"Don’t worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?”So said the 13th century Persian poet and Muslim scholar Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi.
Worry, fear and stress are what many people are feeling these days. Their minds are preoccupied with the aftermath of a worldwide economic downturn that has affected job security and stability. Some people have lost their jobs and others are worried about losing theirs.
Putting plan B – or even plan C – into effect is a good strategy, but then, for the sake of a peaceful mind and heart, you should let go of worry and just be. Experts – therapists, doctors, scholars, and wise men and women from our present and our past – stress the importance of not worrying too much, because it causes illness, conflict and great unhappiness. You can’t control fate, you can only change how you react to what life throws your way.
An elderly tribesman I met in Al Ain once said: “When you age, your face is a mirror of your heart. If you worried and had ill feelings and thoughts, you will have stronger and angrier looking wrinkles around your face.”
It is said that the characteristics of the happiest people who had attained mindfulness, presence, contentment and inner peace – terms that are now hip and marketable – were attained long ago by the Prophets. In this region, we are fortunate to have had plenty of Prophets, scholars and thinkers. And you don’t have to be religious to take what you need from their words.
For example, here is this widely circulated saying on social media attributed to the fourth Caliph, Ali Ibn Abi Talib: “How strange and foolish is man. He loses his health in gaining wealth. Then, to regain his health he wastes his wealth. He ruins his present while worrying about his future, but weeps in the future by recalling his past. He lives as though death shall never come to him, but dies in a way as if he were never born.”
Then we have words of wisdom from the second Caliph, Umar Ibn Al Khattab, who said: “To speak less is wisdom, to eat less is healthy, to sleep less is a prayer and there is peace in solitude.”
He also advised three ways to build love around us: by making salam (greetings) to whoever we meet, to make space for a person in a gathering, and to address a person in a respectful and good manner. It sounds quite basic and intuitive, but when we are rushed, worried and in a bad mood, we tend to forget these basic values and behaviour.
Believers pray to the Creator when times are tough, and for Muslims there are certain duaas (supplications) to help alleviate worry and anxiety.
There have been many books that guide us to a better way of living, coping and pursuing happiness and peace.
In his Alchemy of Happiness, Muslim theologian and philosopher Abu Hamid Al Ghazali (1058-1111) says: "He who knows himself is truly happy." This concept is repeatedly revisited today in self-help books and seminars about refocusing one's attention to the heart and soul rather than to the events and things around us.
Al Ghazali gave us other pearls of wisdom, such as: “To get what you love, you must first be patient with what you hate.”
But we don’t have to look back that far, we can look to writers such as Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz, who remains the only Arab to win the Nobel Prize for literature (in 1988). He put it all into perspective with this simple line: “Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life.”
Unfortunately, fear and worry won’t stop bad things from happening. One just has to be extra creative in tough times. So, hang in there because better times are bound to come back.
rghazal@thenational.ae
On Twitter: @Arabianmau