Yes it’s true, the internet is evil yet I have a love hate relationship with it. I recently discovered this article and it basically sums up my dilemma with these here tubes.

While the internet is such a great resource it has fundamentally changed the way that I approach reading. Where I used to read and concentrate on what I was reading for hours at a time, now I find myself self easily distracted and constantly skimming. Sometimes, I would enjoy reading something powerful or interesting and then deeply contemplating what I was reading while making sophisticated connections and taking notes.

Now, the shameful truth is, I don’t even read books anymore! Hell, I didn’t even read the whole article I linked to above! I saw it was paginated and I gave up after I read the first page out of five. But since I was interested in the article I bookmarked it to del.icio.us under the tag ‘read this.’ Go ahead and check out my delicious ‘readthis’ tag and see how many articles I have bookmarked there. It’s pretty obvious I won’t EVER be reading them. It’s just an exercise to relieve my guilt.

I once listened to a lecture by a professor whose forte was writing about technology and society. He said that he chooses not to use computers and won’t even appear on television. Regarding computer use, he said something interesting that I didn’t understand at the time. The reason he didn’t use a computer is because it teaches to think of everything as data and that this has a detrimental effect on the mind. Now I understand.

You can even see bloggers adapting to the habits of their readers. Bloggers recommend writing “scannable content” or content that is essentially designed to be skimmed. Others have done research on the eye movements of people browsing content on the internet and created heatmaps to describe users reading patterns. These take the shape of an ‘f’ on the page. People scan the first and second lines then go down the page and off they go to another site.

While I won’t be quitting the internet anytime soon I must say that the thought has crossed my mind. It should be noted that as cool as this internet thing is, it comes with a price and that price might be more than you wish to pay.

Four hours in, we were dragging our feet and worn out. We had climbed 3,500 feet up, most of it just within the last mile. The trees were dense and the rocks were slick with yesterday’s rain.

A few steps and suddenly I was aware there was more light peaking out from behind the trees. My pace quickened. The light shone brightly from beyond a sharp bend in the trail. Taking the turn I was bathed in warm midday sunlight as the trees gave way to a broad flat cliff with an astounding view.

“Subhanallah!” It’s all that I could say. It was the most breathtaking view I had ever seen before in my life. I pulled a “king of the world” arms spread in the air pose and collapsed on the edge of the cliff with my buddy A. Rolling hills with every shade of yellow and green stretched out before us in every direction until they disappeared in the haze of the horizon.

A. was admiring the broad shadows cast on the terrain below us by fast moving clouds while I laid there and soaked in that warmth and massaged sore, now unburdened, shoulders.

This view was worth the struggle and suffering it took to get to the top. On the way down we suffered even more and a week later my left knee still aches. But it was all worth it. I could hike the rest of my life.

Yesterday, I saw the movie “Into the Wild” and it awakened in me my long buried desire to trek the world. Life has a funny way of smothering you with anxieties, worries and responsibilities. It’s difficult to look past it all and take a hard look at the end. It’s not far off and maybe even closer than we think. I read once that life is a crack of light between two infinite chasms of darkness. You only get one life, one infinitely tiny span of time racing towards an unknown finish line. What will you do with yours?

I have friends who are financial analysts, doctors, lawyers, accountants, social workers and teachers. They’ve married and settled down. They have kids or are planning on it. Forty, fifty years maybe and they will be gone. What will their life be about. I know aunties and uncles who are staring at the sunset and I can’t imagine that they are happy with what they’ve done with their lives.

I once read some of Ibn Battuta’s adventures. He traveled the world for thirty years. He met Sultans and Emperors went from riches to poverty and back again, escaped death a dozen times from both man and nature, experienced the deepest sorrows and the greatest of elation. He was a pauper, a pilgrim, a judge, an ambassador and a nostalgic old man, all in turn. Now, dead and gone, he is a legend.

Who will want to read the stories of our lives? What’s it all worth, the sum of the daily grind, rich meals and a closet full of junk? To lift a quote from “Into the Wild”:

“… [I] know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing the blind, deaf stone alone with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head.”

How few can say their experience approaches this feeling. There’s always a weight holding us down, crushing us and our hopes and dreams with it. I remember being a stupid child, wide-eyed with all the adventures I was going to have. I didn’t care what anyone thought, I’d dance myself silly or spin myself till I collapsed, the world whipping all around me. Time makes you hard and jaded … jagged.

Ever crossed a desert on a camel, squeezing water from a cactus and eating lizards and snakes to survive? Ever been stung by a scorpion or chased by bandits? Ever slept under a moonlit sky or navigated using the stars? Ever been so hopelessly lost with no way out that you knew you would surely die, then, against all odds, been rescued?

It’s one thing to know that ALLAH is your constant companion, but it’s a whole other thing feeling him there; every morsel fed directly from his Hand and every path to a spring is guidance from His will. Where is temptation and sin on these barren roads? Where can they lead but to piety and communion with the one to whom you will inevitably return. This is where the sajdat ash-shukr comes spontaneously from the core of your being in the place where life hinges on a thimble of water.

But when the traveler makes his home everywhere, his true home is nowhere. In life, it seems you don’t choose your path but you choose your regrets. Some will have their crying babies and their heavy maidens and others will have memories and some rusty stories.

But I suppose I am seduced by a different type of beauty. Overgrown trails and majestic sights romance me. High mountains beckon and deserts dare and mock me. Do I spy an oasis or is this a fool man’s dream? I imagine there’ll be no answer before wearing thin a hundred shoes, or humbling a hundred haughty mountains, or taming a burning desert or cheating an angry sea. But, for now at least, this is my forbidden love. Some day soon I’ll vow to trek round the globe, restless, until the horizon is mine.

I leave you with another quote from “Into the Wild”:

“It should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations. Absolute freedom.”

I recently attended a khutbah by Shaykh Waleed Basyouni which was artfully conducted in both Arabic and English. In it he had two quotes, which I paraphrase here. that I thought are worth sharing.

“Being a true faqih [one with true understanding of religion] does not mean knowing the difference between good and evil but knowing the better of two good deeds and the worst of two evil deeds.”

“A man is like a zero. His true value is based on where he places himself, before or after a number.”

Bismillah arRahman arRaheem

In an event consisting of an all star cast of speakers it was ironic that the most poignant, defining moment of the entire two days was when no one was speaking at all. Before a rapt audience of 1000 American Muslims stood the very icon of American Islam, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, teary-eyed and too overtaken by emotion to speak. In an event whose theme was American Muslim identity it was fitting that Imam Siraj was the one to give the final speech about his journey as an American Muslim. What drove him to tears, you ask? Read on.

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Looking back there are a whole lot of things that may have made a big difference in my life had I known them at the time. Or maybe not. If someone gave me good advice at 14 my smarty-pants-self would have probably ignored them. Well here they are, ten things I wish I knew at 14:

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I was once listening to the radio when I heard the moderator say, “I don’t know if you remember in school when you studied the various rhetorical devices …” and then he went on to list a few. I could not help but scowl. This otherwise well-informed gentleman was totally out of touch with what was being taught in urban schools today. Ask these students what rhetoric is and you will get blank stares.

In my experience teaching and observing first grade classes I have seen a mind-numbing curriculum of drawing, coloring and cutting out and gluing shapes and pictures. Even more disparaging was being bored to near suicide with absolutely meaningless readings. Even in first grade there can be a more sophisticated curriculum than the drivel currently available. I can understand how people might disagree but I will set you straight in another post. Let’s talk about something we both agree on.

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