What Now?

Being a freshmen in college, I often use the excuse I’ll do it later. Or sometimes I would say, I have class, or I’m too “busy” to do that. Sadly these excuses stayed with me throughout the whole semester. (Fall 2007) So now the semester is over, actually it has been over for quite some time and I’ve never had such a long break with nothing to do. Usually in high school we would have some kind of assignment over break, even though I wouldn’t spend my whole break working on it, the break would only be like a week or so and then we would go back to school. Now I have about a month of break and nothing to do and I realize how lazy I have gotten ever since the semester ended. It’s quite sad how during the semester I would balance deen with academic work, and now I balance sleeping, eating and bumming around. I realized this yesterday when I sat down and tried to think if anything productive was done since the semester ended, and sadly I came up with nothing. It was around this moment when I remembered Surah ‘Asr:

By Al-’Asr (the time).

Verily! Man is in loss,

Except those who believe (in Islamic Monotheism) and do righteous good deeds, and recommend one another to the truth (i.e. order one another to perform all kinds of good deeds (Al-Ma’raf)which Allah has ordained, and abstain from all kinds of sins and evil deeds (Al-Munkar)which Allah has forbidden), and recommend one another to patience (for the sufferings, harms, and injuries which one may encounter in Allah’s Cause during preaching His religion of Islamic Monotheism or Jihad, etc.).

I usually don’t think about the concept of time. I mean we all hear the phrase, “time flies…” but I usually don’t sit down and go hm time… The only reason why I even made the connection this time was because in winter the days are so short and in the blink of an eye the whole day can go by and we wont even realize it. For example if you wake up late that can totally throw your day off. For example, lets say I wake up at around 10:00am, I’ll walk around, go eat breakfast, watch some Rachael Ray, go on the computer and realize that I was on longer than I wanted to and then run and make wudhu because it is already time for dhuhr. After praying I will probably get hungry again, and being the indecisive person that I am I will stare at the fridge for a bit, then the kitchen and try to figure out what I want to eat, when I finally decide what I want to eat it will be ‘asr, I go pray ‘asr and then I will eat and by the time I finish it will be maghrib and then it will be night time and then juss like that I have wasted an entire day of my life that I will never be able to get back. Hamdulillah I know that these are not the possibilities for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays because I go to masjid, but the other days are not looking that good. So now that I have written down my horrible habits, I truly realize how I really need to change my ways, because living a month like this can not be good for one’s deen, or one’s health. So I sat on my bed, looked around my room, and realized that there is so much that I need to be doing. So I decided to share what my goals are, and what I hope to continue doing for the rest of the break, you know for those who feel that they are [like me] wasting time, who knows maybe it will inspire someone

I decided that I need to work on my Salah.- I know how to pray Salah and all, but you see as we read all these hadiths of how our beloved Prophet(SAW) used to stand so long in Salah, and we sometimes tend to be a little speedy. I think I’m going to learn how to spend more time on my Salah rug than near my computer table. I would also like to learn more du’as, inshaAllah.

I juss realized that I actually enjoy reading. If you knew me from high school, you know how much I hated reading, but I think because in this semester I was assigned many enjoyable readings, I’ve learned to become acquainted with reading again. I think I might go to the library or juss look around my house for a nice little novel. I mean I usually read seerah books, but other than that I hated novels and such.

I realized that I need to learn how to say good bye to my TV, the sad part is that I don’t even watch it. I don’t like the quiet, so sometimes I would be doing all these things and the TV will juss be on randomly in the background, so I think I’ll learn this new habit of only turning on the TV to watch the news and keep my nasheeds on to block out the quiet.

I also need to learn how to make time for my family. Sometimes I think that I am juss a horrible daughter/sister. I am usually in my room and I should be helping out my mother a lot more than I do. I’ll try to help her out with chores, and learn to cook more of her amazing food.

I need to learn how to be more patient. This is something that I have been trying but sadly it is something that is very hard to master, inshaAllah I will get better.

Most of all I need to start doing something that I have been putting off for the longest time. When I was younger (around 7th and 8th grade) I was in a hifz class. I didn’t memmorize much, about half of the 30th juz. But sadly over the years I haven’t reviewed it and I don’t really remember all of the surahs that I once had memorized. Abu Musa Al-Ash’ari(RA) reported: The Prophet (SAW) said, “Read Qur’an regularly. By the One in Whose Hand Muhammeds soul is, it escapes from memory faster than a camel does form lying its tying ropes.”[Al-Bukhari and Muslim] InshaAllah I’ll be able to retrieve some of what was lost.

So inshaAllah there will be no more slacking off, no more wasting time.

Enjoy the rest of your break, take care inshaAllah.

-radf