Minute with a Muslim #263 – Gender Roles

and certainly set when I last panel to Allah was talking about the different amounts of inheritance that are given to different types of people. He says something really amazing once it's all said and done. And he says that for men is their share and for women is their share. And they essentially the message is they shouldn't compare each other and look to each other wanting what the other one has. Rather, if they want bounty, this should ask a lot. And there's, for me, it's extremely significant that Allah words it in the general way that he does, because this is something that is very informative of gender relations. But even outside of gender relations, like everybody has a

different role to play, everybody has a different sort of hats that they wear, or a different set of hats that they wear in their lives, maybe you're engaged in more of the work on the home front, or somebody's engaged more work out of the house or things like that, it can be really, really easy to feel dissatisfied and look at the other and wish that you were in the other situation, the grass is always greener. On the other side, you see the other person, it might seem like they have a lot of freedom, it might seem like they're going here, there and they're moving around. And they're doing all these cool things. But it's rarely the situation that one situation is completely just better

and more rewarding, more satisfying than the other certain doors open and other doors close. Yes, there might be more freedom and more sort of recognition and in this particular role that you're looking at and sort of envying. But it also is going to come at a cost. And there's other burdens attached to it as well. And vice versa, you might be in a situation where you feel like you're not getting a lot of recognition. And you have a certain type of tasks that you are responsible for. And you don't find it really rewarding. But there might be other people who wish that they were in your situation, let's not use the whole guilt trip. But it's just that everything always looks better

when it's not what we're doing. And spiritually, spiritually. And this is universal. And it's especially in our tradition, building our satisfaction and building our contentment as spiritual people as people of faith is more about developing contentment within ourselves than it is with going out and getting what we want. Now I say more because it's not always mutually exclusive. Sometimes you're in a horrible situation, you need to change the prophecies that don't recognize that when it came to the person who killed 99 men, you know, that whole Hadith, that whole story, and there's others but the most lasting form of contentment or the I should say the most lasting

form of wealth is contentment, because desire and envy and want have no limit what you wish you had today, if you got it, you might want something else tomorrow, you might the thing that might satisfy you today, it might not satisfy you tomorrow once you get it. And so there's this whole spiritual sort of aspect to it that that can't be forgotten without without belittling the material aspect. But everybody's pretty much in our time and age and location in the world. Everybody's very attuned to the material aspect. We're very attuned to changing our lives choose you do this, in order to kind of better our situation. We're not very attuned to developing that internal contentment and

satisfaction with kind of the somewhat the hand that was dealt you and the roles and the duties and responsibilities that you have. And realizing that that too, is an avenue that Allah gave you to worship him even if it's not something that gets recognition from society, even if it's not something that's monetized or has been entered into the neoliberal capitalist economy. It's still an avenue for worship and building contentment and building up your worship through that activity might be the bigger thing that's going on than trying to obtain the thing that you're looking at on the outside and trying to get it