We have lived with imitation forever. Dye pretended to be royal purple. Bronze pretended to be gold. Photography pretended to trap time. Every tool that extends human power also extends human pretense. The difference now is acceleration and opacity: an edit so swift that even conscience can’t keep pace, a polish so seamless it erases its own fingerprints. Authenticity, once a matter of manners and craft, begins to feel like a moral emergency.

The word “authentic” is often treated like a mood: earthy bread, unfiltered photos, a personality that “feels real.” But moods are evaporative. I want a definition that can weather automation. For me, authenticity means at least three things: a truthful intention, an accountable process, and a risk carried by a person—not just a model—at the end. If any one of those goes missing, I can still admire the product, but I struggle to trust the person behind it, even if that person is me.

I am a student of scripture and interpretation; the air I breathe is full of words—recited, argued, memorized, sung. Words are supposed to approach truth, not merely to resemble it. In my tradition we talk about sidq (truthfulness), niyyah (intention), ihsan (excellence), and amanah (trust). These are not ornamental ideas; they are disciplines of selfhood. AI does not cancel them; if anything, it intensifies their necessity. A tool that can impersonate excellence forces us to decide whether we want excellence to be an impersonation at all.

Consider the student essay. A model can outline, draft, tidy, and even simulate “voice.” The result may be correct, even insightful. But where does the student’s intellectual risk live? What has she actually learned to do under the skin? When the paragraphs look sturdy enough to lean on, she is tempted to stop building muscles and start leaning permanently. Authenticity, then, is not a refusal of assistance; it is the refusal to outsource the very thing that the task exists to train. If my course is meant to form judgment, then I can’t delegate judgment to a statistical system without hollowing myself.

Consider devotional art. I can train an algorithm on a hundred recitations and produce a voice that glides like a blade through silk. Does its perfection honor the text, or does it smuggle in a lie about effort? The beauty of breath is that it runs out. The realism of virtue is that it costs. A cloned voice can mimic the contours of humility; it cannot carry humility’s weight.

But the age of AI also disciplines my suspicion. I do not want to become a nostalgist for struggle merely for struggle’s sake, as if the only honest loaf is kneaded by hand and the only honest letter is scratched by a quill. Tools have always multiplied human meaning. A calculator doesn’t corrupt arithmetic; it frees the mind to do higher math. Spellcheck does not destroy literature; it rescues attention for the sentence. So the question is not whether to use AI. The question is whether, in using it, I remain willing to be the person responsible for what the work becomes.

To make that willingness practical, I’ve started practicing a small liturgy of making—four habits that help me stay answerable to myself:

Maksad — Purpose. Before I open a model, I ask: what is the task trying to shape in me? If the goal is recall, I read. If the goal is style, I draft with my own sentences first, however clumsy. If the goal is exploration, I might brainstorm with a model, but I mark the frontier as borrowed. Clarity of aim guards me from seduction by convenience.

Musyaratah — Guardrails. I decide in advance what lines I will not cross. I will not present machine-generated text as my own for graded work. I will not clone human voices without consent. I will cite sources I discover through a model just as if a friend had recommended them. Constraints, like rhyme in a poem, make freedom musical.

Muraqabah — Accountability. I keep a process log. It is not a confession booth; it is a checksum of the self. I note what I asked a model to do, what I adopted, what I altered, what I rejected. If someone asks how I made this, I can tell the true story of the making. The log is for my integrity, not for another’s approval.

Muhasabah — Reflection. After I “finish,” I step back and listen for the room tone of the piece. Does it sound like me—a me who has grown, yes, but still recognizably me? Could I defend the claim I have made without the screen? If the answer is no, the work may be excellent but not yet mine.

These habits are small, almost domestic, but they wage a quiet war against the slippage of authorship. A shortcut that hides itself is a lie; a tool that introduces itself can be a teacher.

To test myself, I ran an experiment. I wrote two short reflections on the same passage: one with the gentle scaffolding of a model that proposed themes and metaphors, and one entirely alone, allowing only books and silence inside the room. The glossier one was not the one I thought. The “assisted” piece flowed and sparkled; it also lacked the knot in the string where my confusion had been tied. The solitary piece was messier; but in its hesitations I could hear a person who had wrestled, and whose voice—imperfect, specific—had weight. If writing is, among other things, a trail of thinking, then the overly smooth trail begins to look suspiciously like a sidewalk poured after the journey ended.

A friend challenged me: “But if the goal is to help readers, why not publish the better piece?” Because better is not the only category that matters. We need a second axis—call it answerability. A piece is answerable when a human being stands behind it and can truthfully say, “I did this much. I accept these consequences.” The reader deserves craft; they also deserve custody. Who is the custodian of the claim? If the maker is only a curator of model outputs, the answer grows indistinct. The words may be true; the accountability is blurry. In a world already allergic to responsibility, blur is not neutral. It is the solvent of trust.

The most common defense of seamless assistance is compassion: Let’s not gatekeep excellence. Let’s let more people sound good. I agree with the compassion; I resist the conclusion. True inclusion invites people to grow strong in their own voices, not merely to be dressed in a costume that fits a market taste. If we unwittingly define dignity as access to a convincing imitation, then we will populate our public life with expertly rendered masks. I do not think we can build a trustworthy civilization out of masks.

Of course, there are ways in which simulation serves mercy: a voice for someone who has lost hers, a predictive text that helps a non-native speaker write with less fear, an image tool that enables a person with limited mobility to tell visual stories. In such cases, disclosure is not self-sabotage; it is part of the dignity. “This is me, with help.” The sentence is humbler and truer than “This is me,” when the latter would be a lie.

