Between Pisa and Arga

I have been saying this in my class. In whatever that we do - no matter how much we love doing it initially, there will come a point in time when we feel "we needed a break" or to "take a short rest". Most of the time, we simply succumbed and we soon stop doing those things.

As an example, sometimes we are inspired to attend a class and we do so fervently, even if only in the beginning. Then work consumes us and we get tired and make excuses from attending class on that particular day. The danger with that is we begin to find comfort in the "doing nothing" on that day - and then we missed another class and eventually stop attending.

That same thing applies to our new-found hobby, new-found interest or even sometimes, in our human relations. Sometimes it is not about something new - like our prayers, our acts of human kindness, our zikr etc

In our various journeys in life, we regularly meet this "plateau" - a hurdle to move it to the next level. A clearer example: if we normally sleep by midnight, our body will start to automatically rest at that time and we feel extremely sleepy and get ourelves ready for bed. But, assuming on one particular night, we had too many assignments to clear and burnt the midnight oil and stayed up beyond midnight, we stopped feeling sleepy by 1am. We merely need to overcome that "plateau" or that defining period and we normally am able to survive the whole night awake!

That is the situation that occurred between "climbing" the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Taj Mahal these past two weeks. Conceptually, to climb that high seemed improbable. To move to the next peak seemed un-endurable. But, I just needed to find that point that will tweak it - to overcome my breaking point. Once I did that, resistance was negligible.

In the same breathe, that concept was applied to the other spheres of my life... be it on the secular or religious front. We need to find our "plateau level" and once we overcome that, waking up at 4:30am to perform the night vigil daily, or to aim to read one juzu' of the Qur'an a day, or even to run 10 rounds on the track - is not impossible.

To add to my favourite Nike motto "Just Do It!" - there is also another motto "Impossible Is Nothing".

PS: No squirrel was hurt or abused in the writing of this Blog-entry :)