al-Raghib al-Isfahani #60 – Importance of The Little Things

When it comes to developing good character, there's a momentum aspect that has to be taken into account. Okay, we've talked before about Alaska Hani drew our attention to the fact that there's levels, right, there's different plateaus that you hit, and then you go through growth, and then you hit another plateau, and then you go through more growth and hit another plateau. And then by the same token, there are levels of dissents, you know, you could fall off with some things and kind of plummet down. And then there's another level beneath that, and another level beneath that. And so we should be cognizant and take stock of ourselves to see what direction we're heading in. Right, you

should compare yourself and Ramadan is a really natural time to kind of take stock of yourself and just very frankly, assess, you know, where am I at spiritually? How is my relationship with the last panel data? How is my expression of gratitude towards him, compared to last year, compared to two years ago, compared to four years ago, we do this already. We do this with things like our health and our cardio and our belief, we go for a physical, right, we see what our what's our weight? And what's our blood sugar and these sorts of things. So this is a very familiar thing. We also do it with our finances, right? You want to check and see if you're saving, if you're losing? Do you need

to readjust your budget? Well, why don't we do this with our spiritual lives as well? Right? How is our progress going through this world of trying to make it to the afterlife? Are we at least getting better? And there's two aspects and there's two things you know, a lot of us are having, he talks about the importance of the little things. And if you think about it, from a theological perspective, it might not be true per se, like, because a lot of times Allah says in the Quran, okay, if you avoid the big stuff, then he's going to forgive the little things. And that's tremendously merciful from him, which one of us doesn't make minor sins, every single one of us

makes minor sins every day. But Allah promised us that if we avoid the major sins, that he would wipe those minor sins away. So theologically, right, it's like, get the big stuff, right, and maybe don't sweat the small stuff, right? But almost for Hani, he's looking at things not from a strictly theological perspective, but from a personal development perspective, because there is a concern that if you leave some of the little things go, they could eventually turn into bigger things. And this could actually hurt your momentum, or it could actually get your momentum going in the wrong direction. You know, maybe you're doing the big things, you're staying away from the major Mahamat

and things like that. But you know, you start making your prayers at home compared to the message sheet, and then you start, you know, making your prayers not right away, but towards the end of the time period. And then maybe even you start missing prayers or things like that. And everybody's at a different level. So it will look differently for every person. But if you don't do those little things, from a personal development perspective, they can actually start to accumulate and actually weigh you down and actually start to affect the big things. That's the concern. You know, the concern is, how do we not fall into the big things? Sometimes we need to take care of the details,

we need to cross our t's and dot our eyes, you know, we can think of it okay, well, slippery slope argument, it's not really very sound. I mean, if I apply the logic and kind of an extreme way, it's like, well, then it's almost like paranoia, right? Every single little thing that I miss, it could lead to something huge down the line. Well, that's not exactly what we're saying. But we are saying that maybe we can think about it as low hanging fruit, right, all those little things like staying after the prayer to make some liquor, right, or reciting just a little bit of Koran every day, you know, trying to watch our speech and make sure that we are not using harsh words or foul language,

or we're not making anybody, you know, feel bad with the things that we say or that we do that we're uplifting people around us and we're calling people to be better. If we're able to pick up on enough of the little things, then it could actually make it much easier to get the big things right. It could give us the momentum that we're looking for, to make positive change and major ways to develop our character even further.