In the name of Allah the Most Beneficient, the Most Merciful
For the longest time, we have heard these or similar words..
"Hard work pays off”
“Determination is the key to success”
“Nothing good comes easy”
“Experience is the best teacher”
But is it really? Does it hold true?
I mean you can determine all you want but it does not guarantee you any success at all. In fact if you were to move past just determining in your mind and following with good action, it still does not guarantee you success.
When we say hard/difficult work pays off, it gives us the impression that hard is always good. And that because something is hard, it guarantees us the best possible outcome. But nah! You can wait so long for the perfect man and go through kissing so many frogs (not literally - we do halal, right?) but then you get married to a prince and it turns out he is just a frog who changes into a prince for 2 hours once a quarter.
Or you wait long enough to have a baby and you expect your pregnancy to go so easy or even parenting to be easy like your toddlers will be different, easy and obedient just because you suffered in life and labour. Hard work doesn’t always pay off. Not for this life at least.
Experience is the best teacher, like just because you experience something, you have learnt a lesson but then, you keep experiencing and waiting for the lesson but then a few years later, you are sitting in front of your therapist and she is telling you about trauma and your response and how you keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result which some old wise man once called insanity but I digress…
You ever watched a relay race?
One person has the baton and runs and then passes it on to another who completes a portion and passes it on. I am not big on athletics but I have sat in the sidelines long enough trying to get out of running from claiming a tummy ache or being in charge of the glucose on inter-house sports day, to hear “the adults” or coaches talk about how one faster runner should have been placed at a different position so that she could win for the team and I remember thinking it was weird. You do not need one great runner in one position to guarantee success of a team. That is too much pressure on one person, why not train each person to be the best in their position. But I digress…
I see all of the different ways I have grown from the start of my life until now like a relay race. Each one experience or lap, setting, preparing, ushering the next runner for the baton and there is not always running. Each one moving in whatever way they like - crawling, walking, running. I mean for some of it, I cringe and for some of it all of it, most of the time all of the time, I am grateful. Again, we are people of Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah alaa kulli ha’al
This whole life is a journey full of tests. And We will certainly test you with some fear and hunger and shortage of wealths and lives and products. Thus give glad tidings to the patient ones [Qur’an 2:155]
As people of Ihsan, we put in our best and expect the best outcome from Allah ﷻ. Hard work will not always pay off (not in this dunya anyway), the patient dog doesn’t always eat the fattest bone (sometimes the fattest bone is the one that goes first because it got chosen first by some other person) and the early bird does not always get the most worm (someone put their hooks out over night and the early bird got nothing or in a town like Lagos, the early bird is still stuck in traffic) and good things come easy too and even in the hardship, is ease as Allah ﷻ has promised and success is guaranteed by, with and through Allah ﷻ…
Allah has promised the believers, both men and women, Gardens under which rivers flow, to stay there forever, and splendid homes in the Gardens of Eternity, and—above all—the pleasure of Allah. That is truly the ultimate success. [Qur’an 9:72]
And certainly, this is not a flaw in design but a perfection of the Creator. A mercy from Him.