Hot hipster lovin’

Saturday morning in a Somerville cafe: in stroll the hipsters. They come for the open doors, the walls covered in art, the outdoor patio and killer fritattas…who knows why they come? Maybe they just happen to be the people living within a stone’s throw of The Biscuit, our favorite closes-too-early-because-of-course-I-forgot-I-live-in-Boston spot. Anyway, in they stroll in their unwashed-hair, unmatching-in-a-surprisingly-fetching-way splendor.

Raise your hand if you don't want to be one of the people in this picture...didn't think so.

I’m, well, ungracefully trying not to stare at these gum-chewing dislays of companionable affection and discipline myself into reading a novel that I am not enjoying one bit. People-watching proves to be the far more compelling pastime (why do I end up feeling like every time I read a novel translated into English it’s full of unnecessarily exhibitionistic excalamations of premature emotion?), and Snow gets ignored, sitting closed by my cooling coffee.

The most charmingly in love couple takes the table next to me (!) before they place their orders. The man is sitting opposite me, and as his girl stands next to him (to better see the menu), he sort of absentmindedly lets one hand travel up and down the inside of the thigh closest to him. She seems not to notice – absorbed instead by the sandwich selections. Embarrassed to be intruding on such an intimate moment, I avert my gaze, yet again, back to my disappointing literature.

Later on, these two chat about some common project on their (shared?) overgrown Mac. He leans over as if to kiss her cheek – doesn’t – whispers something in her ear, and BAM. They disappear.

I start to think about this. At work, we’ve just finished a house meeting campaign, which basically means that we’ve gone around and asked hundreds of people who are part of the Boston Muslim community what issues they’re facing. These were both among the top issues:

1. getting married (as in, we’re having trouble doing it)

2. staying married (as in, we’re having trouble doing it)

And looking at my idealized fantasy of hipster love, I’m wondering if a little of this ain’t what we’re missing:

Matching, hugging, absorbing L-O-V-E.

Now one could argue that this is, for a lot of reasons, not the appropriate model for Muslim relationships. I’m going to ignore that whole side of it for now, hoping you’ll forgive me – as I explore What the Hipsters Have and We Don’t.

Speaking with some of my (not that much older) married friends, these are prominent commentaries on marriage (slash advice):

1. People think that married people don’t get lonely. Married people are often really lonely.

2. Dishes. Every day. Be prepared to do them. And be prepared that he won’t.

3. You should be picky, because this is the man you’re going to obey for the rest of your life.

Fantastic! Where do I sign up?

And then I’m looking around me at all the marriageable people, and I’m thinking, No freaking wonder we’re still single. I mean, here we are, for better or worse, completely immersed in a culture that not only prizes romantic love very highly, but displays it prominently – both in person and in the media. I don’t need Disney to form a warped, idealistic picture of romance – I have the thigh-touching, whispering, disappearing hipsters next to me. So we’re trapped – maybe not unpleasantly – in a world in love, surrounded by a bunch of married Muslims who are either not in love with each other, or who don’t show us that they’re in love with each other because they consider it to be inappropriate.

I’m not asking for people to start making out with each other outside of Eid prayers or anything. That would be kind of gross. But, like, a little something? Like holding hands with each other, maybe, or the occasional smile from across the room as though you share a private joke? That would be nice. That would make the rest of us maybe find marriage a more attractive state – not some sort of elaborately disguised prison.

The conventional wisdom goes: romantic love does not last; therefore, it’s an illogical and doomed reason to get married. Better to marry for the sake of common values and a synchornicity in thinking about gender roles within marriage and how Islam should be practiced/Muslim kids should be raised – 10 years later you’ll thank us.