Disclosure, in fact, may be the new politeness. We already accept labels that tell us what has been added: contains nuts, edited for clarity, color-corrected. Perhaps we need soft language for creative process as well: assisted outline, language polish, synthetic voice with consent. These are not apologies; they are invitations to trust. They let receivers calibrate their expectations without forcing creators into a permanent performance of purity.

Will some people game the new etiquette? Of course. People already counterfeit everything that is worth trusting. But an ethic does not need perfect compliance to be worthwhile. It only needs enough faithful practitioners to make the real visible again.

When I reach for examples, I keep circling back to the ancient contrast between spectacle and sign. Spectacle calls attention to itself: Look how astonishing this is. A sign points beyond itself: Look where this leads you. Much of our AI-driven culture is spectacular, and a little spectacle is fine—life without astonishment would be gray. But a life dominated by spectacle makes us shallow. We begin to prefer what dazzles over what guides. In my own studies, I try to remember that the most important truths rarely arrive in glitter. They arrive in the steady work of reality: caring for parents, reading primary sources, returning a borrowed thing on time, pronouncing a word as it was meant to be pronounced.

This is not an argument against beauty. It is a plea for the kind of beauty that costs a person something. There is beauty in a scale sung until the throat stings, in a paragraph rewritten until the music settles, in a calculation checked twice. The machine can sketch such beauty. It cannot suffer for it. And suffering—not dramatic, but patient, sustained—is often what turns the merely correct into the genuinely true.

What, then, should we do? We can enact authenticity at three levels: the self, the circle, and the commons.

At the level of the self, we can cultivate appetites that resist fakery. Appetites are trainable. If we binge on frictionless polish, our tongues forget the taste of labor. So we can fast a little from perfect surfaces. We can keep some imperfections on purpose—not as a performance of rusticity, but as a reminder that we are not machines. We can practice saying, when praised, “Thank you; I had help,” and letting that sentence be part of the beauty.

At the level of the circle—friends, classmates, colleagues—we can covenant for clarity. Agree on what kinds of assistance are honorable for a given task. Normalize process notes. Praise the growth that shows in the second attempt, not only the result that gleams in the first. The point is not surveillance; the point is shared courage.

At the level of the commons—publishing, platforms, institutions—we can ask for policies that assume human dignity. Tools can include visible provenance, watermarks that are hard to forge, and optional toggles for disclosure tags. Prizes and journals can reward accountability statements as well as elegance. The goal is not to penalize assistance, but to refuse the disappearing act. When a culture asks “How was this made?” as naturally as it asks “Is this good?” life becomes harder for counterfeits and easier for craft.

But what if the counterfeit is harmless? someone might ask. If the cloned voice soothes a child to sleep, who is harmed? I do not want to be severe; I have been soothed by small mercies that were not entirely honest. Yet the harm of habitual imitation is cumulative. If we allow simulation to become the default texture of care, we teach ourselves to accept gestures without givers. We risk raising a generation comforted by performances of presence rather than presence itself. The harm will appear, like all deep harms, as hollowness.

One evening, after too much thinking, I returned to the same recording that had tricked me. I played it on purpose, knowing it was synthetic. I listened for the seams and could not hear them. The vowels warmed, the consonants glinted, the pauses landed as if the singer had lungs. I tried to be angry and failed. The file was not malicious. It was simply better than my ear. So I did something awkward and good: I put the phone down, sat on the edge of the bed, and recited alone. The room was ordinary. My tone wavered and my breath ran short. But a small confidence visited me: this sound, for all its ordinary, was not pretending to be anything. It was mine to be judged for; mine to improve; mine to offer.

Authenticity will always be partly aspirational. We declare we are telling the truth and then we learn how to do it. We promise to disclose and then we forget and begin again. But aspiration is not hypocrisy; it is training. The self is a muscle, not a statue. Every day I decide which parts to exercise: the instinct for polish or the instinct for presence. In the age of AI, the instinct for polish will have irresistible help. So I must nourish the other instinct with choices that keep me answerable—choices that keep a person at the center of the work.

I still love the tremor in a human voice. I love the penultimate draft that isn’t smooth yet but already honest. I love the awkward sentence that finally learns to walk by itself. I love the breath that runs out and then returns. In a future crowded with convincing performances, these small loves feel like the last quiet luxuries we can afford. Perhaps the test of our intelligence will not be how perfectly we can imitate ourselves, but how bravely we can remain ourselves while we learn to live with perfect imitation.

So here is my working creed, shyly offered to anyone else who wants to stay real without becoming a Luddite:

Use the tools, but don’t let them use your courage.

Disclose your shortcuts, and let the truth become part of your style.

Keep a little friction in the craft; let it remember you.

Accept the cost of carrying your claims.

And when the clone sings beautifully, sing anyway. The world does not merely need correct sounds. It needs responsible singers.

However, I, of course, went for the shortcut. Like so many new discoveries, mine too was made through an AI-powered app. I learnt about it one afternoon in my own backyard with my friend, an enthusiastic birdwatcher. She raised her phone, like a divining rod, in the air. “Listen,” she said. The air was alive with a dozen different whistles and chirps that I had heard all my life but had never really listened to. She gave her phone’s screen a tap, and like a magician revealing a card trick, a neat list of my audible world appeared: American Robin. Northern Cardinal. Song Sparrow. House Finch.

It felt like magic. All my life, this world had been lovely yet unintelligible for me, but now this small app had given me a libretto and a volume knob of this concert. I downloaded it right away. Over the course of the following few weeks, I was a human possessed. Nearly every moment of mine was spent sitting by my window and every stroll in the park turned into a digital translation exercise. I needed nothing else now. My interpreter was the app, always present, translating the birds’ cryptic language into the straightforward, gratifying finality of a proper noun.  

