Shadee Elmasry – Happiness is NOT the Goal of Life
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AI: Transcript ©
It's very important we don't worship happiness. Our
goal is not to always be happy. That's
not the goal of a Muslim. Your goal
is to be a good servant to Allah.
Again, your focus has to be on Allah,
not on yourself. So it's very important to
realize
constriction,
grief, sadness, upsetness
does have a place. And if Allah ordained
it for a certain reason, accept it. And
the faster you here's the trick.
The faster you come to terms that this
has a place in life. And if Allah
ordains it, don't fight it back. That is
the fastest play way route to minimize all
your sadness.
By accepting it, realizing it's part of life,
realizing it's part of god's will for us,
part of Allah's test for us, but more
than that, realizing its purpose.
Allah
said we never made them taste any punishment
except so they can return back to us.
Anytime, any grief, unhappiness,
any of that touches our hearts, we have
to realize
not to focus on the means by which
it came to us, to focus on the
source of it
and the reason. What is his reason for
for bringing this sadness and grief upon me?
I have to turn back to him.
Whenever things are too good, you become Ikarus'
wing. You fly too high and hit Ikarus
had wax wings, so he flew too close
to the sun,
and the the wings melted.
Although
the higher you go up, the colder it
gets, but just for the sake of the
story, right, they didn't know that back in
the day, right, when they wrote that story.
So they're like, he flies so far high
up and his wings melt, and he comes
crashing down. So what does Allah do? He
sends you before you get too high, he'll
send you another
tribulation to push you down a little bit.
Humble down a little bit. Come down.
This is not the abode of being so
high up and happy.
Yeah.
Some happiness for sure, but it's not the
abode of perfection.
If you get like that, you can make
a lot of mistakes. When people get too
high, too happy, they make mistakes.
They make terrible blunders. All of these superstar
athletes and rich people as look. When they
get too high up, they screw up. They
spend too much money. They go into debts.
The check comes
with with no coach to tell him invest
like this. Hold up.
Take 80% of that right away and put
it in something that's gonna
basically pay you for life.
Don't spend so much. Don't live so much.
That doesn't come with spiritual or financial
or
economic coaches, these checks to these people.
But they're a lesson for us. They go
straight up, and they come crashing down. So
wouldn't it have been better for someone to
say, oh, put the brakes on. Give me
that check.
Let's put 800,000
in it into an investment. You'll never work
again
at when these investments come to fruition.
You'll you'll it's not me me. You're rich,
but you will never have to worry about
money again.
Do you know there are many, many people
and I met a person. I'm not gonna
mention names.
But he told me about his relative,
that he was at one point earning
over
250, you know, $303100,000
a month
on entertainment in the entertainment business.
$300,000
a month.
Many doctors, because of their debts that they
owe, do not earn 300,000 in a year.
Remove debts, the medical school debts. Remove taxes.
Remove life expenses.
No. No. No. Before forget expenses.
Remove debts
and taxes. He did not make 300,000, and
he's a physician. Trained 8 years for this.
And this clown
entertainer
is raising 300,000 in a month.
Now this wealth is not good wealth. Right?
This is not this is not a way
that Allah wants us to earn money by
clowning around on on the Internet.
Well, fast forward
but
I don't wanna give too many details so
no one tries to guess who it is.
But fast forward,
he's broke.
The entertainment business is hard to stay up
on the wave.
That wave crashes.
That whole wave is about spending and overspending.
The money's gone.
Right? The money is gone. And a great
example of unblessed wealth, it's gone.
It's good. So and
is constriction.
It has a a role in our life.
It's to return us back to Allah. That's
it. There's no other role it has. It's
to return us back to Allah. If we
receive this constriction,
yet we go further from Allah, that's punishment.
That's what we call punishment.
Punishment is that a bad thing happens to
you and Allah does not love you.
