I fight a battle all too frequently. It is one I have never relished but since I was blessed with Islam it has become starker in its naked contradictions and I am obliged to fight whether I like it or not. I have a hatred of living and a dread of death. This flies in the face of my knowledge that this does not accord with the Islamic teachings which I hold to be utterly truthful. So my knowledge may be faulty because it feels right to say that true knowledge leads to its consequent actions of the heart, the mind and the body – true knowledge should not result in contradictions in our actions. When it does, we must suspect cognitive dissonance to be negatively impacting us. There is a fault in me, and whilst I do not know what it is precisely, I am conflicted and I am fighting to redress the balance.
It may be that I am an out and out rebel like Iblis, bismillah, who knows better the truth of Allah and the Right Way than any of us, yet he rejects it and is thus himself rejected and accursed. I wonder if I have a mental disorder? I wonder if it is a disease of the heart? I wonder if I am merely the product of my generation, fractured and fragmented, virtual and yet squashed, alone together in this shrunken expanding planet? Or all of the above? I seem to be unable to resolve this battle, of being constantly diminished by my failure to live in some meaningful way which in turn, I hope, would lead to some sense of death as a stage rather than the tormenting crushing pit I fear so much. Why is there a hatred of life when life is so wondrous? It is life and it is a battle. To live I must fight to the death. But even then, what will death bring but the futility of life?
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