Oh! That’s a Tufted Titmouse, and that one is a Blue Jay. Suddenly, without any hard efforts, I experienced a superior and effortless expertise, a sense of mastery in my field. But soon, an odd thing began to happen.

Not that I don’t accept this tool’s genius. In fact, it can actually be the spark that ignites a lifelong passion for a youngster just getting started. Its visual sonograms could provide access to a world that might otherwise be inaccessible to a person with a hearing impairment. This is a marvel bridge of accessibility to the amateurs. But somewhere along the way, I noticed I was crossing that bridge so often I stopped looking at the river at all.  

The more I used it, the less I actually heard. I didn’t realize when I had stopped even attempting to retain the melody in my own mind to try to distinguish it, just because I was so preoccupied with recording the sound for the algorithm to give me quick answers. I came to the realization that I was actually paying a heavy fee to cross this bridge. This realization hit me when I visited my father. His straightforward comment that the wren sang with a certain character, a distinct personality, exposed the gap between our two methods of knowing as I could only check on my phone to confirm his knowledge.  

Mine was a transaction, a query to a server, question in-answer out, without any personal depth; but his was a connection. He understood the “how,” when I only knew the “what.” And at that precise moment, I felt like a tourist in my own home, a place, of which I had the perfect map, but knew nothing about.  

After reflecting for a long time, I deleted the app that night. The next morning, the birds outside my window were back to singing lovely but indecipherable sounds. Of course, as expected. Afterall, I had given up using my AI interpreter and now had to take on the difficult task of learning the bird language on my own. So I purchased a dusty field guide, the type with faded illustrations and poetic descriptions: the sparrow’s song is a “sweet, thin series of notes,” and the robin’s is a “liquid, caroling whistle.” It was a beautiful experience to try to understand them.  

I recall sitting on a park bench one afternoon, trying to tell the difference between a House Finch and a Song Sparrow. According to the guide, the finch’s song was more jumbled and varied but the sparrow’s had more structure. I closed my eyes and tried to listen. From a maple tree, a bird sang. It sounded, well, like a bird. It was a rambling, high-pitched song. Jumbled, yes. Must be a finch. I opened my eyes and looked around the branches, but the singer was hidden. Then another song came from a low hedge. It was more distinct, with a trill after a few clear notes. I decided, after much consideration, that it was a structured piece. Sparrow definitely. With my field guide in my hand and my heart racing from the excitement of my success, I edged closer. A striped breast and a flash of brown feathers came into my view, a Song Sparrow. My heart did a little flip. Then, however, a jumbled, meandering song emerged from the same hedge. Another sparrow song burst forth. To think my racing heart was on the edge of victory, only to watch a Song Sparrow deliver both kinds of songs in the span of minutes.

My confidence vanished. And I felt utterly defeated. To think a creature the size of my thumb had completely humbled me, the giant. I realized there was no tidy checklist in the actual world.

Weeks passed like that. Humbling, and frustrating. I had to admit how little I actually perceived. I had to acknowledge my own sensory dullness and ignorance. I remembered I certainly was not like this in my childhood. So I decided against giving up and at least learned to sit still without reaching for a quick urge to name and win.

Then on a cool late spring morning, it happened. A clear, three-part whistle that sounded like it was singing, “Oh, sweet Canada, Canada, Canada,” pierced the air as I was strolling close to a small creek. And without hesitation or reaching for an external gadget, a name automatically came to me out of my own memory. It was the result of my own mind’s labor, which was slow, patient, and frustrating rather than an instantly gratifying algorithm. White-throated Sparrow. Indeed.

My happiness was limitless then. It was a profound sense of connection that seemed to be whispered to me alone. It was real knowledge as it belonged to me, not because it was more accurate than the app’s – as a matter of fact, statistically, it was probably less accurate – but because it was earned with patience rather than downloaded. It was a thread, woven from sunlight, birdsong, and my own clumsy attention, that linked me directly to that tiny, genuinely vibrant life in the trees. But now, we are living in the era of fake nightingales. The counterfeit, however, is more than just a fake bird; it is also that fake song that claims to be able to explain the meaning of every other actual song of those vibrant, and “full of life” creatures.

AI has become the ultimate, tempting solution because it can recognize not only the sounds in our backyards but also the trends in our lives, our goals, and our futures. It provides an alluring diversion from our clumsy, ineffective, and frequently discouraging process of learning, creating, and establishing connections with the process for ourselves.

But my clumsy attempt to comprehend the birds taught me that the struggle is what actually matters. The texture of seeking the truth, the understanding that comes with time is just as valuable as the solution. The “real” is a quality of the attention and time we give an object, not of the object itself. A real friendship is a history of shared vulnerability and often imperfect presence rather than a string of flawlessly manicured updates and flawless replies. And, for me, true knowledge is not a fact that has been displayed on a screen but rather an insight that has been ingrained in us via our experiences, our failures, or the victory of finally hearing the song for ourselves.

Hence, though AI can be a helpful map for us, we must not allow it to persuade us that just reading a map is equivalent to actually exploring that area. That unmediated space, the patient labor of listening, looking, trying, failing, and then trying again, until we can finally separate the music from the noise, will always contain the most genuine moments of our lives which no AI can ever replicate because that is something utterly human, utterly real.  

Achieving a constant state of happiness first requires a profound understanding of oneself and an acute awareness of one’s reality. Recognizing that there must be a purpose behind human creation, I realized that lasting happiness and inner peace could only be attained by discovering this purpose and aligning my life accordingly. I understood that every new situation presented an opportunity to progress toward life’s deeper beauties. This transformation in perspective allowed me to derive personal satisfaction irrespective of external circumstances or conditions.

