The School of Life

Life is like a square

I was going through a newsletter I receive from www.productivemuslim.com and came through this beautiful Hadith with its explanation:

Narrated ‘Abdullah: The Prophet drew a square and then drew a line in the middle of it and let it extend outside the square and then drew several small lines attached to that central line, and said, “This is the human being, and this, (the square) is his lease of life, encircles him from all sides (or has encircled him), and this (line), which is outside (the square), is his hope, and these small lines are the calamities and troubles (which may befall him), and if one misses him, an-other will snap (i.e. overtake) him, and if the other misses him, a third will snap (i.e. overtake) him.”

The hadeeth above beautifully summarizes our entire life story into a few lines. Understanding this story would make you realize 2 fundamental truths about this world and hence help you become productive in your current state.   The first fundamental truth is that we as human being always hope to live beyond our set time, we always approximate that we’ll live for 60-80 years even though we really have nothing to indicate that will be the case.   The second fundamental truth is the understanding that calamities are part of life, and should not come to us as a surprise. Life is a test. Whenever we’re faced with one, we should react to it the way our Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) taught us, that is to praise Allah (Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala) and be patient.   How do these 2 fundamental truths relate to productivity? The first one tells you that instead of procrastinating and putting off things till tomorrow, you should continuously be productive in your day to day life. The second one tells you that whatever setbacks you face in your life is actually part of life and instead of reacting negatively to it and virtually paralyzing yourself, shake this calamity off with praise, prayer, dua and salat, and continue on the path of productivity towards your Lord.

SubhanAllah! How beautifully explained! How often we forget!

Prayer is an amazing exchange. You hand over your worries to God, and God hands over His blessings to you.

(Source: zuleikha)

Anonymous asked: why are you arrogant in your expressions?

Am I :(? If I am, may Allah help me get over it and if I am not, may Allah help me stay away from arrogance. For “Whoever has an atom of arrogance will not be allowed to enter Jannah”.
This is a serious warning for me then and something I have to work hard on :(. May Allah help me! Ameen!

Anonymous asked: Keep up the good work aurpita...I might not be in your twitter anymore but I would definitely come back once in a while to see your tumblr updates. I guess you know who I am..;) You are so well informed about the country I live in..:D

LOL! Thanks so much for the comment.. I have been looking for u in twitter to explain the reason behind my being well-informed about that country. But before I could explain, you must have got so frightened that you actually blocked me :P. No wonder I couldn’t see you in my timeline..

Anyway all the best and terima kasih for paying a visit here :). Take care and all the best.

Ma’assalam!

Mother’s Day

In Islam it is Mother’s Day and Father’s Day everyday. We have to be dutiful to our parents everyday whether they are still here or left this temporary world. Show them respect, affection, and serve them everyday, for you can reach paradise thru your parents happiness.

(via zuleikha)

Benefits of abandoning twitter addiction - 1

I use a phone set that I just purchased less than two months ago. But the way its batter used to lose charge, I was thinking they must have fooled me with an old battery. Or else how cud it be that I recharge it to the fullest in the night,and yet the next morning-at some point when I am work with no charger at hand-it starts to show low battery sign? Naah,I must go to that mobile shop and get them replace with a new one!

But it was only yesterday that I got to realize how wrong I was. With my fav app Gravity uninstalled, and my constant tweeting put to a sudden stop, it is taking hours for those bars on the top left corner of my phone screen to disappear! How amazing!! I am fascinated at the amount of battery charge (and hence, electricity; and hence, energy which could be used otherwise for the welfare of the nation) I am saving since I decided to get out of this twitter addiction!

And the amount of money I am saving-will post some other time about it! But I’m sure saving enough moneywise as well!
(Typed with Pixelpipe using my mobile, utilizing the otherwise saved battery charge :D)

Lesson I learnt: addiction consumes a lot of energy’in any form of it. Get out of addiction and save energy :)

Confessions of a Twitter Addict

It’s just over two months I have joined twitter. And by now I have tweeted almost 5000 tweets. If that’s the amount of tweets I have tweeted - imagine how much I have read! How many hours I have spent on the timeline reading updates from my twitter friends! And did I tell that I actually did a cheating because I didn’t like the fact that I had a super-high rate of 82 tweets per day for quite some time? Let me confess - I actually deleted quite a few hundred tweets when I had around 2000 - just to lower my average and bring it to somewhere between 50-60.

Now that average thingy has raised over to 70 again - soon to reach that previous record of 80…

Few days ago, I started to have this realization: what is all these going to bring in Hereafter?

Yes, I am a firm believer of Hereafter and I strongly believe (and tweet also) that there is a God who’s going to take account of what we have done in this world. And that this world is very temporary - and the life we possess - this valuable gift from God - is something that might end at any moment!

So I started to think - where will my twitter, facebook, tumblr and etc etc social network account go once I am done with living? There’s no one in this world whom I have trusted over my passwords. So no one will be there to say - “The owner of this account has passed away or breathed her last”.. or bla bla

WIll that be able to move my followers? Maybe they will tweet a tweet or two saying “innalillah….” and maybe some others will be happy I won’t be spamming their timeline anymore.. Will they even care to say a prayer for me? Why would they, when they don’t even know whether I ever existed!

Or if they don’t get to know that I am not alive anymore - will they stop ever to think “she used to tweet so often, where has she gone?”. No. In a busy world where everyone has enough of updates happening on the timeline - where is there the time to mourn over a “once-seen-moron-who-spammed-my-timeline”?

No ONE. That’s the fact dears, that’s the fact.

And then comes the giving account. God will ask me for everything I did - everything I said.. whether it was a tweet or a facebook update. No matter how many retweets or likes I have got, if it is something that doesn’t bring any good use to anyone - isn’t that a drained effort?

And so, what’s the point of tweeting every single update - like “Off to bed” or “Just woke up” or “eating rice with korma polao”. What benefit will my twitter friend get by knowing that I am off to bed, or I am eating with korma polao? I really don’t get it, but this is what I have done all these 2 months.Seriously!

I had quite a lot more to write.But it’s late night and time to go to sleep. So I would just share my today’s experience after deciding to reduce my massive tweeting:

1. first thing in the morning, i uninstalled Gravity - the app that keeps me always connected to twitter thru my mobile.

Well that didn’t work much, as I soon logged on to pc and signed in, tweeting to my own mostly…

2. Then after I logged out, it happened that I was trying to log in to twitter using the most boring app ever - Snaptu! So I uninstalled that one as well.

3. The yoono sidebar has been a good platform - but to stop that, deliberately signed out from twitter there.

So it’s either saying good or saying nothing principle that I have to adopt now - as quitting twitter altogether isn’t the solution either. Then I can tell God - this tweet was to make my followers ponder.

Oh how I wish I had adopted this principle from the very beginning!

Lesson of the day: If you grow addiction toward any particular thing - know that it has some disadvantages. So try your best to get over it asap - and remember that whatever you are doing or saying - is being recorded!

Whether Osama bin Laden ever existed or didn’t exist, if he is dead or not dead, a terrorist or not a terrorist, a man of faith or no faith; we Muslims shouldn’t be worrying about that. Instead we should be focusing and preparing for our OWN death.

(Source: zuleikha)