First published on: Your Loneliness in a Big World!


  Omar AbdulMonem

Jeff Bezos

After “Jeff Bezos” divorced his wife a few days ago, he lost quarter of his fortune to her. Yet, he remained with the title of “the wealthiest man on the world,” with a fortune of 115 billion dollars roughly. I don’t remember the exact number but it was near that. Was it 114, or was it 117? May be, I don’t know, but does it make a difference to you? Of course not. For us, it is one hundred and “something,” but in reality the difference is of  few billions of dollars here. It could buy all the cars moving in your city. Moreover, the remaining will be enough to buy every house as well!

Numbers at Stake


How many person died in world war two? I remember that the number was 44 million human beings. I googled it thinking that I will find the exact number, only to find the dignified Google doesn’t know exactly. It tells me that the number is between 50 to 70 millions, because no one knows exactly! We hear this and don’t get amazed. There is a margin of error of 20 millions. However, it doesn’t amaze us because it is just a statistic! To illustrate, imagine of all the people in Australia died all of a sudden. This is the magnitude of this “margin” that we are talking about.

If we could describe this era that we live in with a collective description, it will be “the era of big numbers.” Seven billions of humans; ten times of the discovered galaxies in heavens, trillions of cells we counted in our bodies, fortunes that humans knew nothing alike, wars annihilate in a few years more than all those who were living on this earth a few hundred years ago!

Examples


In addition, you now have the knowledge that when you pass your hand over your head you have just touched more than hundred thousand hair. Indeed, the exponential growth is a unique characteristic of the human knowledge. All the knowledge that humans had in 1900 was doubled in 1950 and was doubled again in 1960 and it is doubling every seven or eight years. The American scientist “Julius Robert Oppenheimer” says: the technological advancement that happened in the last 40 years is more than that happened in the last 40 centuries. The space allowed for the people increased from 10^10 to 10^40, the temperature from 10^5 to 10^11 and the pressure from 10^10 to 10^16. Everything expands, knowledge multiplies, boundaries stretch. In short, now we are trapped in the headache of big numbers and the vertigo of the “Big Picture”.

Again….. What do all the little numbers mean when we are talking about millions, billions, trillions of things? What does one, ten or hundred mean? Just a statistical margin can latterly be easily neglected without effecting any equation. Without being wrong in anything statistically, you are nothing in that enormous universe, in this spacious planet, or in that crowded city. In fact, you are also just a margin of error to your school, your workplace, or even your street packed with people.

So What?!


All this may make you feel spiritually frozen, or dull in feelings, or maybe even the fire of excitement for existence gets turned off. To illustrate, everything you want to say someone else said it in a better way in another language on his twitter account yesterday. Every smart idea that comes to your head you can look it up to find that it was made in a better way. Every little insignificant detail about you that you write on social media, you will be shocked that everyone else is also doing it! Are you kidding me? Isn’t there anything that is special to me in this world??

Only Refuge


Your love for “God” and being connected to Him is the only guarantee for your individuality! That is God who counted us all; every single one. He is the One who will talk to every single one of us directly. There will be no translator or mediator between us and Him. He is the One that tells us that he will never make any of our deeds and actions of anyone of us lost. Also, He speaks to us by the singular form that we love and miss in all this fused collective mind.

He Says:

O reassured soul, Return to your Lord, well-pleased and pleasing [to Him], And enter into My [righteous] servants, And enter My Paradise.”   [Qur’an 89-27:30](1)

To Conclude


Your own individual connection with Allah is your only guarantee to have your spiritual elegance. Indeed, anyone looking to be special & be one of the elite yearns for that. So, never let it go.

Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said,

“Everyone of you will speak to his Lord without an interpreter between them. He will look to his right side and will see only the deeds he had previously done; he will look to his left and will see only the deeds he had previously done, and he will look in front of him and will see nothing but The Fire (of Hell) before his face. So protect yourselves from Fire (of Hell), even by giving half a date- fruit (in charity).”   [Riyad-ul-Saliheen](2)