choice. It was more of like
something I have to do. So I want to tell everyone today
that we are all hostage for the actions that we do this man, he
could not free himself from the decisions he made, because the
decisions he made dictated the life that he's leading at that
time that he was leading. Because the decisions that you make,
dictate the life that you lead, they force a particular future on
you. You may not like that future, you may not see that future. But
the future is inevitable. If you make that choice for yourself.
Whether we choose to get on a website and watch things that are
inappropriate, whether we choose to go to places where we do things
or or see things that are inappropriate that are haram,
whether we decide to chill with people that remind us of haram get
us away from Allah, we are going to be a hostage of that decision.
I get a phone call.
Display person's calling me. I know he's gonna back by and
slender. I know he's gonna ask me to do something how long? I know
this person's gonna, gonna gonna remind me of some of my past that
I'm trying to forget.
Do I swipe and accept the call? Or do I end the call and rejected?
Whose decision is that? That's my decision. But you know what, if
that slight moment I decide to pick up a what's up.
That's it, I made the decision. I am a hostage to this decision.
Now. Whatever happens in that call, whatever sin whatever it
leads up to, I have to pay for with my life. And my whole
trajectory is going to change based on that. I want the younger
brothers and sisters in the crowd to understand this because they
have a lot more to lose. Brothers Sisters, like if I draw a line
from here, up here. Let's assume this is ages zero
and this is age
80 Okay, we start from zero, here, you're about 15. Okay?
You make a slight, you break off on a slight tangent, just a
Millis, like
a fraction of a millimeter.
By the time you're 80,
it's going to be a six inch difference in where your life
could have been,
from where it is, right? So somebody at a young age making
these decisions, they have a lot more to lose. And it'll affect
their trajectory a lot more than it will somebody who's closer to
the end of their life, correct or no? So
before we engage in anything, we need to start thinking a lot about
the decisions that we're about to make.
Before I do anything, before I talk to a person before I accept
the job.
Right now you guys are young. Okay, you could you could do it,
if you got two jobs. One job
is at a startup company, some tech company and another job is at a
bank, they pay to whopping dollars per hour more, a whopping $2,
right? And you're like, man, which job do I accept this job at the
bank, or this job at the startup where I'm doing some other tech
stuff.
And you know, if you get into the bank, you're going to be forced to
that the rest of your it's very likely you could change your
career, you could do anything after. But this is the experience
that you're accumulating. Whatever decision that you make, you will
be a hostage, it's always going to be in your resume, it's always
going to be in your track record, it's always going to be in your
experience. You decide to engage in a relationship
that is not pleasing to Allah subhana wa taala. You pick up
someone shoots your message. And you know, I shouldn't be messaging
this person.
But I choose to, to listen and send a message back. Yeah, hey,
what's up?
You're a hostage to that. Could Lunasin be my cassava travina. So
brothers and sisters, the point of this whole thing is to
start to wait, our actions, like they are going to reflect on all
of our lives because they are and start looking at our actions as if
we are going to be captives of them.
Okay, because that's what Allah told us we're going to be
if you're going to be held hostage, and you had a choice
between this and that, who would you want to be a hostage with?
That's basically the choice that we need to make. We ask Allah
Subhana Allah to Allah to bless us and to guide us to the straight
path to guide us away from haram and to show us the truth and to
protect our children. Amelia Blythe Amin la masala Selim barik
ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa Al Hamdulillah blossom in Santa
Monica
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What's going on? I don't know who
Eileen