Over time, it became evident that life does not always unfold according to one’s wishes. Nevertheless, I came to accept that if the events shaping my path were part of a divinely orchestrated destiny, then they inherently held meaning and purpose. In a life plan uniquely designed for me, it would be impossible for a situation to arise that did not ultimately serve my benefit or growth. Thus, I began to view each experience as a carefully crafted treasure trove of lessons. Embracing the viewpoint that a believer, whether tested by hardship or blessed with prosperity, is always in a position of gain, I perceived every situation as a form of divine grace. Consequently, my foremost responsibility was to internalize this reality and actively incorporate it into my daily life.

However, the true meaning of life and my own place within it became fully clear during a profound period of captivity. The circumstances that led to my imprisonment were deeply political, rooted in the systematic repression carried out by the Erdogan administration in Turkey, under which mass arrests and detentions targeted individuals not for violence or crime, but simply for dissent. Despite the suffering, captivity became the place where I discovered the genuine beauty and deeper purpose of life. This experience exposed my human weaknesses and made real the truth of the saying, “pain matures the soul.” By consciously giving meaning to what I lived through, I reached a powerful realization: none of my experiences were wasted. Each one was a meaningful chapter in a greater story written for my growth.

Significantly, I understood that the suffering and pain I had perceived were often a product of my own distorted interpretations and judgments. Life itself, in its essence, resembled a beautiful book; yet when its beauty went unrecognized, it became akin to a story abandoned after its first page—empty, meaningless, and devoid of value. This recognition illuminated the importance of perceiving life as it truly is, rather than as it appears through the lens of emotional distortions. In this context, the insight of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, a renowned Islamic scholar—”Those who see beautifully think beautifully, and those who think beautifully find joy in life”—emerged as a timeless guiding principle, highlighting the transformative power of perception.

People are asleep

My imprisonment became a means of awakening, an embodiment of the profound truth expressed by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in his saying, “People are asleep; they wake up when they die.” Within the solitude of confinement, I was afforded the rare opportunity to confront realities previously obscured by the distractions of daily life. I came face to face with what it truly meant to be human and acknowledged the deep dissonance between the truths I professed to know and the life I was actually living.

During this period of isolation, the words of Rumi resonated deeply within me: “Just as the thirsty yearns for water, the water also seeks lips to quench its own thirst.” In a similar vein, I came to believe that God had granted me this trial as an opportunity for my soul to quench its thirst for authentic meaning. All that remained for me to do was to offer boundless gratitude and praise to God for this unexpected blessing.

God-centered existence

The spiritual psychology expressed by Prophet Muhammad and some Islamic thinkers such as Nursi, and Rumi finds deep and striking parallels within Christianity and Judaism, revealing a shared understanding of suffering as a path to awakening and inner purification. In Christian theology, hardship is not viewed as meaningless pain but as a divine instrument through which the soul is refined and drawn closer to God, as reflected in St. Paul’s teaching that suffering produces perseverance, character, and hope. Similarly, Jesus’ life and suffering stand as the ultimate symbol of redemption, where pain becomes a gateway to spiritual rebirth.

Judaism likewise teaches that trials are a form of divine testing meant to purify the heart and strengthen faith, as expressed in Proverbs, which compares the human soul to silver refined by fire. This closely mirrors the Islamic belief that adversity matures the soul and unveils deeper truths hidden beneath the surface of comfort. In all three traditions, suffering is not a sign of abandonment by God, but rather an intimate form of divine engagement—an invitation to transcend the ego, correct one’s perception of reality, and awaken to a more meaningful, God-centered existence.

Crucible for awakening

Moreover, captivity revealed the extent of my spiritual thirst—for life, for belief, and for the values I claimed to cherish. Perhaps most startling was the realization that I had been completely unaware of this yearning. I had been consumed by worldly ambitions and fleeting pursuits, oblivious to how much of my life had slipped away. Prison, paradoxically, became the crucible for my spiritual awakening—a space where I recognized my inner desolation and began to take meaningful steps toward satisfying the deeper needs of my soul.

Upon recognizing the reality of my situation, profound regret washed over me. I mourned the years wasted in superficial pursuits; the time lost in the illusion of faith rather than its sincere practice. I wept for the lost opportunities to truly live by the teachings of the book of God, understanding belatedly that had I engaged with it with genuine reflection and earnestness, my life would have unfolded with far greater beauty and purpose. The realization that I had neglected such a profound gift for so long was devastating, yet also deeply transformative.

This confrontation with my own shortcomings revealed the fragility of my faith. The oft-repeated phrase “hanging by a thread” took on visceral meaning, deeply shaking my very foundations. I discerned how precarious my belief had become—despite having memorized the six pillars of faith in childhood, I had failed to internalize and live by them. I found myself grappling with profound questions: What does it truly mean to believe in God, in the Holy Books, in the Angels, in the Prophets, in the Day of Judgment, and in Divine Destiny? It became apparent that merely professing faith was insufficient; true belief necessitated active embodiment and practice.

This painful but necessary realization unveiled a critical gap between the beliefs I claimed to hold and the life I actually lived. In neglecting to live by my stated values, I had, instead, come to shape my beliefs around my experiences—believing as I lived, rather than living as I believed. Consequently, I had drifted far from the Scripture and the Prophetic path, relying instead on my own flawed interpretations. The life I had constructed was one of chaos and spiritual emptiness, starkly contrasting with the divine tranquility I had so long sought.

