Life’s Just Games & Entertainment

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today's phobia is about an idea that belongs to SoCal and clubroot. It's similar Ayat occur in other places in the Quran. Sometimes in the Quran, Allah will give us a comparison between this life that we have these few years that we have to spend on this earth above the ground. And something that we can observe, like to understand life itself, he'll give us a comparison. Sometimes he'll compare it to rain and the growth of a plant. Other times we'll compare it to other things to give us some perspective. This is one of those ions. But what's interesting about this idea is Allah did not compare life to something, he almost made it equal to something this is in the Arabic language, this

is called a test we had believed. And what that is in simple languages, you know, you see an athlete, and you say, This guy is like a lion. You know, he's, he's like a lion on the playground, but you use the word like, right, so when someone's listening to you, they can tell you're making a comparison. But if you want to go really far, in your comparison, you just say this guy is a lion, you don't even mention the playground, because that would make someone think you're talking about an analogy, you equated this person to alive, right? So that's a very strong form of connection between the lion and the athlete, even though literally, he's not a lion. Right. So this is the kind of

thing that happens in the Quran, when two things are very closely related to each other. Or the more the more you contemplate it, the more you will learn about the first thing, the second thing will make you really understand the first thing So what Allah says about my life and your life that we're living now, first of all, he says, my heavy hand here to dunya Javi is kind of Allah Fie, he feels from a village a sense, you could just say worldly life. But he says this worldly life, he adds the word this in the idea. And the idea of that is at the crib, what scholars of language call it supreme. Meaning I want you to notice everything about this life of yours that you're experiencing

this day, this year, this decade, you know, this experience these people that are in your life, this work that you do this business that you do these friends that you have this family that you have, every part of this life is kind of being focused, a lens is being brought on to it. And it's being zoomed in on just with the word heavy. So when I when I had the hill, hacker dunya, he says, None this entire life, this worldly life, amounts to nothing more. It's all it is, is loved one when it's just two things, and a rough translation of loved one, whether it would be entertainment, law, who can be translated as entertainment, you can also think of it as distraction. So two words, you can

think about what the word level, Allah is saying this life has nothing but entertainment or distraction. That's the first thing. And when he says we're live in a game, or a sport, or a match, nowadays, we call it a match. Right? That's, that's all it is. So in this ayah, Allah has made me think about entertainment. And he's made me think about distraction. And he's saying, delete, connected between entertainment and distraction, and what's going on in this life, or what is entertainment. At the end of the day, somebody's had a busy day at work, they're mentally exhausted, they're tired, they get home, they're like, I just need to sit back and just watch some I don't know

some highlights some sports highlights on YouTube or play some video games or watch a TV show or something. Just need to let loose a little bit, entertain themselves or tell if kids want to be entertained. Tell me a story, right? Kids want to be told a story or they want you to sing a song for them or something like that. And of course when people get older you

They just have the more adult version of the same thing. It's either the music industry or the movie industry or the, you know, the the Netflix's and the Amazons, and all of that stuff, right? It's at the end of the day, it's still the same thing that you want that as a child, you just want the advanced version of it as an adult. When we're doing that, and somebody says, What are you doing? Let me just relax, okay, I had a long day. Let me just can I just breathe a little, this is just my take, this is me taking a mental break, right? This is me taking a mental break, you're not somebody else's doing the work. And by the way, the difference between Lahu and Derek is that if you're doing

the work, you're kicking the ball, you're taking the shot, you know, but in that hole, you're just sitting back and somebody else is doing the entertaining for you, you're just watching and enjoying or listening and things like that. But as you're doing that, you're what happens sometimes is people get so lost in that, that they miss an appointment, or they get so lost, and that they forget to do the groceries and the stores already closed now. Meaning the idea the Arabs associated entertainment with distraction, because it's always taking you away from something that's more important. Something needed your attention, something needed my attention. And I have lost track of time. And

before I know it, you know, there's, you know, the time for it is over. Right. So the same thing happens. For example, some of you students here you have an exam coming up or something, now there's a break, but before the break, you had an exam coming up, and you're studying for something like, oh, I need a break. I know the exam is in four hours, let me just turn on the PlayStation for a little bit. And just let my you know, relax my mind. And before you know it, you're beating the final boss and the game and you beat the entire game. And you're 20 minutes late for class and you'd have you know, you forget the review, you almost missed the entire exam. I travel a lot. I've

