Reflection 75 – It’s About The Journey Itself, And Not The Destination!

First, let me begin with this hadith:
النب يّ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَّ: إ نّ الْعَبْدَّ لَيَتَكَل مّ بِالكَلِمةِّ مِنّْ رِضْوَانِّ اللِّّ تَعَالى مَا ي لقِي لهَا بَالًّ يَرْفَع ه اللّّ بهَا دَرَجاتٍ، وَإ نّ الْعبْدَّ لَيَتَكل مّ بالْكَلِمَةِّ مِنّْ
سَخَطِّ اللِّّ تَعالى ل ي لْقي لهَا بَالًّ يهِوي بهَا في جَهَن م رواه البخاري .
Before I tell you a major takeaway from this hadith, I will take you a little bit back in time.
Sometime early 2019.
A friend of my wife brings to her attention the potential benefits of an ongoing stem cell clinical trial taking place in several hospitals in the US, UCI being one of them. A friend of hers was already enrolled in the trial, which encouraged her to tell my wife. We got pretty excited and quickly began emailing the folks at UCI. Long story short, we initially traveled to Irvine to find ourselves faced with an unexpected rejection due to my score on a certain breathing test (I later got accepted a couple of months later, but I talked about the details of this story in a previous reflection). Anyhow, the period between my initial rejection and later acceptance witnessed the following. Right after being rejected, I was pretty upset. I had very high hopes in that trial, and it seemed as the only hope out there. As a result, I began looking into some of the alternative medicine out there. I tried several of them and nothing really worked out for me. But that is not the point 😊. The thing is that during my search, I came to know that one of my school friends does homeopathy. We exchanged some ideas for some time until I left for the US. During one of those exchanges, she told me something very powerful that would remain with me forever.
But I must admit that at that time, I was very fixated on THE ONE idea of HOW and WHEN I would get cured! Mentally, I couldn’t see –or even accept-any other solution as a viable one! And probably I wasn’t really open about that, and so probably she didn‘t know. At any rate, she told me once: “Ya Tamer! It’s about the journey itself, and not the destination! “ In other words, it’s all about the experiences and struggles we go through and how they shape and mold our personalities regardless of end result! At that time, her statement didn‘t really sit well with me. I didn‘t realize how meaningful and powerful her statement was until probably several years later. Probably the last year in specific has shown me the immense good that could come out of my struggle while being at the low of the low physically. All my reflections that elhamdulellah touched a decent amount of people’s hearts didn‘t come out from me until I was stripped away from lots of my faculties I never saw this coming at all not even remotely. Now, back to the hadith I began with.
Being reminded of that incident, I sent my friend asking about her and her family as well as wanting to remind her of her statement. The funny thing is that she couldn‘t remember saying it 😊. And this is what reminded me of that hadith, which I first heard around maybe 15 years ago. To be frank, I always struggled with its meaning that I found to be a bit too tough! But the more I grew up and (assumingly) matured, the more I became at ease with its meaning. Words are BULLETS whether we realize it or not and whether we notice or not. In my friend‘s case, it was a meaningful, powerful, and a positive one even if she can‘t remember 😊. But in other cases, we all might be guilty of saying nasty stuff to others (in many times without realizing!) that might affect them negatively for years to come.
So, in some respect maybe I am blessed by not being able to talk anymore 😊. As for my friend, THANK YOU!