Through the struggles of imprisonment, I came to a profound understanding of divine testing. I realized that God tests His servants through hardship, not to break them, but to guide them back to Him. My life in prison was one such divine test, an opportunity for reflection and repentance. It was through this trial that I was blessed with an awakening—a renewed commitment to the values I once only claimed to uphold. For this extraordinary mercy, I offered unending thanks to God, fully aware that, had this trial not occurred, my life may have continued on a trajectory of unconsciousness and ultimate loss.

Having arrived at this realization, I turned to God with earnest supplication, seeking forgiveness, mercy, and the continued blessing of His guidance. I understood, with clarity and conviction, that enduring happiness and true peace, aligned with my faith, could only be attained through God’s favor and my unwavering commitment to live by the principles He revealed. In this, I found myself echoing the insight of Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi: that the real journey is not outward, but a return from myself to myself, discovering that every search, every struggle, and every moment of distance was, in truth, a path leading back to my own heart and to the presence of God. Thus, what seemed an external quest resolved into an inner awakening, realizing that the One I sought was never absent, and that my true task is to purify the self, recognize His nearness, and walk, with humility and love, in the light of His guidance.

In a meadow of memories, my mind is a mosquito. It flies from flower to flower, and separates the colors from the petals [1], sucks the warmth from the sun. It finds no house in the darkness, no home in the ever-changing seasons. Flowers cease to flower, but in a memory, they bloom to infinity. The mosquito calls this knowledge, hope. It wears this hope, its home, in the fine fabric of its wings. My mind weaves itself a blanket from life’s moments, hammers in pegs in different places, and pitches a tent. It crouches inside and bathes in the warmth that radiates. It calls this comfort, home.

My mind had grown up ready to pack me, and my life, into a box. It thought that those flimsy cardboard boxes, wrapped twice round with industrial tape, felt more like home, than “home” did. Houses changed, in more ways than it cared to count, and the common factor was the boxes. It, in its youthful simplicity, deduced that my home was hidden somewhere there. The boxes that menacingly threatened mildew when starved of attention, but when you gave them just that, would launch dust grenades that made you sneeze. And my mind had tried to carve out a home amongst them, with box cutters, but the cardboard never budged. Then it attempted to fit my life there, to squeeze an infinite quantity of warmth into a finite volume.

It worked, for a while. As a temporary, makeshift home. One that burst at the seams when the houses stopped changing. My mind then concluded that, if my home could not house my life, I did not need one. It left my belongings strewn across the floor of the soaked cardboard, and looked elsewhere, as comfort oozed away like lava seeping back under the earth’s crust. It left its life in disarray, and banished itself to a desert, as it could not bear to look at trees. It did not want to be reminded of the home it had found, the home that had then abandoned it. It walked around, kicking about loose stones, while the sun pelted heat upon its wandering back. It had never felt colder than there, and it discovered that a place that housed warmth, was not automatically its home.

It went back to thinking that home was somewhere with four walls, and it jumped from place to place. This is how it became a measly mosquito, one who did not know what food source it was meant to look for. It tried to find home in the bottom of cereal boxes, in crates of oranges, and in tins of stationery. But no matter where it flew, it could never find anything concrete to stick to. Nothing had enough grip for it to puncture its proboscis into. My mind found nothing of substance to hammer its roots into. And here – beneath the dried-out cheerios, the stinging orange peels, and the empty ink cartridges – a home was not found.

My house was never a home because it was a cage, and then school became a cage, and then the world became a cage. And in my mind, the only way out of this cage was to become an astronaut. A mosquito’s wings flying through space, dressed in a white, padded, sealed suit. I wanted to find home, to look for it somewhere, because it had to be out there. Somewhere on some planet, maybe Mars, maybe Pluto. It was somewhere. I was adamant. I had searched everywhere else, yet, I had forgotten about the four walls of my mind. The vacant, desolate home that belonged to me. The walls littered with propaganda posters, slogans of all the words that I had heard that had stung enough to stick. The memories scattered in little cardboard boxes, packages of warmth waiting, not to be moved, but to be opened. But the mosquito did not know of these.

In the depths of space, the mosquito heard a faint buzzing sound, a sound that could not be heard elsewhere. It was not the background static of space, nor was it the broadcasts transmitted from nearby spacecrafts. It was not the voices that were pleading for it to come back “home.” The mosquito did not know what to do, since it had no concrete sense of direction in space. So, it simply hoped that it would find the things it was looking for. And a match, dipped into a basin of hope, was struck against the all the resistance that space had to give.

The mosquito’s internal compass sought out the source of the sound. It guided them both out of space, while its eyes remained closed, and led it to my mind. It did not notice the barriers, it did not notice the scaling walls, it simply flew. It did not look around – until its head hit a wall and it stumbled into a stupor, spiraling backwards, downwards, and side to side. Piles of boxes tumbled over. The sky cracked open, no longer withstanding the heat that seeped out from the cages made from cardboard. The mosquito shielded its shut eyes, wings quivering from the warmth, and it dared to investigate the boundaries of the four walls of one box. Inside was a flower, sitting neatly in a mound of earth. It was no less alive than a flower in a meadow, and did not shy away from the glaring lights of the mind.

The mosquito, starved, sucked the color from the flower. The flower’s petals did not wilt, and they stayed raised proud, even though they had faded, even though they no longer emitted a single ounce of warmth. And this mosquito was like all mosquitos. It left this flower, without as much as building it a gravestone or gifting it a goodbye. It inhaled all the colors, cycled through all the boxes, and the mind’s artificial lights could not keep up. The colors swallowed, the warmth stolen, and the light, powered by an external generator, flickered. It mourned the memories the mosquito had mistook for flowers. These flowers would not rebloom.

