What’s Your Latitude of Gratitude?

It never ceases to amaze me how Allah [swt] always reminds me to work on myself to become better in the most obvious and flat-out of ways.

As a part-time job, I work at the information desk of the student services building of my university. My work mainly consists of telling people that the bathroom is down the hall, to the right. Occasionally I’ll get a few rebels who actually ask something other than where the restrooms are, but for the most part, everyone needs to potty.

Twice now, however, at the end of my shift at around 5:30PM, I’ve gotten a very unique request, one that I am always inclined to fulfill no matter what I’m doing. This guy, I think from Russia or an eastern-European country, comes up to the desk and asks me to help him put his jacket on. You may be thinking, “why would he need your help to put his coat on…isn’t he an adult?”

He’s in a wheelchair because he’s lost 85% of the motor ability in his limbs. In order to put his coat on, he needs me to hold his arms and guide them into the holes and pull them through until the coat fits just right. I’m not posting this on the internet to show everyone what a supposedly good person I am. Keep reading.

Yesterday night, Shaykh Yusuf Estes gave a talk at Benedictine University. As always, he seemed to stray a bit off topic at times, but the tangents are almost always beautiful gems that are well worth the diversion.

During his speech, he spoke about the mercy of Allah [swt], and how He is so merciful to us that He allows us to have physical and mental abilities that we normally take for granted. He allows us to see, eat, breathe, talk, walk, run, laugh…the list goes on and on, quite literally. Then he paused, let the appreciation of Allah’s mercy soak in, and then asked, “so how do you thank Him for it?”

I couldn’t answer the question. Every day as I’m leaving the house, my mom, Allah protect her, reminds me to remember Allah as much as I can that day. But I could do better – we all could, insha Allah. How many times do we thank Allah for the blessing of sight? Or the blessing to be able to eat? Or (sometimes more important than a lot of other blessings) being able to relieve ourselves by using the washroom? We take these things as a default, as a standard to the quality of life, but is there really such a thing as a blessing that we deserve, per se? We didn’t earn anything, Allah gave us everything.

So let’s thank Him more than we do, not just by saying Alhamdulilah, but by the actions that we do with the blessings. It’s definitely important to thank Allah verbally for our sight, hearing and speech, but just as important (if not more) is to thank him by using those abilities in ways that are permissible and beneficial for us as Muslims.

Do we speak well with our mouths, or backbite and put the hookah pipe in it? Do we listen to things that will benefit us, or do we listen to Jay-Z and Snoop talk about how many women they’ve each slept with? Do we view and reflect upon what Allah created, and the beauty of the earth, or do we log on to “those” websites that we shouldn’t go to? Will my list of semi-rhetorical questions ever end?

I think this is the end of this article, but hopefully we all took an important lesson: remember those who don’t have the amount or level of blessings that you do, and remember and thank Allah through word and action, because we didn’t earn anything, Allah gave it to us as a gift.

And the best way to thank Him is to use the gift the way He wants you to.

Allah, protect and bless us all.