I would counter with, “What about the Obamas?”…But I’ll admit that they are the exception and not the rule. So this may very well be sage advice. Nevertheless, I’m not positive that it’s responding – or suitable – to our cultural milieu. It may very well be unwise, but Muslim kids grow up watching their peers fall in love again and again – Muslims see people around them in love all the time. The common cultural narrative goes like this: boy meets girl in some sort of meet-cute, they exchange some pleasant witticisms and then numbers – or maybe they friend each other on Facebook first (baby steps), then they agree under some pretense to meet for coffee (perhaps they happen to be reading the same book, which one of them only read because the other was reading it…), they flirt, they walk to some other destination (someone’s class? The bus stop? He walks her home?), navigate the awkward first goodbye (are we kissing or hugging?) but not before making plans to see each other again. They meet a second time – in the evening, so as to make looking hot and kissing more plausible, have a surprisingly wonderful time, and end the night with a kiss – which, if it’s sublime (and why wouldn’t it be?), will initiate a love affair that may or may not involve thigh-touching at the local cafe, much to the Muslim next door’s chagrin – and, if everyone’s amenable and things go well, could very well end in marriage, kids, and a plot at the local community garden.

And…apart from the kissing, etc. pre-marriage, what’s wrong with this picture? Are we telling ourselves to want something we can’t want?

I feel like we might be approaching it like this: the married community (to the extent that such a thing exists) is telling the unmarried community, “This [i.e. romantic love] is what’s broken in your culture [self].” So we’re supposed to want to get married for very practical reasons: to have a family, to have religious support, to not sin. But I don’t think that’s why we really want to get married. We’d like to be swept off our feet by an experience that makes us feel like taking on responsibility and adulthood with this person will feel less of a burden, and maybe even fun – we want to lose sense of ourselves, to desire someone – hopefully for deep and shallow reasons, we’d like to come across a person who makes us feel like all this waiting we’ve done is insignificant, erased, by the pleasure of his/her company. We’d like our minds to be blown – and eventually think about a family, support each other, happily not-sin together.

It’s not that we’d like to marry someone with terrible character and a tendency to shirk responsibility. It’s that we don’t want it to be just that. Who wants to end up in Charlotte’s marriage to Mr. Collins?

Practical? Very. Hot for each other? ...I rather think not.

Now, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy? There’s a better model. The beauty of this fictional match is that neither partner compromised on the ideal character of their imagined beloved – they both dreamed of marrying refined, interesting people of superb character. Perhaps Elizabeth imagined herself with someone a tad more outgoing, and Mr. Darcy imagined himself with someone a tad more rich – but these things are not the glue that holds people together. They loved and respected each other, and with good reason. And no surprise, happy ending there.

I like this much better. Much.

Why should we be trying to fit ourselves into a box that…doesn’t fit? If we want to love our spouses, I mean – isn’t that okay – isn’t it desirable? It only needs to be tempered with some sort of reasonable wisdom or reason – of course it’s possible to lust after, or even to be infatuated with, a person who is all kinds of wrong for you. Of course. It happens all the time. But that is very different than feeling deeply in love with a person you respect and admire, and therefore want to spend your every day with. Maybe he doesn’t rake leaves, and maybe she’s not so on top of the dishes, or the laundry, or whatever. But I’d so much rather do without a few of the teeny little chore expectations I had and have someone I actually like spending time with. Isn’t that what marriage is? Time? I’d so much rather enjoy it.

So I think it’s hot hipster lovin’ or bust. This unhot transactional nonsense has got to go, dig? Can’t nobody defenestrate that but us, one lovemonkey marriage at a time. Ready?

Because properly married people should stand like this. Really it's indecent not to.

Something else entirely

Very often this happens: I start to write about something. An event, maybe. An idea. And then three-quarters of the way through, or even after I’m done, I realize that I was writing about something else the entire time. Usually the something else is loneliness.

I’m not really sure what to say about it. We all feel it, and yet we can’t seem to solve it for each other, which puzzles me a great deal. It seems that things get confused, like my writing. We think we want one thing, but after we get it we discover that we wanted something else entirely. Back to square one, a new post, a new project, a new something, chasing something else. And then the refinement of that. And so on.

I think the loneliest time in my life was probably during junior high. I had kind of a clique in elementary school, but it busted wide open in seventh grade, spilling its contents in different classes, separate hallways and lunchtimes, and a wide range of rungs on the social ladder. I landed somewhere near the middle-bottom. I think. No way of really knowing.