The mosquito was not exiled. It was simply sent to the gates, and set loose. Left, standing on the doorsteps between the mind and a meadow. Filled with mistrust, and seething with shame, it plucked a petal of the nearest flower. Drained from its nature, dampened slightly by the falling rain, the mosquito pressed the petal against its wings, dumping its hue onto their fine strands. It then drank half a flower’s full of warmth, and tread back to the mind. Doors open, it ran in, knelt beside a box, and planted the flower’s roots into the soil. Nothing happened, the lights still whimpered as if they were cold, but it felt right to the mosquito. A dead flower should be accompanied by a not-yet dying one. It imagined that they might hold hands. It fancied they would be happier that way.

The mosquito flew far. Meadows close-by had grown empty, and flowers became scarcer the further it went. It brought boxes with it, towing tools, and tales behind it. It slept in bogs, and sunk into the heat from the fire that its wings created. Its wings wrapped tight around its body, and it watches as colors ripple across. And even in the darkness, even in the wet, sunken ground, it has a home. A home filled with warmth.

The mosquito flies, fueled by the memory of warmth that lives in its wings. It is entertained by the colors that find a festive hat and entertain any of its lonely emptiness. The mosquito lives in its wings and their warmth, and has a constant companion called color. It always flies back to my mind, armed with a garden of flowers in its hands. And my mind, finally having a living and functioning thing to treasure, fashioned the mosquito a tent. It stretched the strings, and nailed four down. One into space, one into the desert, one into the boxes, and the last into that first meadow. And it listens, while it knits a blanket, to the voice of the mosquito recounting its travels. A blanket weaved with the wool of the mosquito’s life; all the moments it saw. And when the mosquito leaves, my mind casts the blanket over its own four walls. Its house finally has a roof, heat takes longer to escape, and my mind had made itself a home.

One day, the flowers will be too far for the mosquito to fly to. There will be a journey that the mosquito undertakes, but never completes. Its fuel will not last. Only the dark sky will bear eye to its fall, and it will die in the cold. Its wings will flicker, flicker, a dying flame at the end of its match. A gust of wind will come along and extinguish its glowing embers. The mosquito’s home had lived with the mosquito’s life, and without the sound of a beating heart to follow, it could no longer send out any waves of warmth. The mosquito ceases to exist, and its home follows in suit.

The flowers in my mind will still exist, faded, and dried out, all their last color used up for that last journey. And my mind will shiver in the cold, waiting for the mosquito to come back. Waiting for it to tell stories of its thoughts, waiting to hear its wings buzz under the tent when the next morning comes. A sound that never arrives. My mind will wonder why the mosquito did not find a home in its walls, why the tent it had sewn was not filled with enough warmth to entice it to stay. And it will seek the mosquito’s corpse out, and bury them both into its blanket. It reckons the dead mosquito needs a dying companion. And its artificial lights blaze with a natural glare, and both the mosquito and my mind are buried with a home above them.

Note

• Male mosquitos feed on nectar.

Sarah waited while sitting near the window with her legs pulled toward her chest. The church bell rang in the distance, and the sky outside was growing darker. That morning, her mother had departed wearing a scarf over her head and carrying a basket.

“If I’m not back before night,” her mom whispered, “take the small bag under the bed and wait for Marie.”

That was her only response.

There was silence in the streets as the sun went down. Sarah stood up and took out the small cloth bag from beneath the bed. It had a small loaf of bread, some cents, and a folded piece of paper with the name “Claire” written on it that she didn’t recognize.

There was a gentle knock on the door.

It was the bread vendor down the street, Marie. She mustered a grin despite her anxious face.

“Come, little one. We have to go now.”

They only moved at night as they made their way through side streets and alleys. Sarah’s hand remained in Marie’s hand. They stayed in basements, barns, and even a church cellar at one point.

Sarah was given warm soup by an elderly man at one stop. A little girl once surrendered her shoes.

Their eyes all had the same silent expression. Kind yet exhausted. “Why are you helping me?” Sarah asked once.

Marie looked away. “Because someone helped me once. That’s all.”

They arrived at a little farm close to the woodland one evening. Pierre, a man, was standing there. He had potatoes and hay in a wooden wagon.

Under the hay, Sarah lay flat after climbing onto the cart. Pretending to be merely a traveler, Marie and Pierre sat up front.

Sarah held her breath as they went by the German checkpoint. Boots on gravel, she could hear the soldiers conversing. Pierre simply chuckled and waved when one of them yelled something.

The cart then continued to roll.

They stood near a row of trees that evening.

“Just past these woods is Switzerland,” Pierre said. “You’ll crawl under the fence. Someone will meet you.”

Marie knelt next to Sarah. “You’re brave. Braver than you think.”

Sarah remained silent. She was too afraid. She did, however, nod.

Her heart thumping, she dashed through the trees. There was moisture on the grass. Her nose stung from the cold air. She fell to her knees and crawled upon seeing the fence.

She was pulled up and held tightly by a woman wearing a coat on the opposite side.

“You made it,” she said.

At the end of the war, Sarah remained in Switzerland. She didn’t see her mother again. She had no idea what had happened to Pierre or Marie.

Despite growing up and moving far away, she lit a tiny candle on her windowsill on the same night each year.

For Marie. For Pierre. For those who offered assistance when it wasn’t required.

On a less than memorable episode of The Simpsons, Bart, the hell-raising ten-year-old, is struggling to begin a paper on World War I that is due the next day. Books are piled on his desk. The pen is in his hand, touching the paper (back when kids still wrote essays by hand). He looks around the room and sees an especially inviting book on his bookshelf.

