Day Fifteen

Rule 15

“It’s easy to love a perfect God, unblemished and infallible that He is. What is far more difficult is to love fellow human beings with all their imperfections and defects. Remember, one can only know what one is capable of loving. There is no wisdom without love. Unless we learn to love God’s creation, we can neither truly love nor truly know God.”

This post is dedicated to Shayan Afzal Khan, known to all of us as "Poppy", on her birthday... She loved creation to the point of wanting to leave this world a better place. A true mentor who taught us to think of the good of others.

Have you met people who think of themselves as terribly pious, but all they seem to do is harp on minute details and criticize everyone? Yeah, so have I. I have also met people whose faith makes them exude happiness and light, acceptance and love. 

It's easy to love a perfect God, it's easy to love rules and rituals, to get so stuck in them that you can't see beyond your own salvation. Faith is not about scoring brownie points with your maker, that's entirely between you and your maker, but how about keeping it to yourself? 

Those who love all of God's creation, genuinely care for them and their wellbeing be it humans, animals or wildlife... they shine the brightest because they are so rare. 

I don't love all of God's creation, I admit it openly. I am a cynic and find most humans to be insufferable. At age fifteen, I used to write such scathing poetry about societal ills that my father said my ideal profession would be a "social critic". I said it sounded like my dream job but I didn't think it would pay the bills. In my Political Theory class at university, the text I liked the most was "Leviathan" by Hobbes. Positively charming, wasn't I? 

These days, I'm possibly closer to Rousseau's philosophies, though I say possibly because people are still terribly disappointing at times. When given power they are likely to turn corrupt and ignore any moral compass they may have had. Rumi, like Rousseau, might say that they are straying from their natural state. Most humans are nowhere near that romanticized pure, natural state. And what else can we expect when every framework humans have created for themselves revolves around money and power? 

Looking at the state of humankind today, it is hard to completely discredit Hobbesian theory; that said, we cannot change what others choose to do, but we can individually vow to prove Hobbes wrong. Love each other, care for each other. Accept our collective responsibility towards one another. 

Let's hope the "pious" get the memo, too.