Here’s what junior high is like:

1. All the same people are cool. There is some predefined coolness that is unchangeable and unknowable until you get there. There is not a lot of room for originality, unless you want to totally give up and embrace becoming an outcast. Few people have the courage to do this early on. It usually takes a couple of years of swimming in pointless circles.

2. All of the people – cool, uncool, pretty, unpretty – have crushes on the cool people. Now this is interesting. The cool people aren’t necessarily the prettiest. They’re not necessarily the most accomplished. They’re not necessarily interesting, but the people who have crushes on them don’t know this, because they’ve never actually spoken before. These crushes are feelings borne of wallflower moments at school dances where one person seems to shine or appears immoderately happy, out of imagined intimacy when one arm brushes another in the hall, out of the aura, the mystique, created by the fatal combination of distance, new, overgrown desires, and active imaginations.

3. Everyone wants to be cool, but no one is sure why. There is some social currency in popularity , but it’s not clear what it will get you. Maybe a boyfriend on the JV basketball team. But maybe not. Nobody knows, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

4. The psyches of barely-not-children are pretty trampled on the way to the top. Example: I once had my two best friends bring me to the Guidance Counselor’s office (who, keep in mind, is there to reign in reason and protect the sanity of the innocent) to tell me that they couldn’t be such good friends with me anymore, because I wasn’t cool enough. That’s right. That was the only reason. They were magnanimous; they would let me say hi to them in the hallways. But no more weekend sleepovers. It was over.

Time passes, and a few things happen:

Sometime in high school, or college, depending on where you’re at, you realize that all the hullabaloo is a sham. The cool people are bland. Or you realize that the girl who sits next to you in homeroom is actually prettier. Or you develop some interest that allows you to interact with people in a way that isn’t based on mutual advantage. Like, you like the same things. Hey! Who thought of that as the basis for a friendship? Genius.

You become interested in and interesting to the people who are like you. It’s not really based on prettiness anymore, or status. It becomes about whole people, and this is totally refreshing. And affirming. The rate of rejection is relatively low, which, you know, ROCK, plus you actually enjoy your time more. No surprise there, but it still seems like a novel idea.

You realize that this obsession with popularity is a blip. It’s a stage. It’s developmental. Children have wholesome friendships, and so do adults, but somewhere in the middle there we lose all sense and fly at each other like dogs – and there is only one bone, and it is golden, and it is called The Perfect Social Life. But you have to rediscover either that it doesn’t exist or that there are a million different versions, once you enter the world of See and Be Seen. Because then, it’s not only about who or what you like. It’s about the consensus about who and what you like. And you can’t escape the pressure cooker of public school, so you get all twisted up faster than you can untie yourself.

Which brings me to the latent effects of this syndrome in the Muslim population. It is sad for me to say it, but some of us are kind of still in junior high. Every girl wants to marry the MSA president (or, if the MSA president is a girl, vice versa). Every boy wants to marry the prettiest girl he has spied out of the corner of his eye in the musallah. Which, you know, to each his own, but (and convert alert here, I’m coming at this from the outside) these impulses seem to miss the point that marriage is about soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much more than the ability to give a good speech, or really great recitation, or good looks. Those things, frankly, don’t matter much when it comes to being happy in a relationship (don’t say I didn’t warn you). When was the last time you gave a speech in your kitchen? And let’s face it, people – we’re all going to age. Have you ever seen a beautiful old person? That beauty is from character, and wisdom, and goodness – good genes give way to wrinkles eventually. Now, I’m not advocating for marrying someone who doesn’t appeal to you at all…I’m just saying that when it comes to domestic bliss, in all respects, and thank you for not making me spell that out, a lot more comes into play than a pretty face. I mean, we’re talking roommate for life, God willing. Not only is this person going to share your kitchen, and your bathroom, and bicker with you over window dressings, but you have to share a bedroom, too. And a bed. And the covers. And trust me, you’re not going to care how hot she is if she won’t give you the blanket in January. Trust me. If you’re going to have no refuge from someone, have no refuge from an interesting someone. From a nice someone. From a merciful and loving and patient and kind someone. No refuge from a hot someone gets old pretty quick, if that’s his/her crowning virtue.

