In this UNLAWYERLY. moments Ramin talks about his own struggle between Dunya and Akhira.
In this UNLAWYERLY. moments Ramin talks about his own struggle between Dunya and Akhira.
00:01
I've had this struggle with dunya versus Achara Now before I go a little bit more into it, I guess I should take a step back For those of you who are listening and perhaps you may not have an Arabic background dunya means the world that we currently live in.
00:18
I look at it more as the, the material world, you know, things related to possession. Status title wealth and Akira means the afterlife Things. That especially those people who follow particular religion, if you want to look at it me myself, I'm a Muslim. And we believe that this world that we live in currently is not the only world.
00:48
There is life after this world. So once we die, it doesn't end there. Yeah, where we're asleep. If you want to look at it that way for certain period of time. But then there's a day where we'll where we are all called to account for the things that we have done in this world.
01:06
Y'all, you know, and the the opera supposed to be seen as the, the eternal forever indefinite. And so there's there's a great heaviness that that comes with it and it's not necessarily anything that is to be seen from a negative perspective, the heaviness of it, it is something that is for a lot of us forward looking especially when you know, we have faith that what we're doing or what we're trying to do.
01:37
Striving toward is accumulating or doing good deeds in this world so that it does count for us. When our our books are given to us. We're all of our deeds are written in the scales of our good deeds at way, the bad one so to speak. So just a very basic primer on what I mean by dunya and Akara, but for me, I've struggled for the longest time between these two concepts.
02:03
I mean, anybody who speaks with my wife, can tell you that the struggle that I've had, and I do see it as a struggle. So again, let me take a few steps back. For those of us who have an immigrant background or a background, where we came in as refugees or we are not necessarily the first generation born in the Western world, ie in the United States.
02:27
For those of you who are listening from the US, there is the sense of needing to rebuild, rebuild our lives and I've spoken about this before for those of us who come from this background, a lot of our families. Look at it and sense that those of us who, you know, with the school here, got an education, it's best to attain the level of education, where you not only get your bachelors, you go.
02:57
Get your mast, where you get your doctorate and you fall into one of the three professions of either a lawyer, a doctor or an engineer, Something that not only has title and status associated with it, but financial stability. So those of us who come from that background, we do realize the, the importance of it.
03:18
It's not necessarily that are our parents are always putting pressure on us, but we ourselves see and have seen the struggle that our parents went through with, you know, coming to another country, giving up, everything that they had to, for the reasons of safety security, or building a better live for the kids, kids being us.
03:39
And so, with us growing up with me growing up, it was always that idea. And thought that, you know, do well in this world You have opportunities here. You know, parents made a lot of sacrifices and so you should do well and part of that doing well is equated with, of course, the mater, real wealth of the dunya For me growing up.
04:02
You know, I've always been gold driven. I've always been the type that, you know, set your mind to something and accomplish it and praise be to God at that, that has been the case. But one thing I started realizing, especially as I got older was, I had this inner struggle.
04:20
In this inner struggle was focused on one element. The grasping of the things of this material world. This dunya, you know, as I attained higher level of education, my careers changed, I attained, you know, more prestigious titles, became a lawyer started, my own business, a professor etc. You move up the ranks of of society and of course part of that comes with it.
04:50
You know, your your salary and keep increases your pay increases and so forth and so on and rightfully so you putting a lot of time and effort into, you know, your education or your career and you know, you you would expect to get more money out of it if nothing else.
05:07
And I will say this, there is nothing wrong with, you know, wanting the best of this world of this dunyan and even within my own faith, for those of us who have either, you know, have made Umra one of the things, the sayings when you're making your total off, you're making the circling around.
05:29
The the kava is one of the duas of the prophet which he would say a rub, not enough adunion as not allocrates. Now canada banar which basically translates to, you know, give us the best of this world in the afterlife and save us from the punishment of the fire.
05:45
And, and so that in itself shows that there's nothing wrong with attaining, the best of what this world has to give us. And so that's what I did. I went and sought after the best of what this world had was able to provide. But where I started to see my struggle was when I started realizing that more of my time and commitment was focused more and more on the dunya on the, the material side, on the, on the title, the prestige, And I, I always been a person of faith.
06:22
My faith has gone through of core, of course, twists and turns, and has never been a linear path and rightfully. So it shouldn't because a linear path in my view. While it is the best path to be on. If you can, we as human beings work, we're not made to be like that, we're not angels, so to speak.
06:40
And so each time that I've made a twist and turn and, and my path toward my faith, it's it's praise. Be to God made me stronger. But as I've started learning more about my faith and as I've gotten older, My struggle with the junior has been the the many traps that are set forth before us.
07:03
And the thing is that the traps that are set forth are not seen as traps. They're, they're not seeing as pitfulls. They're not seeing as, you know, you look down a hole and you see the abyss. There are things that are beautiful, there's things that we, as human beings.
07:18
Want, you know, whether whether it's from the material side, where it is really some material side where it's related to, you know, wanting to advance in your career to wanting, you know, the nice things, the nice clothes wanting to buy things for your spouse, your kids, you know, your family, moving up the ranks of the corporate ladder, if you're over there starting a business and doing well.
