Security Is A Trap

insecurity is a trap. And it's kind of tricky. I mean, we need, there's a sweet spot, like with everything because we, we need a certain amount of financial security. But you know, just like Robinson Crusoe, or these sorts of novels show that there's no end, because feeling secure is a subjective thing, right? So what makes one person feels secure in their wealth versus what makes another person feel secure in their wealth? I'll never forget, you know, when, when I was in my, my first undergrad, you know, and this was, it was turbulent times because it was the recession. And basically, we had a new college president. And they did the classic neoliberal thing where they,

they were trying to fire a bunch of the cafeteria workers and trying to hire twice as many at halftime, so they didn't have to pay him benefits, and basically ruining livelihoods. You had some people that, you know, the position of like being a cafeteria worker at a university, it used to be something that someone could have that as their career, and they could support a family, and, you know, the neoliberal push to make it into a temp job, basically. So that couldn't happen anymore. So we tried to fight back, you know, we some students went on hunger strike, and some students, you know, and one of the things that God told us was that the President made probably like, $300,000 a

year, right. And I remember we were sitting in our office, and we like other presidents across the country, you know, it's tough times recession and stuff like that have taken a pay cut and even taken, skipped a year, though their salary, just so that everybody else can be okay, that's leadership, why won't you do something similar? And the response that we got from the president was, you know, well, my job is really stressful, and I need that much money. And

so what makes you feel secure is never, it's not objective, right? In some sense, there's a lot of subjectivity to it. Let's say that, you know, somebody feels secure with, you know, 30,000, some buddies feels doesn't feel secure, except with 100,000. Some people don't feel secure, except for 300,000. Right, and as different from person to person. And so there's this kind of trap. And the last one was, Allah wants us to be aware that of not falling for the trap of Tikka thought of more and more and competition for more and more, yes, you have to set yourself up and take care of your responsibilities, but you can't just put off doing other things, especially religious things,

whether it's Hajj or Umrah, or even you know, just dedicating your life to worship or things like that. It's not a get my piece of the dunya and then be religious. That's what a lot of people sort of imagine it as, because two things and one thing is very well known. And the other thing is not well known, but needs to be said, people often bring up you don't know how long you're gonna live. And that's true. It's true, you might die tomorrow. So you might not ever make it to that period of your life where you're going to turn into a religious person and start praying and start going to Hajj and stuff like that. The second thing and this is even scarier, what if you live that long, but

you're not the same person then because every decision that you make has an effect on you. It's a habit. And so you have this motivation now and this potential now to be doing religious activity. Now, you're assuming that you're going to have that motivation. 1020 30 years down the line. What if you don't want to when the time comes, even if you have the means you're an older person, you have finally have the ability, the time and the money to go to Hajj and you don't want to you finally have the time free time to pray. You don't want to that's the scary thing. And may Allah subhanaw taala save us from that