So let’s all make an effort to get along. Let’s be mavericks and throw middle school to the dogs! Let’s dig each other for the important things. Things that matter to us. Let’s be nuanced individuals, and be, like, interesting, and stuff. I mean, I know it’s hard, and you’ve all been good, and you feel like your kiss with the prom queen is ten years too late and you deserve it already, but overvaluing the transitory elements of people, allowing yourself to be guided by the intoxicating cocktail of an aching desire and a rich fantasy life, amounts to shooting yourself in the foot. And besides, what happened to the prom queen of your high school? Do you even know where she is now? Do you care? You see my point. Balance in all things. If middle school was raging, repressed hormones, and high school was discovering your angst, and college was finding your niche, be in college. Marry the girl/guy who likes pina coladas (virgin, goes without saying) and taking walks in the rain.

Sometimes I feel like I’m looking around at this plethora of lonely, awesome people, and I feel like: what is our problem? Can’t we hook up, already? It’s all most everyone wants. But nobody manages to pull it off. (Well – some do – and may God bless them all, and bless us poor single folk with the same happy fate! But not enough do it. Not nearly enough.) And I’m not sure this is the solution, but I figure I’ll throw it out there just in case. Fuel the brainstorm, you know. I’m nothing if not brazen. So here are my brave ‘n brazen two cents for the day: we need depth in our interaction, and nuance, and love. We need to let each other be a little quirkier, and embrace it. Join that knitting group! Or dig on your hopscotch! Or whatever it is, rock! Be it, and be it like whoa, and find other Muslims who will do it with you and support you and make you feel like a million bucks. And who knows? One of these days you might wake up and look at that brother you get along with like peas & carrots but just aren’t that into (he’s no Brad Pitt) and think: smokin’.

It’s been known to happen.

[Comments, please. Stop being so shy. For those of you who have already - thanks!]

Between obscurity and notoriety

I once had a conversation with someone who didn’t write a book because he wasn’t sure that his intentions were pure.

Wow, I thought. Not me. Fear of renown has not scared me off anything – but perhaps it ought to.

Sincerity is something, perhaps oddly, perhaps normally, that I find elusive. I don’t know how to put my finger on it. And the lack of knowing plagues me. I’m trudging ahead, doing what I do, feeling as I feel, without much self-editing. I wonder if it’s time to take a step back and check myself.

Usually, when faced with the dilemma of my own sincerity, I simply pray for it. I’m not sure how much more I can manage. I even cringe away from uttering things like “Oh Lord, you know that I did such and such for Your sake alone” even when I am alone in prayer. I am afraid of myself, and afraid of the One Who created me and knows me better than I know myself. What if I have told myself a pretty and convenient lie? What if I told myself that, for instance, I started this blog for the sake of God alone, and what if, underlying that, even stronger than that, a love of praise and desire for recognition drove me to it? How would I know? Not knowing, I am inclined to think that baser things drive my actions – hoping, all the while, that I am wrong, and if not, that God will forgive me and improve me. And who am I to say what I meant by this or that? The more important something is to me, the more various my attractions to it. I feel that to to identify one driving force for something so important, so personal, and so inevitable as my writing would be to deny the complexity of my humanity. Right now, anyway. I am not so good, I am not so pure, and I am afraid of such self-assured declarations.

Do we totally understand our own selves?

Something may remain painfully unclear to a person for months or years that is plain as day to his peers and family. Alcoholics deny their alcoholism. Cumpulsive gamblers tell themselves, “I can stop whenever I want.” Am I any different – are any of us any different? If I understood the most inner, deepest motivations I have for all of my actions, and could identify them immediately, wouldn’t it be easier to rid my heart of its imperfections? Isn’t part of the insidiousness of sin that we sometimes don’t know it’s there?