07:42
And so those things will, of course, come through the progression of time. And of course, like I said, nothing wrong with it, but when you start putting more and more time and effort into it, it starts to, in my opinion, take away from the other thing which is the ahra thinking about your your afterlife.
08:04
And of course, providing from your family, providing for yourself, doing good for the community, using the skills and knowledge that you have through the education that you've been able to attain to better the world counts toward your Ahara. But I think it's always important to look back to your intentions and ask yourself.
08:25
Why am I doing this? What is my purpose? How is this? Helping to contribute? Now, every one of us we have 24 hours in a day. And I've mentioned this before, You can only split that in so many different ways. 24 hours for yourself for your family, for your work, for, for sleeping, for eating whatever.
08:45
It may be. That you split up your time. Everyone has 24 hours of the day. And what I started to realize with myself, is that more and more of my time was justly because I it became a habit being attributed to the dunya being attributed to this world. And so I started to have more and more of the struggle.
09:06
Do I want to continue being in a particular profession where I was making a lot of money? Do I want to completely pull away from it? And you know, do things where I'm helping more of the community. And now when I was working in big law, one of the things that I did a lot of was pro bono work, the pro bono work that the firms offered.
09:26
And for me, I looked at it as a way as being able to give back while also, you know, being able to make a good amount of money with the other things that I was doing on the energy law side. But as the struggle strengthened, I started having more conversations conversations with, with my wife.
09:43
And so she would say, you know, why can't you have both? Why can't you have, you know, both the dunyal and the Ahara. It's easier said, than said than done at least the way that I felt it. It was very difficult because I felt that more and more of me, my attention, my time, effort and focus was being put into the material side of things.
10:07
It's not necessarily that I was buying a lot of things or upgrading constantly, but it was more and more just this this want. And accumulation of, you know, where am I gonna go? You know, what type of status am I going to be able to attain in my career?
10:24
You know, where is is all of that gonna come to it? And so, I found it to be a struggle because I felt that spiritually. I was in a state of decline Spiritually. I wasn't growing the way that I wanted to grow. And I do understand that there are people out there who are able to balance it and I think I'm starting to figure out how they're able to balance or able to achieve both of it.
10:51
But I reached a point where I was in the crossroads of my life and I realized that I can't keep juggling or thinking that I'm able to balance to dunya on the offer because I was I thought like I was being more and more consumed by the dunya by this world.
11:09
And for those of you who follow, she comes a use of, you know, we are in the lowest state in this dunya. This dunya represents the lowest state. And the only direction for us to go, if we do it, costly is to go up. And again, for those of you have listened to me, this is, by any means not placing judgment on anyone not boasting about where I'm at, or what I'm doing, or what decisions I have made.
11:34
I believe, with every person, their decision is their own decision. And at the end of the day, it's between you and your maker. When we are on the day of judgment, we are going to be before our maker and nobody else is going to answer for us except us And so whatever decisions we make whatever choices.
11:53
We make whatever we do the only person that's gonna answer it is us and God is going to be the judge and he's the best of judges. But it got to a point where I realized that I was at a crossroads and I had to make a choice And so I decided that for me I was going to focus more on the Achara.
12:13
I was going to focus more on the afterlife, I was going to focus more on doing the things that was going to count for me as good. Deeds, focusing more on my kids on helping them grow on helping them learn about Islam. I was going to go back to learning to properly recite the Quran because I was self-taught.
12:34
I taught myself. I know there was a lot of rules that I wasn't necessarily following because I didn't not know about it. And so, you know, I just realized that I needed to move myself away from the, the traps of the dunyal, and it's a work in progress. It's not that I made that decision, and I just move forward and moved up, and that was the end of it.
12:56
Every day is a work in progress, and I take some steps back and I make a step forward. I take many steps back and I take one step forward but it is a Ford moving progress and that that thing that I'm starting to realize, is that the more and more that I focus on the afterlife, the Ahhra God is going to place the dunya this life is gonna set it in order.
13:20
He's gonna give me everything that I need. My risk is guaranteed in this world, but I've realized the more and more that I focus on my afterlife on doing those things that's gonna set me up for that. The junior this life is going to be placed the way that it needs to be and I will be okay.
13:38
God's always looked out for me, my family and he will. And the things that I'm doing is not necessarily going to guarantee that my occura set at the end of the day, that's gonna be through the, the mercy of God. But at least I have realized that in that struggle.
13:53
I had to at the end of, they make a choice and the choice that I made is taking a very calculated risk. If you want to look at it that way, but I focused more on the ahra because I've realized that for me and my faith and my religion and at least what I know that is going to be eternal That is going to be forever and the life of this dunya is very temporary.
14:18
If we are able to reach 70, 80 years old, that's a blessing. Most of us won't. I don't know if I will and so I've always looked at it from that perspective, let me do whatever I can with the limited time that I have Again. Anything that I said, in this unloyarly moment, it's not meant to judge.
14:34
It's not meant to look at look down on anybody, but just sharing my struggle with dunya and Ahara.