Not All Wells are a Downfall, and Not All Castles are a Victory: The Illusion of Success
Seeing Things Through The Eyes of The Revelation
We keep running after things, good grades, top college, highest paying job, and the list goes on.
We feel happiest when we achieve these milestones. But when we don’t, it can feel as if our days — sometimes even our entire lives — are ruined.
If I think about it a lot, I’d say that we’ve been wearing glasses for so long that we’ve forgotten that we are looking at the world through one, at all.
I’ve realized, that we shouldn’t base our happiness and sadness, on our success and failure on these stereotypical stages.
Since one of these milestones might be what we want and believe we need, it may not bring us to what we truly want or need.
These good grades could lead to our depression or cause us constant stress and anxiety; getting into this top college can lead us to lose all our social life and sane mental health; acquiring this highest paying job can be the worst experience of our lives, being under the wrath of an angry boss or bad coworkers.
Not everything we believe is best for us turns out the way we expect.
Allah swt says,
(سورة البقرة) وَعَسَىٰ أَن تَكْرَهُوا شَيْئًا وَهُوَ خَيْرٌ لَّكُمْ ۖ وَعَسَىٰ أَن تُحِبُّوا شَيْئًا وَهُوَ شَرٌّ لَّكُمْ
Perhaps you dislike something which is good for you and like something which is bad for you (Surah Al bakara).
We view all the goals above as indicators for a good life, but we shouldn’t view life with just our brain and its logic; the aya (verse) above ends with,
“وَٱللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ وَأَنتُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَ”
“Allah knows and you do not know.”
Allah swt knows what’s best for us and what is not, what we truly need and what will lead to our happiness — and what won’t. And we, no matter how developed we get in the knowledge we learn, will never know that.
In one of the stories narrated in the Quran, Allah swt tells us not to associate success and failure with our mere, short sighted standards.
Consider this with me:
Everyone would like their father to love them,
but Yusuf’s AS father’s deep love for him is what led his brothers to throw him in the well.
Nobody wants to be thrown in a well;
but being thrown into a well is what led Yusuf (AS) to the castle of a high-ranking official in Egypt, Al-Aziz, who took him in as a son.
Everyone would like to live in a castle and be treated like the son of an important, rich official; and everyone would like to live in good conditions and be pleasant to look at;
all of these things, however, are what led Yusuf AS to prison.
Nobody would like to go to prison,
but going to prison is what led Yusuf AS to work in the royal court
When contemplating Yusuf AS's story we’ll see how the way we view things is very limited.
Everything that was supposed to make Yusuf’s AS life good was what led him to struggles and hardships; and every hardship is what led him to the good he got.
This is one of the clearest indicators that our judgment for things are limited to what we know and our standards for good and bad, success and failure, happiness and sadness are wrong unless we adopt the ones Allah swt told us to.
The aya first mentioned tells us of our ignorance and limited view in comparison to Allah, who is All Knowing. We never know what Allah has in store for us. But He swt is the best of planners.
So trust in His plans for you. Console yourself with the knowledge that the same thing that makes us sad can be what makes us thrive in life and lead to our happiness.
“ذَلِكَ مِنْ فَضْلِ اللَّهِ عَلَيْنَا”
“That is from the favor of Allah upon us”
Yusuf AS said this when he was in prison, in a foreign country, alone.
No matter what the situation is, let’s be satisfied and thankful for the path Allah chose. Let’s make peace with Allah’s plans for us even if we don’t understand the wisdom behind them. Let us make a promise to ourselves to take off our glasses and start seeing things the way Allah swt told us to. What seems like a prison today can be the road to achieving great things — just as it was for Yusuf AS.
Thank you for reading!