The Qur’an calls those who deny belief, even while they hold it somewhere deep in their beings, “blind”. With honesty, and admission of that belief, there comes sight. “The likeness of the two parties is as the blind and the deaf and the seeing and the hearing: are they equal in condition? Will you not then mind?” [11:24] But I am more inclined to think that this phenomenon happens in gradations. Among the believers, the seers and hearers, some are undeniably better people and more committed to their faith. So I shy away from stark dichotomies. Is it right to think that because I see with the eyes of a believer, my spiritual sight is 20/20? I feel as though I am still waking up to the world, and things are revealed to me slowly, as I grow. With time, I am learning to polish the glasses of belief, and things that were vague in the distance a year ago become clear, and yet more things remain farther, beyond my reach, but between me and the horizon. I see myself for what I am through experience as it unfolds; it was not all done with a thunderclap the moment I became honest with myself and sighed, Yes, I am a Muslim.

So am I sincere? Am I sincere in all the ways I should be, in writing, in waking up in the morning, in the friendly exchanges I have with my fellow Muslims and my fellow Americans? I don’t think so. But I’m not sure if that is reason enough to stop.

I was raised in the theater – as a dancer, then as a singer, then as an actor. Then as a writer and director. I haven’t been involved in theatrical projects per se since graduating, but I believe that it would be foolish – just plain stupid – for me to say that the exhibitionism that drove my involvement in those things from the age of three does not now play a part in what I do, or attempt to do, publicly. The sound of applause was familiar to me from an early age – the smiling faces, the admiration, the feeling that I am real because these people see me. Or: I have done something, because they have witnessed it. I did not imagine my life. Did those feelings of comfort die two and a half years ago, because I began along a spiritual path? No. Surely not. And this is not my theory; I know it. If I write something and receive a compliment, when I blush and smile at it, it is twofold: I’m enjoying the praise, and censuring myself for basking in it.

Part of the reason, I believe, that I became a Muslim, was a recognition that all of the applause was transitory, illusory, and ultimately meaningless. The older performers I knew behaved, with some very notable exceptions, like overgrown, grayed toddlers. Unable to stop themselves, they threw embarrassing, diva-esque tantrums, and then recovered themselves as if nothing had happened. The rest of us, who were younger, less acknowledged, and only partially infected by the same need for attention, were left to feel ashamed for them. I dreaded becoming that – so I sought a forum for my heart that was richer than the stage.

Still, fleeing from something does not equal being freed from it.

Jane Austen asserts something very simple and very remarkable that I believe we learned to ignore by the time I showed up in the 1980’s (and perhaps long before that, too). In Mansfield Park, when Henry Crawford proposes to Fanny, and she refuses him, she explains herself by saying, “I do not trust him. Like many charming people, his enjoyment lies chiefly in the admiration of others. His sole interest is in being loved; not in loving.”

The problem with rushing to praise is that she is a fickle lover. Sometimes the truth will gain you some of people’s love; sometimes it will gain you hatred, insult, and pain. Perhaps living in a democracy, we’ve been trained out of the idea that truth is not arrived at by consensus. Truth is sometimes unpopular. Lest we forget it, the struggles of our dear and beloved Prophet (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him) remind us – so too the persecution of Galileo – or more recently, those valiant champions of the Civil Rights movement: Martin Luther King, Jr. and our blessed brother Malcolm X, may God have mercy on him.

The danger of love of praise is that we will pander. That with time, and addiction to admiration, we will begin to edit out those things we may have been previously committed to, but may not be popular with the masses. We water down whatever it is we wanted to convey, and excuse the adulteration in the name of wider dissemination, or slow introduction, or any other number of things. It is a very dangerous temptation, it is a very slippery slope, and it faces everyone with something to say and some sort of public face. The tide of popularity carries our souls away with it – poor Britney is the saddest testament to this. What she began trying to do, and what she has actually done – it would take a true cynic, I believe, to deny that the aim and the reality have parted ways for that poor woman.

