What is the Most Important Thing to Do Today and Now?

Pain is the symbol and symptom of life. Errors are the step stones of improvement.

Bankruptcy (moral, material, etc.) is an inevitable part of life.

Feeling pain is equal to living. Not feeling pain is equal to non-living. Making errors is equal to living. Not making errors is equal to non-living. Being bankrupt sometimes is equal to living. Never being bankrupt is equal to non-living.

Pain, errors, and bankruptcy are veils of life, but they are not life itself. Pain, errors, and bankruptcy are springboards of hope, but they are not pits of despair. Pain, errors, and bankruptcy are connections to Him; that is why they are important and relevant (12:86).[i]

Habits, routines, and rituals are the cure and care for pains, errors, and bankruptcies. Actions overwhelm, overwrite, and overshadow feelings and thoughts. That is why physical activity is required to cure and care for pains, errors, and bankruptcies. Prayers, long walks, travel, fasting, charity, etc., are tools and instruments that refresh feelings and reconstruct thoughts. For example, the pain of fasting is the prerequisite of the pleasure of feasting, and Taleb compared the pleasure of fasting to drinking wine but without the pain of a hangover.[ii] Fasting clears the mind, body, and heart from the accumulated rubbish of thoughts, toxins, and feelings. Throw out garbage and rubbish, and you will feel better. Removing bad is more important than adding good (via negativa).[iii]

What is the most important thing to do today and now? The Glorious Quran’s aim is to remove bad, negative, and destructive habits and establish good, positive, and productive habits. Its first verses establish two important daily habits: reading (96:3) and writing (96:4).

For me, writing is meditation and medication. In the craziness, randomness, absurdity, and cruelty of the world, which is magnified by the availability and abundance of negative information, writing is a safe haven and repair shop for my soul. Broken promises, unanswered hopes, misunderstood loves, stolen lives, spoken lies, unspoken truths – everything is repaired by writing. After I write for half an hour, the world seems to be better, and problems seem to be smaller, future seems to be brighter.

Writing by fountain pen is one of the greatest pleasures I experience in my life. The physical process of writing, the mental process of arranging words, the emotional process of expressing feelings, the marriage of paper and ink that produces the offspring of meaning – all these are the rewards and pleasures that writing gives to me. That is why I think that verses 96:3 and 96:4 are the greatest miracles of the Quran.

What is the most important thing to do today and now? The most important thing to do today and now is writing.

I chose, and I am choosing to write every day because writing is a journey of beauty, order, and purpose.

2:111 … Say: “Produce your proof if you are truthful!” [iv]

25:30. And the Messenger says: “My Lord! Surely my people have made this Qur’an something worthy of no attention.” [v]

-İman isteyen münafık

 

Endnotes

[i] Ali Ünal, The Qur’an with Annotated Interpretation in Modern English, n.d.,

www.mquran.org www.theholybook.org.

[ii] Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, 1st ed (New York:

Random House, 2012).

[iii] Taleb.

[iv] Ünal, The Qur’an with Annotated Interpretation in Modern English.

[v] Ünal.