actually seen people miss their flights, because they were they had their headphones on. And they were just watching something. And then they get look up and the there's a different city, this board in there like

wasn't this going to Dallas, no, that flight already left, this is going to Miami now. You know,

the idea of LA who is distraction, something that gets my attention and more important things that had a limited time schedule, they passed me by the opportunity passed me by well Allah is saying that life is full of this. In other words, in a 24 hour day between waking up and going to sleep the conscious hours that I have, and you have there are priorities, there are things we have to get done, every one of us has a to do list that we need to get done. And what happens is we get distracted, and that To Do List barely gets touched, we get one or two things done, then the mind gets distracted, we do something else and the things that you really had to do didn't get done and

that's just one day, but then sometimes you're like this year I'm gonna learn some Arabic.

This year I'm gonna memorize over sutras. But this year I'm gonna do this and you have people are not in the in the modern world, people have all these new year's resolutions, right? We Muslims have Ramadan resolutions or whatever. So we have these resolutions and they're like, I'm just gonna do this. And then next Ramadan comes, it's getting closer. And you're like, yeah, yeah. So sad man. I've been, I've been making this commitment for 10 Ramadan's now, and I just haven't gotten around to, you know, this thought or this idea or this, this this commitment that I made or reading this book, or learning more about the seal of the prophets like Selim or something, you made this

commitment, you keep putting it off, putting it off, something else distracts something else calls your attention, what the problem the problem with that is our inability to balance our inability to say, Okay, this much time allotted for breathing room, but not enough not so much that it takes away from important tasks, this needs, some things need to get done, they cannot be compromised, they have to be addressed. Right. So Allah says, most people for most of our lives, we look back and we say I wasted a lot of years, or I wasted a lot of time, or I could have done so much more with my years, I could have done so much more with that time. And then life later on, you get you know,

physically you you're less capable, financially, you're more strained, you're more responsible. They're people depending on you, you don't have the kind of free time you used to have. Now you look back and you're like I wasted my college years. I wasted my early, you know, pre married life and all of that stuff I wasted all that time. And now when you have your children and they're hanging out like you used to hang out, you're like, don't do what I did. Don't Don't waste your time. Actually, you were a bigger waste of time in your years. But that guilt has piled up on you and you're slapping it on to your next generation. Right? So this is what Lahu does. But more

interestingly, Allah didn't just compare this life to love who he also compared it to learning, to sports to games to a match. That's a really interesting comparison. Because a match is about competition. You're trying to defeat an opponent, you're literally inside of that square if it's a basketball court or it's a football field.

yield, right or as a soccer field or something, you're at war with your opponent for those for those 90 minutes, or for those four quarters for that, you know, in that time, the only focus you have is I have to defeat this enemy. That's all we have to do, we have to crush this enemy, right? So our life is actually filled with a number of matches, you have some a challenge in front of you, and you're going at it, you're focused on it. And while that match is happening, nothing else matters. You just this is all that matters. But the thing with that is, you know, both teams, you, especially when things get very serious, both teams have athletes that have prepared their entire life to be

able to play that match. They took to get to the professional level to reach the finals or whatever, right, but only one team is going to win, they can't both win. So all of that work is going to look like it was completely gone to waste. After all of that effort, because nobody's going to clap for you for great effort. Thanks so much nobody did, they'll just put the camera on you because they want to see you cry. And then they'll turn the camera to the winner. Right? And everybody's cheering the winner. And this is this is what this life is doesn't matter how hard you try to study for an exam. If you failed, nobody's gonna say great effort, you know, they're gonna say you fail you all

that matters is you failed all those 1000s of hours of study and preparation, and all of that none of that matters not because the only thing that matters now is that you didn't pass. That's all that matters. And this life is about a series of tests.

