So let’s say some aspect of a relationship didn’t work out. There was a misunderstanding or a falling out with someone. Someone wronged you. Some hurtful words were spoken. There may have been a parting of ways – a divorce, or you are still in touch, but still disturbed and hurt by what happened.
You know that you should move on but somehow… it still feels raw.
You are afraid to visit some places, because you know it will provoke certain memories. You avoid certain friends for the same reason. Even browsing through social media is like walking in an emotional minefield. Time has passed, but you can’t seem to close the chapter.
OUR TRUE OPPRESSORS
Even if we have been wronged, most of the real oppression comes from ourselves. How? We may have been hurt once, but when we keep allowing our thoughts to relive the various incidents of pain, heartbreak and injustice that has been done to us, we keep victimising ourselves afresh.
We may not realize it, but when we replay the unpleasant incident – whether by talking, thinking or writing about it, we are re-opening our wounds. Instead of healing, we are creating bigger injuries and more scars. Each recollection hurts us afresh; like physical wounds, emotional ones can also become poisonous and infected.
Nobody benefits from this. The one who has wronged us will not feel our anguish, and are probably oblivious to the pain they caused in the first place. However, it is not the wrongdoer to be blamed if three years later, we are still crying over The Big Fight, or The Final Argument, or The Incident.
So we may have been betrayed, cheated, lied to. We may have had our hearts crushed. Such is life. People are not perfect and they are bound to create emotional injuries to one other. The Qur’an repeatedly tells us that we were created as a trial for each other. But the truth is, the oppression of others to us is multiplied many times over by our own oppression to ourselves. This happens when we keep dwelling on the details of such ugliness, and spilling fresh tears by recollecting things which are best forgotten. We have no one to blame but ourselves for the continuing hurt.
This behaviour is unhealthy. Numerous people post their traumatic experiences and personal scandals on blogs or Facebook, articulating their pain to the public under the banner of “artistic license”. Others do it under the pretext of appearing strong, to convince others that they have moved on, when in reality, a person who has moved on is always silent about the past. There are yet others who claim they have buried the past but in reality are digging into it every day with their bare hands. Worse, there is usually a generous measure of backbiting in the process, transferring a good amount, if not all, their good deeds to the wrongdoer in the eyes of God.
As a result, many people deny themselves a second chance at happiness, punishing themselves and rebuffing others – “I was hurt before, I will never get married again”, “This person lied to me, I will never trust anyone again” and other variations of the same theme.
Studies have been conducted into the power of repeating ideas of people inside themselves. These studies found that one of the most powerful factors of the people who lose themselves – jail, psychological meltdowns, suicide – is not the original trauma which happened to them, but is the amount of re-enactment of the incident in their minds. They generate the drama of their suffering internally, over and over again, until they believe and live out what they repeat. This internal replaying leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy ranging from victimisation to hatred that will influence future behaviour and relationships.
If we relive this drama by ourselves, we are the ones who generate the distress; and this leads to emotional paralysis. Soon we will find our time, the prime of our lives, beauty, finances and intelligence wasted – simply because we are stuck in a self imposed emotional stalemate.
This is the real killer, when we destroy ourselves by our own hands. An example is when a woman loses a man she loves (or vice versa). When Allah gives her a better man, she cannot love him. Why? She is so preoccupied and pained by her previous experience, that she cannot let go. She clings to the baggage of her past to the point that she loses her own present, no matter how beautiful it may be. These studies conclude that the majority of people lose themselves and their future, not through a negative or sad incident, but through the amount of internal repetition of such incidents. Now imagine if this is how one deals with all the sad incidents of life – the tragedy is multiplied and amplified to the point that all the collective incidents become the core of the person’s existence.
This is why for some people, it takes the smallest trigger – a venue, a word, a meal – for all these painful memories to come flooding back and for everything to fall apart. It is because the memories never left in the first place.
What is the point, apart from the emotional prison and misery that will continue to shatter your heart? Why do you do this to yourself?
Where is the Islam in such an approach to life?
WHAT IS OUR GOAL?
Sometimes, when certain wrongs have been committed, there are various means of recourse. In matters of personal property for example, one can claim rights against the wrongdoer through the proper channels. In matters of the heart, such remedies are not so obvious.
The believer knows that every act of injustice will be rewarded accordingly by Allah. From an action which hurts one’s feelings, to the stealing of another’s property, all will have to account to Allah for their actions on earth. There is even retribution for intangible wrongs such as emotional hurt, where the damage cannot be calculated in terms we understand. However, the believer knows that when they have been denied their justice on earth, they can still stake a claim against the wrongdoer in the next life.
If you believe in this, then entrust your emotional affairs to Allah, and let Him deal with the wrongdoer. If you have faith in Allah’s justice, you do not have to monitor the situation to assess the results, but simply trust that Allah will deal with the one who wronged you. A true believer has no time to recount bygone incidents like a broken record.
GETTING OVER IT
I am not saying that you should be a superhuman with no feelings. Hurt is a very real feeling, and it can cut deep. Emotional wounds take time to heal. However, what we should avoid doing is to continuously nurture the pain. We should confront the incident, but we should not dwell on the hurt. Islam is about moderation, including emotional moderation. One cannot mourn forever.
As a Muslim, the first thing we should do is to say “Alhamdulillah”. No matter the degree of pain or how broken we feel, there is a higher wisdom in it. Whatever the incident, it would not have happened without the will of Allah.
Instead of complaining and questioning His divine decree, we should question ourselves. There are a multitude of reasons why things happen. Sometimes, personal catastrophes are necessary for our personal growth. In others, it is Allah’s way of removing someone harmful from our lives. And in others, it could also be a call for deep introspection, to examine where we ourselves went wrong. After all, are we so perfect that we have done no wrong or hurt others, deliberately or by mistake?