“Oh, algebra,” he says excitedly. “I’ll just do a few equations…”

He then hits himself to refocus.

Everyone finds the gag relatable: a task so difficult or boring, with a deadline looming, where the distraction of doing math equations is not only tempting but preferable.

I have no algebra books in my home, but plenty of other distractions that stand out and glitter like half buried pearls. Laundry that suddenly needs doing or trying to decide which is the perfect way to organize my bookshelves (by color? alphabetically?). There are the kinds of distractions that announce themselves randomly and demand my attention. My son deciding he’s hungry ten minutes after refusing lunch. My mother calling with the vague, dreaded, “are you busy right now?” Making sense of what it was I wanted or was supposed to be doing after all of these detours can take more mental energy than I’m capable of, which means I often leave everything unfinished.

Usually, I’m good at hiding my half-done priorities, but not everything can be swept aside or pushed into a closet. My lawn, for instance, is something everyone can see as the result of these shifting priorities. The grand list of plans to repair and care for my lawn every spring has now increased to where the grounds crew of Yankee Stadium would find it difficult. To get rid of all the overgrown bushes and tree branches would take a full weekend, but didn’t we want to take my son to the aquarium? Wasn’t getting him out of the house and away from the TV important? Mowing the lawn itself takes at least two hours, yet my mother isn’t well enough to go grocery shopping on her own. She can’t go without food, right? I can’t put it off, not when I’m supposed to be seeding all the empty patches and pulling out the dandelions and spraying deer repellent. An unending stream of guilt causes me to lurch one way then another, leaving my lawn a mess, an outward expression of things left half-finished or completely unstarted.

The secret, as we are told by various self-help gurus online and daytime talk show hosts, is to put aside the things that aren’t important and embrace the things that are. This is meaningless gobbledygook that looks good on the kind of cheap coffee mugs you see in greeting card stores. If the slogan was “do what makes you happy,” or “prioritize the good in life!” it would have just as much meaning and probably as much impact. The definition of what makes something important is too vague, too changing. After all, each distraction blares its importance to you like a screaming baby. Rather than limit things to important or not important, the best method for avoiding distractions is to prioritize everything. From restocking the scotch tape dispenser to fleeing a house fire.

Discovering that hierarchy is the real trick, and it is a process. Little children are hardwired to not think about the world around them (as newborns, we think things stop existing when they leave our field of view). When we age, our priorities change. Hopefully for the better, but not always. Some people need a lot of time and experience to help learn what’s most important. And even as you figure it out, the distractions come fast and hard. Every week a person is recommended to watch a new TV show, even though they probably haven’t finished watching the latest hit everyone’s talking about. Then comes the dilemma: should that person stop the old show and pick up the new one? What if they’re someone who never skips a Sunday crossword puzzle? Do they continue to do them and watch TV, knowing they might put off work they brought home from the office? When do they get around to paying bills? Calling up their parents to catch up? All these options just from having one show introduced to us.

By the time you’re a young single adult, it becomes easy to think that whatever makes you happy is what’s important. For a long time, my biggest concern was how to be a rock star even though I spent my high school years playing trombone. Once I was out of college and that dream was as realistic as eating unicorn steaks, I went ahead and started waiting tables. All that mattered to me at that age was whether I would walk out of each shift with enough to pay off the essentials. These consisted of gas, rent, and food, not always in that order. Often the food came from McDonald’s and the refreshments from local bars. But happiness was the goal, not nutrition. As long as I wasn’t too picky about it all, I managed to make it work. I was satisfied.

When I started working as a teacher my own happiness depended on others. Staff members needed help. Students wanted feedback from me. The distractions and the goals I needed to accomplish were so numerous it became dangerous to my career to leave some incomplete. I learned early, though not as early as I should have, to prioritize what mattered without leaving everything undone. There were too many days scrambling to finish lesson planning five minutes before the students walked in. Too many mornings struggling to discuss the merits of The Great Gatsby while feeling far from clear-headed. The less said about the burgers that contributed to my expanding waistline the better. It would be wonderful if people learned this earlier in life. But a lot of people don’t. Some never learn to prioritize at all. Judging by how many people still take on Tik Tok challenges, it stands to reason people are not always acting with their best interests (judging by how many challenges there are, there are never too many distractions either).

The vast majority of people also learn that once you have a spouse or partner and children who count on you, or extended family that needs help, their safety and security becomes the most important thing. Something in my lizard-brain activated once I held my newborn son for the first time, a little voice that said, “This thing matters. It’s counting on you.” After that, my brain took all the stimuli around me and, like a badly kept 90s desktop computer, put everything it receives through a quick analysis: on one side, that nagging distraction that demands attention; on the other, my wife and son.

The system isn’t perfect, of course. Sometimes it says that nagging thing is my son, and my brain therefore questions how long I can go and ignore it. The effect is doubled when the request is something innocuous, like demanding we do the same dinosaur puzzle for the sixth time in a row. (Ignoring him is a generally all-around terrible thing to do – newborns and toddlers have to be dealt with eventually if you ever want to get five consecutive seconds of peace).

Ignoring my responsibilities to myself for too long, like any engine that burns too hard for too long, causes me to crash. When things come up that relate only to me – a new videogame demanding my attention, some of my friends making plans to unwind after work, maybe a free hour where I can sneak in a nap – my systems work on autopilot, telling me to brush them aside. The little voice inside my head will sometimes pipe up: “Yes, you have papers that need grading, but shouldn’t your son have fifty meal options for dinner, just in case?” The messaging gets confusing, and this ultimately hurts everyone else. You should definitely do work for your job, and when it comes to toddlers, falling asleep while playing with blocks means I get a rude awakening when they’re chucked at my head. Sometimes I need a reminder, often from my wife, to take care of myself as well.

