Tom Facchine – This Is Just How I Am
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses how people have repeatedly tried to convince them to change their behavior and manners, citing examples such as chemical imbalances, clinical diseases, and emotional responses. They suggest that these mistakes are not just excuse for poor behavior, but rather are a means of rewarding them. The speaker also mentions that people may not always be responsible for their behavior, but there may be reward benefits if they work harder.
AI: Summary ©
How able are we really to change our
manners and our habits? Right? And we 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 in the past.
And so, at all of us, Fahani, he
wants to take this on. He said, okay.
Well, how much power or ability to act
and control and change our behavior do we
actually have? He 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,
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
in different ways. These are things that Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala created you with. You're not
gonna 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 Allah 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, it'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, Ashaj, that where
the prophet you know, he praises Ashaj because
he,
Ashaj Abdul Qays because he,
has two qualities. He says you have 2
qualities that Allah loves, and he says you
have alhamwal ana'aana. He says that you have
forbearance
and you take your time. You don't rush
things. And then, Ashayd has a really, Abdelkhais
has 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
he
said, no, this is something that Allah created
you like. And so then, Ashaj Abdul Qais
has an another amazing sort of response, and
he says, praise be to Allah who created
me with characteristics that Allah loves. Right? So
there are some things, yes, okay, Asha Jabal
Qais 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 Asha Jabal
Qais, but maybe you'll see a special sort
of reward because you had to struggle with
that.