al-Raghib al-Isfahani #28 – How Much Power Do We Have To Change

how able are we really to change our manners and our habits, right? And we hear this all the time, or at least we make excuses for ourselves all the time somebody gets angry, they curse, they throw something, they hit somebody, oh, I do that when I'm angry, or they get sad. And they say, Oh, this is just how I am, right. And we've reached a challenging time in history in our society, where we have a lot of kind of ready made excuses for people who really just have poor behavior, not to say that every single poor behavior is simply, you know, poor manners. There are such things as chemical imbalances, there are such things as clinical diseases, but we definitely have reached the time

where people have ready made excuses for their poor behavior at a time, like more than they've had in the past. And so at all of us, Rouhani he wants to take us on he said, Okay, well, how much power or ability to act and control and change our behavior do we actually have, it talks about things like nature, he says, everybody has a certain nature, and everybody has a certain personality, and these things you don't really have control over. So let's say for example, if you have a short temper, okay, or if you are very sensitive, and you kind of take what people say about you, you take it personally, or you get emotional, like some people get emotional, different ways, these are

things that Allah subhanaw taala created you if you're not going to change that, however, you can intervene and change how you respond to those sorts of emotions, and respond to the ways in which Allah created you those sorts of capacities. So that has to do with your manners and your habits. So if you want to put it on one side, we have our nature and our personality, which a lot kind of gave us and that this is something that is not really able to be changed, then we have habits and manners, and those are the things that you can change. And so everything that we're talking about here is doing what we can, right, you can't necessarily let's say for example, you're somebody who

has a short temper, okay, you can't use the fact that you have a short temper as an excuse to not work on your anger, okay, it might be harder for you to control your anger than for other people. Some people are naturally patient people, they're just, you know, they don't get angry, hardly at anything like for that person. That's easy, right? But just because it's harder for you doesn't give you an excuse to not do it, right. In fact, it's possible that the reward for you might be greater if you try hard to control your anger, because it's something that you actually have to struggle with. And there's a very nice hadith of a judge that where the prophesy son um, you know, he praises

that judge, because he

should face because he has two qualities, he says, you have two qualities that Allah loves, and he says, You have a helemaal. And he says that you have forbearance, and you take your time you don't rush things, and then a shirt has a really ugly face is a really, really interesting response. He asks, and we all you know, 1400 years later benefit from from his question because he asks, Is this something that Allah created me like, or is this something that I kind of did myself and I'm responsible for it and the Prophet alayhi salatu salam, he said, No, this is something that Allah created you like and so then a schedge is has another amazing sort of response. And he says, Praise

be to Allah, Who created me with characteristics that Allah loves, right? So there's some things yes, okay, shut up. Look, he's had this capacity. He had this natural quality, it came from Allah, not everybody might have that. But that doesn't mean that you're not responsible for trying to obtain it. Maybe you have to work harder than Shut up the place, but maybe you'll see a special sort of reward because you had to struggle with that.