We either pass or fail,

or fail as a fail constantly on and off the field. Whether it's in school, whether it's at work, whether it's in our relationships, whether it's literally on a playground, it's all of these events over and over again. And by comparison, what Allah has given us is something so beautiful. In the same vein, Allah says what and they said it in Sandy Illamasqua. And so to nurture, he says human beings will have nothing except their efforts. He didn't say human beings will have nothing except their accomplishments. He said their efforts. So unlike this life, where the only thing that matters is winning the game, that's the only thing that matters. with Allah, the only thing that matters is

the effort. That's what celebrated because what is the Quran teaches winning and losing actually comes not from people, it comes from Allah. And the only thing that actually comes from people is effort. So the only thing you get credit for is effort, you don't get credit for the victory. If Agia Nasrallah it's attributed to Allah, when the victory from the aid from Allah, Allah, and the victory came, right. So the same way they can iamu that we don't have enough when Muslims suffered a defeat in a hood. Allah says these are days we flipped between people, we flipped between people. It's not Muslims last and the far one Allah allowed them to have victory, just like Allah allowed

the Muslims to have victory and better if the victory and loss is coming from Allah, the effort is the only thing that is going to be commented on in 60 or so I author there in Silicon Valley, and Brian, commenting on the loss of offered and all of us talking about his what effort could have been made better? What were the gaps in the effort? And what did we learn from that? And how is it going to modify our efforts. Another important thing about sports and this analogy of the game, is that games are just another kind of entertainment. But you get so serious, in spite of a game, you know, this just you just got a controller in your hand, and you're smashing some buttons, and there's a

virtual thing that's responding to it. You're not dying. You're I mean, the boss is slicing away at you with this giant sword, but you're not the one who's dying. But you could see pain on your face, like, ah, oh, my God, and there's your you're projecting yourself onto the character, and their loss becomes your loss and you're slamming things and oh my god, Mom, why did you call me You distracted me. And, you know, Pete, some kids play online games. And it's like, they're actually in warfare when they're playing warfare. You know, it's really passionate and similar to sports fans that are watching a game, especially, you know, with the with the Football World Cup, people are watching a

game and they're so riled up. And if their team wins, there's going to be a riot. And if they lose, it's also going to be a riot. You know, there are there are cities that are sports cities, you know what they do when they know there's a Friday night game, the restaurants and the homes and everybody goes home early and boards up their windows because they know windows are gonna get broken and cars are gonna get damaged, because there's a big game on Friday night. So what happens? It was just a game, but it got taken way too serious.

Sleep, you took it away, you made it a matter of life and death. If you took it too far, what do we do in this life, sometimes things are just small. They're not that big of a deal. But we zoom in on them, and we make them so important. We make them into life and death. And we do so much damage. Because we made something small into something big, we lose our sense of proportion. Allah says this life is just like sports. It's just like games. So there's a sense of proportion. And something remarkable that we learned from from this analogy of Allah comparing life to sports, is that in a match, like I said, one team can win one team can lose, right? Or is even a single like a tennis

match or something, one athlete is going to win, what athletes going to lose fine, this athlete has a championship cup in their hands, they get the applause, they won the match, they're the winner. But it could be true that in their personal life, they're losing in their marriage, they're losing with their kids, they're losing with their parents, they're losing to depression, they're losing all these other matches, but the only match they won is the one on the field. And it couldn't be the guy that lost really badly is winning in every other match. Some of that one coach I was talking to because I was trying to understand this, I am contemplated better. So I spoke to some coaches and

some sports coaches. And one of them told me that in my career coaching for 3040 years now, some of the biggest losers I ever met are winners. And some of the biggest winners I ever met are losers. so remarkable. In other words, Allah is telling us something incredible about life, it looks like someone's winning, it looks like they have money, they got fame, they have looks, they have popularity, they have everything, you will have charmed and everything you want. If I had that life would be good. But actually, that's just one box. And outside of that box, they may be the biggest loser. Some of you might not know that a Buddha, for example, which everybody knows I'm will have is

like one of the ultimate villains in the seal of the prophets lesson was a really good looking charming man, they were they were the celebrity couple, you know, he was actually you know, his, he was, you know, colored hair tall, you know, brilliant skin tone, people used to compare, you know, to talk about his physical beauty and things like that. And hemp was considered a beautiful, these were these were the winners of that society by any standard. If you if you don't look at the Quran, and you look at ancient Egypt, people still go there to take pictures of the marvel of what these that civilization created. The pharaohs were winners in the world, they left their mark on the

world. And we know from Krons point of view, there's some of the biggest losers in history, if not the biggest losers in history, right? So the idea is