He wants he does not love you. So
you bad things happen and I don't get
closer to god,
nor do I stay the same. I get
further.
If
a bad thing happens
and I just I neither get further nor
closer is purification.
I'm just suffering.
Neither am I getting better in Islam,
like doing better deeds,
nor am I doing worse deeds.
So what what do I consider that now?
I consider we the scholars say that is
purification.
And that is like when you see somebody
who gets sick,
but his status never changes. Like, his religious
deeds, his perspective, nothing changes. He's, like, very
sick, and he's just watching TV. Still watching
the same old games and TV all day.
Hold on. You're really sick. Why don't you
why you reflect about death? Nah.
I'm not in the mood for that. Okay.
So you know what? But you're praying. Yeah.
He's praying. Five times a day. I'll pray
my 5 times a day. I fast Ramadan.
I don't lie. I don't do these things.
Right? So but he's not getting better. I'm
not into the mood for spirituality right now.
I just wanna sit and so we say
that's purification.
Right?
Now a person
has the same suffering,
but he's so it's so bitter to him.
The TV is nothing means anything anymore. Shut
it all off.
Bring me book of death and afterlife and
read to me. So now woah. You weren't
like this before.
All of a sudden, you wanna talk about
the afterlife since when? Some people like that
in your family, like, what's up with him?
Right?
You're all of a sudden, you're in the
dean now, and he is. And you're like,
woah. He's changing.
That means that is a that is a
hardship that Allah elevated him through. So that's
how you know. Am I being punished? Am
I being purified? Or am I being
elevated?
So if you are being elevated
through tribulation, it's called,
a good test,
good suffering. This suffering made me better, and
that's how we know the difference.
So
we are a people who accept when bad
the bad comes to us. We are not
worshipers of happiness,
of bust. And the reason ibn Atha, when
he says that Allah gives you sometimes he
gives you happiness and sometimes he gives you
constriction
so that you are not a worshiper of
either one. Don't worship either one.
Sayedna Yusuf alaihi salam, he has a wonderful
idyllic childhood.
He is the
11th out of
11 siblings, then he had Binyamin the 12th.
Young one younger sibling, baby,
and 11 and 10 older siblings, and he's
the most handsome of all of them, most
beautiful boy of all of them, most beloved.
Right. Now Yousef, what happens? I mean, he
goes from this wonderful life,
then in one day, he has a nightmare
of a day. They take him out. He
thinks he's gonna go play. All of a
sudden, I'm in the well. Think about that.
That's like a shock. We're going out. We're
having a good time with my brothers. It's
not like I'm with strangers, and I'm expecting
something bad. No. I'm with my brothers, and
all of a sudden, they throw me in
the well.
And then from the well, he ends up
going through very you you have to imagine.
This is not a happy time. He gets
sold from one merchant to another, to a
traveler, to finally he's in the marketplace of
Egypt.
Like, this is terrible. Terrible month that he
must have lived. Probably it was a month.
Right? You can imagine maybe it was a
month or a few weeks. And then he
ends up suddenly
in this gorgeous house.
So the ups and downs of prophet Yousef's
life
are meant to teach us that you are
not a slave
of happiness,
neither cubbed nor bust. If happiness and good
times come, you must accept it because some
people are the reverse.
If they live their whole life in bad
situations,
they're uncomfortable
with good times.
And even in the good time, in they
they they feel uncomfortable, they have to think
of something bad that could possibly happen because
that's what I'm comfortable with
and the opposite. Other other kids, the opposite.
Other kid grew up, everything is perfect.
And even when something objectively terrible is happening,
he's gotta find something fun about it. Now
that other person's probably better off
in in in the moment.
The unhappy person's probably better off in security
of the future. They're more stable. They never
get too excited about any they never get
too happy about anything, but you just don't
mind might not want to be around them.
They're Debbie Downers all the time. Right? The
other one, you wanna be around them, but
this guy, you can't trust him with anything.
Right?