And yet, despite all the danger that lies in making any part of one’s self public, we seemed to be called to act. It does not take a rocket scientist to look at the world and see that the forces of good, righteousness and truth aren’t exactly running the show. And who will speak out for justice? Who will stand for something other than profit, or sex, or the profit of sex?

As afraid as I am of myself, I get lost in feeling a crushing love for all the world, and a responsibility…to try…to do something. Something. Something not toting the line of meaninglessness, of greed, of celebrity-obsessed ingratiation. Something that supports the idea that there is more to the world than accumulating as much of it as possible, more even than doing no harm, more even than helping one’s fellow.

Someone asked me recently why I write. Glory be to God, I thought, why do I write, indeed? I was overwhelmed with my own self-ignorance, my lack of certainty in my intentions, and also with my love of my family and friends, my feeling for their hearts, and my desire to bestow upon them whatever I may have that is good. I write because I must. I write because I am obsessed with the memory of myself three years ago, and what scared me, and what inspired me, and I write to that girl: I write to console her. I write because

‘This is my letter to the World/That never wrote to Me –’

Because I need something, because I myself, feeling misunderstood, want to at least be able to say that I made an effort to be understood – whether or not it works is up to God. I write because I did not understand Muslims, and now I do. I write in the belief that I’m part of a group of people at least attempting to bridge the gap between Muslims and Americans – or attempting to expose the assumption that there is some contradiction between those identities is false. Because when I’m talking to someone, trying to say, “I’m American, I’m a patriot,” and they’re very busy telling me, “You’re Muslim, you’re different, you’re making life difficult for yourself, you crazy! You gave up your White Card,” I drive home feeling despondent, and only working against that tide will soothe me.

I write because I love reading, and want to read something I can relate to. I write because I meet wonderful people, and love them, and feel I’ve been blessed with this most beautiful faith, and on the off chance that it is something that will touch someone else’s heart in the way it has touched mine, I want to say to those people: It’s scary as all hell, but it does turn out okay. I write to remind myself of things I’ve forgotten. I write for the friends who encourage me. I write because my heart is bursting with love for God, and I can’t keep it in anymore.

I don’t know if I would be better off if I was more guarded, or more private. But I’ve never been secretive about much – either before or after becoming Muslim. I suppose it’s my personality – which doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing – so I can’t, won’t, and don’t defend my own sincerity. That’s not what this is about. I pray for it – I ask you to pray for it, especially if you’ve found something here that you feel has benefited you. God alone knows my heart, and putting it – and this, and all I do – in His hands is the most I can manage right now. It may be that I change my mind later, and that would be alright.

In the end, I’m hoping that there is something in here worth saying. I’m hoping there’s a point. I’m hoping that the best of what I have to offer comes out, and that this isn’t, deep down in the cockles of my heart, an attempt for popularity. How sad I would be, if that were the case. How disappointed I would be in myself.

We take refuge in God from sharing with Him anything in our worship knowing of it, and we ask His forgiveness for what we share with Him without being aware of it.

May God protect my heart, and yours, and grant us freedom from wanting that which can bring no gain. May we all have the best of intentions in all of our actions, and may He reward us according to that which is most noble in our hearts. May He correct, in His mercy, what is wrong with us, and help us to guide each other in love. Amen.

I stand corrected.

The only thing I could think of, as is often the case with me, was a line from one of my favorite movies:

“Your words shamed me.”

[note: I admit additional shame for another reason entirely. Brazen Jane Austen fan that I am, I do not know, off the top of my head, if the line is taken unadulterated from her prose, or if it was reworded for the script. For shame, you say. I know.]

Someone has corrected me, and I believe it is of some note. A few posts ago, I was talking about fantasy, and the remarkable ability to see through a religious fantasy as it is envisioned. The remarkable part being that it requires no one else’s permission. That once a heart desires the spiritual life, it is, in many ways, already living it. No bars stand between the sincere heart and God.

This person was very right in pointing out that a relationship with the Divine requires the permission of the Divine.

