Desires makes slaves out of kings and patience makes kings out of slaves: Al Ghazali
We all have heard from our elders that despite living in difficult circumstances, life used to be better back then. It used to bother me earlier; how’s that possible? I couldn’t bear the thought that you might be thrilled to have fewer modes of transportation, no TV, and no Marvel superheroes to fantasize about. It could be because of the lack of wisdom that I had at those times to comprehend. As I grew older, I began to see things from different angles and tried to deepen the insights or perceptions I had. I mean, I realized why people were happier sooner.
After contemplating the contemporary lives of people, one thing that has made me anxious is the fact that people today are bloated by anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems. Mental health is a hot topic in current times. Reports from the WHO and other organizations are worrisome. Suicide rates are escalating, and the number of depression cases is rising exponentially. As a result of this mental health crisis, people are living in fear and insecurity.
There could be many contemporary reasons to argue why it is happening, but the legit way I can find it is by seeing it through the paradigm of Islam, and the reason I find is people’s disinclination towards sacred teachings. Allah mentions in the Quran, “And follow not desire, lest it leads thee astray from the way of God.” (38:26) Allah is being direct with us, wanting us not to pollute ourselves with worldly desires. Regardless, no matter how fortunate our lives are, it is never enough for us; we have lofty aspirations and an irrational desire to achieve them at any cost, even their physical or mental health; it doesn’t matter because all we hear are things like “follow your dreams at any cost” and “work like an animal to achieve your goals,” which are pathetic and incoherent. The problem occurs when we try to disband divine philosophy and wisdom. We tend to look at it through the lenses of western and contemporary scholars.
You will encounter many motivational speakers and even new spiritual gurus who will tell you to “dream big,” “sky is the limit,” “anything is possible,” “work until your Nano turns into a BMW,” and other similar things in order to instill lust for worldly pleasures in you. And what they don’t teach you is how to be happy. Their philosophy of happiness majorly lies in materialism and the acquisition of wealth, which is not the real essence of happiness, and that makes it very problematic. Something that is temporary is never going to bring eternal joy.
Since our first day of school, we have been taught and shown the life where becoming a doctor, engineer, or some other fancy job is required to live a blissful life, and since then, our thought process has started working in a very linear way, where we believe life’s goal is to grab a fancy job or become an entrepreneur to be filthy rich to contend with life. Unfortunately, these things eventually turn out to be wrong. Educated people today are very covetous of life and are more likely to be unhappy, whereas uneducated people who don’t build castles in the air and are generally less covetous end up living a happy life.
We are living in a world driven by capitalism. We are forced to believe that earning large amounts of money can bring happiness. This is, without a doubt, the biggest lie. The famous American polymath Benjamin Franklin, with whom everyone is familiar, had some thoughts on money. He said, “Money has never made a man happy, nor will it; there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness.” “The more of it one has, the more one wants.” Here he wants us to understand that longing to make more money is like putting water in an ocean—it’s never going to get filled. Longing for material things of any sort is never going to make you content with life. Being a slave to your desires is like being a slave to darkness. The famous Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “I count him braver who overcomes his desires than he who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over oneself.” If we turn the pages of history and observe our great people with great wisdom, such as Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Ibn Siena, Al Ghazali, and other wisdom-filled people, we will see that they all did not promote the lust for worldly desires; in fact, these wise people instead encouraged the idea of detaching oneself from desires, since they knew and understood that such detachment can lead to inner peace. They believed that it is only when we turn away from the distractions of material pursuits and look inward that we can discover true joy and contentment in life.
Longing is the root of the tree of sorrow; it tangles you up with its branches, and from it, you can never escape. It evokes attributes like ostentation, greed, vanity, egocentrism, and other similar ones worth despising. One of my favourite Sufi saints, scholars, and men with great wisdom, Maulana Rumi, stated something interesting and wisdom-filled: “The beginning of pride and hatred lies in worldly desire, and the strength of your desire comes from habit.” In other words, these negative attributes begin with a longing for something, and this longing develops into a habit that we can’t escape. Pride and hatred are the most shameful attributes of a person in the eyes of Allah. Although these attributes should not be part of our lives, the longing for worldly desires will always make us vulnerable to them. And if the divine message is to abandon worldly desires, it means that it is going to be a problem for us to allow ourselves to be caught up in these qualities. And regardless of the wisdom we possess, we can never match the divine wisdom, which is unique. And when we try to make light of those messages, we end up feeling deep sadness. The divine messages that encourage us to give up our worldly desires can be difficult to follow at times, but if we stick to them, they can help us achieve inner peace and contentment.