Minute with a Muslim #383 – Living Up To Your Potential

So along with us for Hani emphasizes living up to your potential early on in the book, and he says it's a really, really

essential thing to realize. And he quotes a lot of poetry that escapes me right now. But it's basically to the effect that there's nothing worse or more disappointing, then something that doesn't live up to his potential. And he gives a ton of examples that might seem comical, he says, like, let's take a sword. Right? If you have a sword, was it for? It's for the battlefield, right? It's for combat, it's for these sorts of things like so what if you had a sword, and you're using it to just you know, cut up your cheesier bread? At home in the kitchen, it would be kind of silly, it would be kind of a shame. You know, this sort of thing that was created for this purpose, and sort

of a glorious purpose, a very important purpose. And it's being used for something that's way below what it can do. Right? Or like, I used to give this example to other people, what if somebody gave you a Rolex? Thank you so much, that's a kind of view and then use it as like a doorstop, or use it as a paperweight. Right, you just say like, that'll look great. Next to my other paperweights, like, I'll put it here on my desk, you're using something that has, you know, it's been made, it's valuable, it has this potential, and you're using it for something that's way below what it can be. And the author out all of us for how he brings that back to us as human beings, because we have

these three levels of purpose. And our highest level of purpose is clean, if it's a law is to be the steward of the whole creation. The Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu sallam said that a person who knows the religion of the island,

everything in the creation, asks a lot of forgive him, or her, even the fish in the sea.

Even the fish will be asking a lot of forgive you, if you know your religion. Why, because a person who knows the religion, they're going to take care of everything, and allows creation, they're not going to make decisions just based off of their own narrow interest, they're not going to go just plow down the woods, and say, Well, I want to make it a driveway, or I want to make it this, you're gonna think there's birds that live here. There's creatures that depend on this for their sustenance, there's all these other, you know, the environments, all these sorts of different things, a person who understands their religion and fears a law will look at things holistically

like that. How does this affect everything? Has this effect, three generations from now, this decision that we're about to make now? Right, whereas a lot of people they're not, they're not that deep. They're not thinking about things along those lines. And this is a waste. Because as human beings were created with this capacity to be operating at that level,

right, the other creatures that we see the beaver, squirrel, or whatever, are they making decisions for all the creatures? Everything that they do with a squirrel takes a nut and stashes and not, you know, hides it away for winter in a tree? Is it doing that thinking about the birds thinking about the people thinking about the soil, thinking about No, animals don't have this, this is a special human capacity, we have the ability to manage, we have the ability to take care and steward for everything. And so if we're not doing that, who's going to do it? Nobody. Even worse, we're gonna make we have an asymmetrical power, we have more power than certain other creatures. And if we start

making decisions just based of our own narrow self interest, either as a species like with the environment, nuclear power,

toxic sludge, dumping it into the rivers and streams, pharmaceuticals down the drain all this crazy stuff we see these days, we're going to have a disproportionate effect on everything. Compared to the squirrel, how much damage can a squirrel do?

He can maybe, you know, kill one of your trees, he can maybe clog up your gutter or something like that, but he can't wipe out species. He can't, you know, pollute entire rivers and watersheds and ecosystems as only people can do that.

Right. So we have a higher calling and we have this potential, enormous potential and if you don't reach that potential, it's just like that Rolex just using it as a paperweight. What a waste.