As I understand it, there is some debate in Christian theology on free will. It is a problem. In other words, God gave humans free will – but knows what we will choose. So….isn’t that, like, not free will? Isn’t that predestination?

I am very fond of the Islamic approach to this problem, which I find very straightforward and not at all logically problematic. Basically, we are taught that God made us, and knows what we will choose, but that our choices are very real to us in the time that we make them. Parents often know their children well enough to predict their choices; a Creator’s knowledge of His creation is infinitely greater. It gives me a sense of comfort, actually – that God is, in a sense with me in my choices, in that He knows what I am faced with, knows my heart, knows what is hard for me, and, ultimately, knows what I will choose. It also gives me a source of help in difficulty. I pray: Oh God, You made me, and You know this is hard for me, and You know best why it it hard for me. Grant me success in this, and give me the wisdom and steadfastness to choose, and stick by, the right thing.

When I chose Islam, nothing stood between me and that choice. It’s not like being admitted into your dream graduate program, in that you can try and fail. Of course, in extreme cases, there may be practical bars to declaring faith. One may feel afraid; one’s family may forbid one, in all the ways it is able, to change faiths. But Allah knows what is in the breasts. [3:154] Whatever your state is with God, it is between you and Him, and that is all. No one can take it from you. Faith, like love, is really one of the great secrets of the heart. We can look for its outward manifestations, but as to its strength and sincerity, we can never know what truly lies in the breast of another. God knows best.

So when I say that we have complete autonomy in faith, this isn’t exactly what I mean. I mean that our hearts, created with love, compassion, and infinite wisdom, belong also to their Creator, and that it must be so, and that He guides us according to that wisdom. That it is always there. The hint is ever-present, that there is more to all this, that we might feel more satisfaction in beholding a cloud, or the full moon in a clear sky. That we might say, Subhan’Allah, Glory be to God, instead of, Wow, pretty moon. And that saying it will make a difference to our hearts. That we will be free, that the ability to say that, and the knowledge to say it, will be the dearest thing in all the world, and the things that harm us thereafter will be mere pinpricks in comparison to the pain of separation from The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful. I believe that nudge is there. It is all the other noise that gets in the way, convincing us that we are dreaming, or that our own importance is all that matters in a void of meaning. That what we can see and point to is all that is there. Pretty moon.

One of my favorite prayers begins, “Oh God, Oh Changer of the hearts…” When my heart began to desire God, and began, as a consequence, to desire Islam…I was making the choice: am I really going to do this? But even that was gently guided by The Compeller, unbeknownst to me. Even the longing was put there in mercy. How could I claim that my heart is independent? It is like that pot of tea over there insisting it is the master of its own fate.

I like to think that I don’t belong completely to myself. I feel safe, cared for, less lonely. I love thinking that God made me for a purpose, and that it is to worship Him, and that my sincerest, dearest desire is perfectly in line with what I was intended for. Of course I bungle it all the time. I feel this way when I sit and reflect, or when I pray. But in my day-to-day life, my mistakes are much the same as they ever were, and I make and remake the intention to improve myself, even as I make excuses for my sins and tell myself, This is the last time. May God forgive and guide me!

The thing about turning to God, I think, is that it can be done by the hardest heart, by the darkest sinner, at any time. He always hears that call. As long as we are breathing, the chance to begin completely anew is there. It is unlike any other relationship, because there is no limit to God’s forgiveness. And this is also what I mean. Going to your lover requires his welcome, his trust, his open arms; misuse these, and you may find yourself alone. Lovers hold each other accountable. Even a kind person, abused enough, will eventually respond to overtures of sincerity with: I can’t. But not if God is The Beloved. He is independent of need, unlike any other kind of love object, so He is limitless in His ability to hear us say: I’m sorry. Take me back.

The wisdom of fools.

I’ve been neglecting my writing. Last week, I had the excuse of a midterm. This week, I am ashamed to say that my only reason for staying away was an inability to think about anything other than Jane Austen.

You see, I am jealous of Fanny Price.

