The Story of Life Repeats: A Generous Optimist or a Discontented Pessimist
Life is a novel with ever-renewing pages, its cycle continuing without pause. Whenever God grants us a new day, it is another respite from a Merciful Lord to turn its pages, thereby increasing our reward, deeds, optimism, and eagerness. Since maintaining the status quo is impossible, the changing of circumstances is God’s sunnah (way) in His creation, and indeed in life itself. This is the secret behind the non-repetition of events and experiences that pass through us, despite their similarities, and through which we learn and mature. This is the essence of the absence of boredom from what life carries—joy or sorrow, fatigue or rest, love or hatred, illness or health, hardship or ease. From this, we realize that, given its events of varying and changing narrative nature, each day paints a different story in terms of subject, lesson, time, and place, and even characters.
A prominent feature of the novel of life, whether we live it or it passes through us in the register of memories, is that it is imbued with elements of continuity. Its starting point is good trust in God and sincere reliance upon Him. He is the One who wraps the night over the day to grant us faith in the renewal of life and to provide us with a model in their succession and the changing weather, darkness, and light. This is the secret of the strength of the believing human, who never ceases striving to bring about change. We must possess the will to achieve the best, which is the gateway to optimism. Perhaps what reinforces this and should accompany it in our thinking and behavior is seeking help from everything that renews its nature and increases our eagerness for it. The ink of this and its source are the bridges of communication with people of different backgrounds and opinions, foremost among them being relatives, who are closest to us, followed by friends and their companionship, which spans multiple pages covering or accompanying our various life stages, whether in upbringing, neighborhoods and villages, study, or work. Every friendship has its own flavor and experiences.
Alongside all of this are knowledge, learning, reading, mastering the arts of life, and adapting to the changes of the era. The novel of life and its journey continue. You find the optimist who always sees the light illuminating his life, and the pessimist who allows the pages of yesterday to dominate those of today and tomorrow. You find the pretender who attributes people’s pages to his own narrative, succeeding for a period of time, until people discover the falsity of his story. There is the loyal, trustworthy, and sincere person, whose pages are filled with unique and beneficial narratives. There is also the sycophant, the liar, and the stingy person, whose life narratives reveal the nature of their poor ethics, even as they attempt to manage and conceal it. There are many other examples of life narratives of good or bad characters, which we cannot enumerate or count.
Undoubtedly, each of us knows a quantity of them. The most entrenched narrative of life in everyone’s memory, and in the memory of others simultaneously, may be our own life story or that of another person we know or who passed through our life narrative. It is that narrative whose circumstances renew with each day in our lives, by God’s grace, and from which people always derive a share or beneficial impact each day. Indeed, this renewal instills hope and optimism in those around it. This was the prominent feature of the life narrative of our greatest Messenger, Muhammad (peace be upon him), and it is what every character with a distinguished life narrative strives to achieve. Why not choose for yourself to be among them?