The bottom line, however, is that the situation should make us reflect and move closer towards Allah.
LIVE AND LET LIVE
If you really want to move on, however, the best way is to forgive the one who wronged you.
Do you think that Prophet Muhammad SAW was exempted from emotional pain? He was cast out of his home; ridiculed, insulted and abused by his community, and there were even several attempts on his life, both by assassination and in the battlefield. He was invited to deliver the Message in Taif but was driven out with stones and rocks by its inhabitants. What would we have done in his shoes? Would we be lamenting about it for years to come? Would we have plotted vengeance and the retaliated once we had the means to do so? Or would we have done what he did, which was to complain to Allah of his own shortcomings and to pray for the enlightenment and forgiveness of those who humiliated and attacked him?
When he was forced to migrate to Madina from his beloved birthplace and hometown, did our Prophet SAW spend days and nights weeping about all the injustice done to him? No, he stayed focused on the much bigger goal – his mission in life. When Mecca was ultimately conquered, did he make an example of his oppressors? No, he forgave, granted them amnesty, and moved on. He did not dwell on the past.
If you think that the standards set by the Prophet SAW are unrealistic, then examine the accomplishments of the Companions. In the early days of Islam, they suffered the worst possible persecution and betrayals by their own flesh and blood. It was brother against brother, father against son. They were tortured, assaulted, boycotted, starved and imprisoned, they had to see their loved ones perish in the brutal hands of the disbelievers. Yet when their persecutors repented and turned to Islam, they forgave. The slate was wiped clean. They moved on to achieve their goals in life, their unity in the Islamic brotherhood taking precedence above all else.
The difference between us and them is that their love and hate were only for the cause of Allah. They did not get waylaid by their own petty emotions and desires. They did not obsess over failed relationships, insignificant issues or emotional grievances. They had a goal in life, and did not allow any other agenda to distract them from that goal.
Would Islam have spread if the Companions had adopted our attitude of holding on to the past, harbouring grudges and being occupied with problems which are, in comparison to what they faced, wholly insignificant? When push comes to shove, how many of us treat our friends and families worse than we would a stranger on the street, because of some small issue that was blown out of proportion?
Have we, as Muslims, lost so much of our ultimate goal in life that we have let our emotional disasters dominate our thoughts and hearts? Have we let our own personal trivialities made us forget our ultimate purpose in life? If so, isn’t it time to move on?
THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS
What is forgiveness? This action has a deep significance. Forgiveness brings closure to the incident.
This is monumentally difficult and requires supreme emotional discipline. So why should we forgive, and let the other person get away scot free?
On an emotional level, when you forgive, it is a testament to the strength of your character. You have chosen to rise above the pain and instead of playing the victim. You have placed a clear barrier beyond which the past is no longer capable of hurting you. In this, you have fully assigned the matter to Allah to deal with the wrongdoer, but you yourself bear no grudge against them, and choose instead to take the more noble path.
You cannot claim that you have forgiven someone, and yet when the person is in your company, you glare at them or give them the silent treatment. Worse, when you still mention a past wrong. That means that you are still festering negativity against the wrongdoer, and still bringing the incident back to life, back to the forefront of your thoughts. True forgiveness requires developing emotional amnesia.
The effects of this are immense and liberating. For one thing, your mind will stop being cluttered with the past. With forgiveness, you wash away the hurt and close the chapter once and for all. The emotional cleansing complete, the true healing will begin, and your heart will be light and free. When you forgive, you display mercy, a characteristic beloved to Allah.
You forgive for your own salvation, for one of the ways of ensuring that Allah treats you with mercy is if you treat your fellow man with mercy. You unchain yourself from the weight of emotional baggage. When you forgive, you will stop thinking of the unpleasant incidents, and this in turns releases and enables you to occupy your heart, mind and time with things that are more refreshing and significant, such as focusing on the present and strengthening your ties with Allah.
When you forgive, that is when you stop oppressing yourself for the wrongs that others have done to you. Ultimately, the benefits of such forgiveness to yourself outweigh that of the person you forgave.
Forgiveness takes time. It takes effort. And in many cases, it takes several tries before one can sincerely admit to himself that all is forgiven. But it is worth it, for with forgiveness, you can then bring the matter to finality and write a new chapter for yourself.
ERASING THE PAST
There is also a higher level of forgiveness, which is erasing the wrong. There are narrated reports a man being granted Paradise, not because of any extraordinary amount of worship on his part, but because he slept with a clean heart (i.e. not harbouring any ill feelings to anyone) every night. There is also another report of a group of people entering jannah directly without reckoning – these are the people who not only forgave, but erased all traces of the wrongdoing from their hearts and thoughts – as if the wrong never occurred in the first place. Erasing is evidenced when the person prays for Allah to forgive the sins of the wrongdoer and to wipe his record clean.
Of course this is not an easy act. Forgiving is a difficult task, and transcending this even more so. In Islam, the truly valuable things come with high price tags. It involves sacrifice – in this case, of our pride and need for vindication.
Do we think that Allah does not know the extent of our pain, the chain of injustice that led up to it? Of course He knows, for He knows the innermost contents of our hearts. He knows all the private and intimate details of our individual distress. Allah knows the measure of our suffering, and of our own inner conflict when we try to forgive and forget. It goes against all our natural instincts. That is why the corresponding reward is exceptionally high – jannah without accountability.
Whether or not Allah accepts your supplication is a different matter. What is relevant is that you have done your part between you, the wrongdoer, and Allah. It is often said that one of the ways to taste the sweetness of iman is to pray for the forgiveness of someone who has oppressed you, and anyone who has undergone this will agree that this is one of the most beautiful tranquil feelings ever known.