Fanny has the good sense that no one around her seems to. At eighteen, she has the forbearance to consistently refuse the man pushed on her from all sides: her rich, benefactor uncle, the cousin she is in love with, her friends, her parents, and all her acquaintance together. He has been a libertine in the past; he tells her he has changed. She is the only one to not believe him, is cast out and called a fool. In the end, he runs away with her married cousin and vindicates her refusal.

It’s possible that I am Fanny’s opposite. I believe the things that people tell me, have faith in everyone’s ability to change (hey, I’m a convert – if not me, who?), and let optimism conquer reason without putting up much of a fight.

These would be admirable qualities indeed – in a world of people who spoke only the truth, changed all the things they intended to, and lived up to expectations. Sadly, this is not the case; disappointment abounds, and it is often mine.

I know many people who are not like this. My brother, for example. He is good and wise, and it seems that he was always so. He is purposeful and deliberate. People more than twice his age seek his advice. Whenever anyone meets the two of us, or hears me talk about him, that person always assumes he is the elder sibling. Always. The reverse is true. It is also true that I am often a fool – so the mistake is understandable.

I once found myself in a situation that was truly pitiful. I fell for a man who (surprise!) said he had changed, and talked about his ability to refine and improve himself a great deal. I was impressed by the commitment to improvement he was always chattering on about. What undaunted struggle! What courage!

What blindness.

My family dutifully raised their objections, as did my friends. All and every one. And I, the loyal lover, defended my man to the last. I defended my own flawed reasoning with logical dances I can’t hope to reinvent. My elaborate maneuverings of love were so impressive and impromptu that when family recounts them for me now, I’m aghast. Really? I said that? Idiot.

A funny thing happened amidst these objections. I noticed that I was unhappy in love.

It would be so great if this didn’t feel so mournful…

Unhappy in love is an unfortunate combination, and is fraught with danger. The danger is that one will say to oneself, I don’t care. I’d rather be with him than without, no matter how miserable I am. Perhaps even more perilous is the suggestion, It will get better. He’ll change. We’ll learn to get along.

I’m not sure why, or how, but remarkably and miraculously, neither of these tempting thoughts won out. I got out. I got out fast, and reflected later on all of the building evidence of my own unhappiness that I did not see at the time. The mounting pile in the corner that suggested, oh so massively, that the man I loved was not actually the one I was involved with, but an elaborate invention we had both spun out of hope and breath and forgiveness. It was so clear in retrospect.

Foresight? We’re fresh out. Try the hindsight store next door; bitterness is on sale, and self-loathing is half off.

I’m seven years older and a good deal more experienced in relationships than Fanny, so what gives? Why does her presence of mind elude me in all the most important ways, in all the most important moments?

This is what I was thinking as I was walking to the post office today. Why wasn’t I just born wise? What is the purpose of all this fumbling towards sense? Couldn’t I have been more like Abdullah? I would have been spared a good deal of false starts and heartaches.

Then I thought: Because I’m a writer. Because I’m a writer, I was born a well-meaning, good-hearted, foolish girl. Because I’m a writer, I have some comic foibles that entertain more than myself. Because I’m a writer, there is a path to wisdom. If it had been easy, there would have been no story to tell. There would have been no point in speaking. If I were all alone, the Buddha on the mountaintop (to steal from Reality Bites), there would be no one up there to relate to me, and no benefit to all my wisdom. Because I’m down here mucking it out, I get to tell stories that are also, on occasion, lessons. It is a peerless joy, purpose. I can say, Here is point A: silliness. If you want to get to point B, which is marginally less foolish, I have recently discovered the secret to doing so, and it is X.

Actually, it is Islam, but that’s a little tangential.

My current suggestion is to read Mansfield Park. It is an incomparable study on patience, modesty, and the will of God making things turn out all right in the end. It still shocks me. Every time! It all turns out all right. Sometimes we just have to ride out the rough wave of sticktoitidness. Definitely holding to your principles is key. Holding to your romanticism, or your faith in the fancy promises of others…not always a great idea.

I know. I read it in a novel once.