still alive today. Just because someone is winning in one arena, doesn't make them a winner. And someone just because you're losing in one arena, doesn't make you a loser, that cuts that stamp doesn't stay on you. And you know, if you if you look at real athletes, after they lose a game, they don't call themselves a loser. They're like, I'm going to train harder next year. And I'm going to come back again. And I'm going to come back again, meaning a loss to them is just learning. That's all it is. I learned what we did wrong, the Analyze, because if athletes, the ones that do play sports, if they started listening to the commentaries of their fans, they listen to everybody's

criticism and commentary. And if they took that defeat to heart, they will not be athletes anymore. You can't. It's not just about physical toughness, you have to have a mental toughness to be able to be good at something. In this life. Allah created this requirement of suburb, if you're going to do anything in life, you have to be ready for mostly defeat. Mostly we're going to lose and there are going to be pockets of victory. Edwin every time in fact, you can't win most of the time. Most of the battles in our life are challenges that are conducted in Santa Fe covered in overwhelming burden to Allah create a human being. Finally going back to level something interesting that some of our

scholars have said contemplating on this idea is very beautiful. One of the ancient ways that people used to entertain each other is they used to perform plays. So in the ancient Chinese civilization, Arab civilization, others, they used to have like even puppet shows, or somebody would dress up like the king and the other one would dress up like the Joker or two warriors, they would pretend to be warriors and they've got like these these wooden swords, and they're pretending to die and somebody throws leaves up to make it look like it's blood and stuff. And people are like, they get really into it. This was all this was ancient special effects. By the way. This was ancient CGI. But now

it's it's a modern version of the same thing, isn't it? It's all we're doing is we're watching the story.

But at the end of that play, the king wasn't the king. And the beggar wasn't the beggar and the victim was in the victim. And the killer was in the killer. A lot of actors that play villains and serial killers and things like that they have a hard time because people start cursing them out when they go to grocery stores, murderer, no longer ones just to show. That's not the real me. I'm actually a nice guy. But people get sold. They look at this role this person is playing. And they assume this is who they really are. You understand, in this life, Allah has given people different roles. Some people are presidents of countries. Some people are generals of a military, some people

are billionaires. Some people are athletes, some people are popular. Some people are nobody, nobody knows that. They're not famous. They're nothing. But you know what this life is like a play on a stage. And one day the curtains are going to pull and the costumes will come up with Dr. Maha welcome. Allah says, Your New Left Behind all the wrappings I put you put on you. And then the king might be a beggar on Judgment Day and the beggar might be a king on Judgment Day, because this was just a facade. This was just a distraction from the reality of things, while I'm either here to dunya Allah Allah one, when they were in the data Hara, that he had higher one No Can we are the

moon and the finite life? That is actually the ultimate life? Had they any knowledge, if only they had known, we have to become people that you know, contemplate Allah's book, and look at our life in that way, so that when you see someone succeeding, instead of becoming like, why can't I have that? Why can't I do, it may be that they look like they're succeeding. And maybe you're not having that is a gift from Allah to you, that may be the case that Allah is blocked, wants you to not feel in the way that they might be feeling. So don't fall into that facade. Don't look at something on the outside and assume this is what success looks like. This is the powerful message that this Ira has

given us. And boy, are we in need of this message today. Because we are now in the age of filtered, you know, fake Presentation of Self. And everybody the new currency is no longer money, the new currency is social media following and interaction. And in order to stay relevant, you have to keep putting things up that make you interesting, or make people want to hear what you have to say, or make, you know, just entertain the world and entertain the world. And so you're becoming the puppet you know, and the public has become your puppeteer. The this these people you've never met, they're your puppeteer, oh my god, I I kind of post a new video the engagement is going down, Oh, I gotta do

this. Otherwise, I'm not gonna get the following. Now the algorithm has become a new god. You know, because we got to follow the algorithm if we're going to grow out of love, and any that in this new, you know, virtual landscape that we find ourselves in, we have to step back and really contemplate what Allah is saying to gain some perspective and to not be distracted by something that is taking us away from something much more important but Allah azza wa jal to make us all people that contemplate Allah's book and understand it in a way that betters our lives and bring light to ourselves, our own hearts and to those around us. BarakAllahu li Walakum Quran is a key when a

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