Burning Yourself

You’re a community organizer.

Maybe you run a school organization or have a position of leadership at your church or mosque—you’ve dedicated a majority of the most crucial and highly developmental years of your life, either in high school, college or the years after, to serving people or the community in some way, form or fashion.

Years have gone by, and if they haven’t, you’re probably perfectly fine with spending the next few years of your life to whatever space you dedicate yourself to. If you’re the former—sometimes you wonder to yourself if you’ve done any sort of real impact — but quickly convince yourself that any sort of service is beneficial and there’s no harm because at the end of the day—you still really enjoy it. If you’re the latter—you look at people still serving, telling yourself that you’re going to do it different—you won’t become them because they did it wrong when they were where you were. And when you do whatever you’ll do differently—it’ll be more fruitful than whatever anyone before you has tried.

Or maybe you’re the nostalgic. You’ve been out of the game for a while cause life called and it demanded the 9 to 5 because being MSA president wasn’t going to pay the student loans or the dowry. But now, you’ve gotten into a regular groove at work and have a bit more time on your hand and you’re itching to get back to serving the community.

And then there are those days. Where you question all of it. As an organizer just starting out, you are faced with you’re inadequacy and self-doubt—problem after problem just starts piling up and you keep wondering if you’ll ever become adequate enough to do the job at hand. As the season organizer, you look back at all the years you’ve spent in serving the community, calculating down to every last event or money raised or project started and wonder to yourself if you did enough impact.

Sometimes one of the days where you’re questioning it all conveniently lands on a major event. You’re busy directing volunteers, finalizing the work plan, making sure tasks are getting done and then — the problem starts. You know? THE problem that has to happen at every event. And when it does, the thought of whether or not if any of this is worth it suddenly comes to the front and you have to take a second to subdue that so the event can run smoothy.

For some reason you just aren’t satisfied. You have no control. And you’re maybe happy 40% of the time.

(For the rest of this post, I’ll be talking about the Muslim community in America specifically, but I think it can be applicable to other faith groups.)

I honestly think the Muslim community — being one in which service and nonprofit/volunteer work is so integral, has a deep problem of unreadiness. I truly think that far too often we undertake responsibility we are far from ready from taking, thus leading to the stifling growth of many many people.

And because of that many of our organizations, mosques, and MSAs have also halted in their ability to do some serious change.

The Prophet ﷺ said, “The one who cares for others while neglecting himself is like a guiding lamp in the darkness that burns itself.” When you’re lighting the way for other people, while simultaneously hurting yourself and your own growth, understand that any impact that you make is temporary, cause eventually you’re going to burn out.

We need to internalize that serving the community in and of itself isn’t prophetic, especially when it is done at improper moments. When studying the hadith literature, one would notice that there is virtually no hadith recorded about the Prophet’s ﷺ life between the ages of 25 and 40. Much of his mid-life was uneventful and not as community oriented as years of prophethood.

This wasn’t because when he received revelation, he all of sudden developed a care for the community — in actuality, the Prophet ﷺ throughout most of his younger years showed great concern for the people around him. Rather, between 25 and 40, he ﷺ understood that his main responsibility was to himself and his family, and before receiving revelation, that was where his time was spent.

There’s a wisdom behind Allah ﷻ tasking the Prophet ﷺ the responsibility of revelation at the age of 40. Because all of the years before it was dedicated to getting ready for what was/is the biggest responsibility for any individual — to introduce Islam and truly care for people.

As individuals that have inherited his responsibility, (Because the Prophet ﷺ was someone that was the president of the masjid and the Imam and the Khateeb and the governor of Medina and the principle of the Islamic school and the chairman of the board for the relief non-profit), we owe it to the task at hand to really face ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves: “Have I dedicated enough time to myself before dedicating so much time to other?”

If the answer is no, then do the hardest thing that you’ve ever had to — step back.

“But if I don’t do it, then no one else will.” (If I had a dollar for every time I heard this come out of the mouth of a masjid board member, MSA officer, or non-profit volunteer, I could honestly quit my job.)

Allah ﷻ is Ar-Razzaq and Al-Muqeet — He is the all sustainer and all provider. He does not need you to service His creation, because He is independent of all things and He has guaranteed provisions for all either in this world or the next.

“But I’ve gotta get good deeds somehow?”

The Prophet ﷺ said, “Verily, none of you will enter Paradise by his deeds alone.” The companions replied, “Not even you, O Messenger of Allah?” The Prophet said, “Not even me, unless Allah grants me his mercy.” Works is but a way in which faith is confirmed, but salvation is the decree of the Allah alone. You provide for your community, because your faith in your Lord compels you to do so, but getting into Jannah, irregardless of all of the good deeds you’ve done, is ultimately up to Allah ﷻ.

Look, I’m not saying everyone involved in some sort of community work should outright quit — thats not practical. But the people you cater to and the Lord you’re trying to please and frankly, your own being, deserves the best version of yourself.

And sometimes that requires stepping back before getting burned—especially when every part of you still wants to stay on.