The Weekly Journal #2: Hiking and Haecceity.

Assalaamualaikum! And welcome back to The Weekly Journal.

This week I want to talk about inspiration, not simply because it is the first emotion in any consequential action, but rather I think it an appropriate theme with which to lay a cornerstone in this new project.

What do we mean by inspiration? Is it a conscious and rigorous imitation? Or, maybe, a yearning for affecting and introspective change. The source of our inspiration is sometimes found in the observation of the natural world, in the meeting of fellow inspired souls and between the lines of bibliosmia. And this week, I was exposed to two different, yet similarly evocative, sources of inspiration.

In this new chapter of the blog, I have made it my mission to highlight some poignant moments of inspiration from my past week, with the aim of consolidating my thoughts and potentially being a conduit of inspiration for you. In honesty, I am not a particularly inspirational person myself, but I do have the privilege of being exposed to a variety of ideas; many insightful, many concerning and all very motivating. It could be one person's apathy or another's armament that stirs a desire to take action, defend our beliefs and mobilise to fulfil our potential.

Often, I have found the self-indulgent idea that 'I am the source of my own inspiration' creep into my mind. This concept can distort our already crumbling view of this world and our place in it. When we talk about inspiration, ideas and the postulation of certain beliefs over others, we do so, knowingly or unknowingly, with very little input from our intrinsic selves. Our lives are an amalgamation of experiences, impressions imprinted on our souls from every other soul and substance in our path. It could be the bombastic sermon of a preacher or the quiet blooming of a garden orchid that inspire gratitude for the natural world or put the fear of God into us.

The Hike

Beyond inclined panting and breathtaking scenery, my first ever hike, undertaken alongside my uni ISOC brothers, was a soaring success. No rain, clear skies and soggy fields, what more could one want? The coach journey was, for me, a great chance to catch up on some sleep, but through the cracks of my doze I heard snippets of Quran recitation, 'wheels on the bus go round and round' and a certain brother's favourite nasheed, Qamarun, exiting the microphone slightly tinny and bouncing around the walls of the coach. I found great joy in the distance from my phone, although only tucked away in my bag, on airplane mode.

We've all been on hikes, we've all lent over a balcony, we've all looked from plane windows and seen the grandeur of the world. Our eyes have captured the light, and our brains quickly transmitted those signals into vivid images over which we fawn and attempt to recapture with our phone cameras. But when we 'see' those resplendent, rolling hills or feel the bullish brush of a waterfall against our flesh do we comprehensively experience the singularity of each moment? The tempered, predestined and infinitely compounding nature of every event we've ever witnessed is so enormous, so complex we fail to capture its grand precedence in a single reflection. My point here being that the enormity of God's creation is so particularly complicated that my jaw just drops each time I attempt to decipher my self amongst it all.

Let's break the thought down a little. When strolling through the luscious mountainscapes of the peak district, I couldn't help but feel so small. In the city, you look around and you see the man made concrete being poured and the man made bricks being stacked; everywhere you look in a city you see the definite imprint of man, towering in blockade of the natural landscape onto which it was built. Rarely, is the veneer of city life evaded. Therefore, being surrounded by nature, being surrounded by an entire arena that I had no place in creating made me feel so inconsequential, I think it contextualised that no matter how highly we think of ourselves, how big a difference we think we make, our ultimate purpose transcends the physicality of our being. The only semblance to monuments we can muster is not any action or construction but that of our spirit, how is it we can make some difference? Inspiration, as we discussed earlier can cause us to do great things, and I have found no greater inspiration in my life than the viewpoint of my lilliputian self, contrasted by the created universe of which I take up very little space.

In summary, the hike was a joyous canticle of laughs, friendship, brotherhood; the hike bonded us with fresh air rather than internet waves, it strengthened our loins and filled our lungs with fresh air. We connected with nature, detached the facade of city life with the staid appreciation of Allah's creation. Yet, upon reflection, all of this felt very small, saddeningly so. I personally found a great ontological realisation, a shift of perspective you could say. No matter how I try and engage with my physical self in the physical world, no matter what I try to build or create there is very little change I can tangibly make in comparison to the establishment of the universe by God and furthermore the weight we must place on our spiritual development. The ability we have to entirely determine our spiritual future is so great, so unique, so antithetical to the physical abilities we have in this universe.

My reflections of the hike can be simply put in the following points;

1. Our actionable purpose in this world is entirely spiritual, the physical body can be a vehicle of spiritual action but on its own, little can be done. The physical world created by God is so expansive and complicated we have no right trying to make any significant, material change.
2. The nature of the physical world is a reminder of our smallness in the face of divinity, our inconsequence in the material world and that nothing deserves worship but Allah SWT, The Creator of all things observable and invisible, The Master of the material and spiritual world in which we have been placed.

Jazakhallah khair.

Faithfully, Issa.

Hope you enjoyed this week's reflection, ISOC Hike did more than I expected. I was anticipating fun and having a greater appreciation for the natural world but my mind's eye was opened to such a philosophical realisation that it took me over a week to figure out how to put it into words.

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