Some distractions, like Bart’s algebra, we just can’t help but be tempted by. They fill our head and make us think they need to be done right this second. Giving everything a label of important vs not important rarely helps. By prioritizing things first, especially when helping others, has shown me what matters in my own life. Family first, always. Then myself, my career. Maybe, eventually, some day, my lawn will make it a little higher up the list.

Today is the monthly community market in my little town. Every month, we buy a bag of Granny Smith apples from the nice apple lady.

Usually, my wife takes care of it, pulling a heavy bag of apples home in a two-wheeled trolley. Only, she injured herself a few weeks ago, and I’ve been playing mother. Thanks to some combination of acupuncture and the passage of time, she is getting better, but not yet up to a three-kilometer walk and hasn’t driven the car yet. So, it was my job this morning.

The weather forecast promised thirty-five degrees. (That’s the sensible Celsius scale. It’s ninety-five on that F thing.) First hot day of summer. When I set off at about eight in the morning, it was pleasantly warm. Towing the two-wheeled trolley, I decided to combine a little exercise with walking meditation, and soon found myself in the Nowscape. I stole the concept from Jon Kabat-Zinn, but he doesn’t mind. How does it work?

Whatever my attention focuses on is full, two-hundred percent vivid. That attention is allowed and even encouraged to wander, but always with complete focus. So…

The smooth rhythm of the muscles in my leg, identifying each stretch and pull by name.

The light breeze moving the fresh green leaves on that tree.

The scent of lavender from a garden I am passing.

Birdsong.

A fly buzzing around my nose.

The thought that, sadly, there is only one fly annoying me. A few decades ago, there were thousands of insects for each one alive today.

The blue sky, gently moving little clouds.

Walking. Left foot forward, meets the ground, rolls from heel to toe, glutes tighten, center of gravity advances, right foot forward… on and on.

Across the road, a father watchfully follows his little girl leading a brown dog. The girl is running, the dog strolls along with her. They pass a low timber fence, and a boy about her age runs out and joins her.

From within my heart, I wish them all a good life.

Then the thought; I should write all this down.

A big white dog is taking a middle-aged woman for a walk. We smile at each other (yes, all three of us), and two of us say “Good morning.”

This is repeated from time to time with other dogs and their followers, each time with full focus from me, and my unvoiced sending of lovingkindness to both the human and the canine person.

A young woman is straddling a bike, one foot on the ground, a cute little miniperson in a carrier seat behind her. Poking out of the gateway on my right is the front wheel of another bike. A dad is putting a helmet on a little boy. Smiles, greetings, sending lovingkindness as I walk by. They ride past me a short while later, the boy with a look that reminds me of a hero going off to face the dragon.

More walking meditation, in rhythm with an internal song. That is allowed: merely another target coming and leaving the focus of the Nowscape.

Here is the market. Regular arrays of marquees and open stalls, most selling junk I have no interest in, but I bless them and wish them a successful day anyway.

A fellow wants to sell t-shirts with inscriptions I wouldn’t wear if you paid me.

Enough socks for an army of millipedes, but I’d bought socks from her last month. She is worth a smile, a greeting and a secret blessing.

Home-grown honey. That would be fine, but we have some in the cupboard already.

Tools that would have grabbed my attention twenty years ago, but now I have more tools than I need, for activities I no longer do. May he sell them all today.

My friend, Judy, is in her stall, selling hand-crafted things too hot for the coming summer, but she does it more for fun than a livelihood nowadays. We have a good chat. She is the focus of the Nowscape, then I move on.

People milling about, people in their stalls (no, no, not like horses but in their little mobile shops), each worth a smile and a secret blessing.

Here is the apple lady, her truck in the usual spot. She is doing good business, and I join the little crowd.

At home, my wife and I had counted out twelve dollars in coins—useful for her as change, but just extra weight for us. Now, I hand them over. She accepts them without counting, and I tuck a bag of crisp green apples into my trolley. I move on, looking for leek seedlings. The two garden guys have every kind of plant but leeks, so I leave for home.

As I pass the apple lady, she grabs me, well, not physically but with a wave. She insists that I’d given her too much, and hands back about three dollars in loose change. We have a nice chat. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone had our view of money?

On the walking meditation home, I detour to go past the place of the little old Croatian lady who grows vegetables the way her ancestors did in the Old Country. She has them under the shade in her driveway, with an honesty box for your payments.

We don’t really need anything she’s selling, but I notice bunches of lovely flowers, marked down from $8 to $6, then to $1.99. I decide to invest two dollars of the apple lady’s honesty—both to reward the veggie lady’s trust and to bring a little joy to my wife. An hour of my life, spent in heaven.

In the movies when somebody dies, assuming that they are a good person, they go to heaven, which is portrayed as somewhere beyond the clouds. Other movies show heaven as beautiful meadows with gorgeous flowers, trees, animals, and lakes. Depending on religious sources and a movie director’s imagination, we see glamorous, luminescent white scenes in heaven. Apart from what a perfect place it is, we have no idea where it might be. Even though we are told about the glamours of Heaven, neither Islamic nor Christian sources tell us much about the location of God’s magnificent creation.

Acknowledging in the first chapter of his The Letters volume that “Only God knows the unseen” (an-Naml 27:65) and “Knowledge is only with God” (al-Mulk 67:26), Said Nursi talks about two Hells, the smaller one and the bigger one. He suggests, some Prophetic traditions (Ajluni, Kashf al-Khafa 1:281; al-Hakim, al-Mustadrak 4:568) report the smaller Hell to be underground, underneath the earth’s crust at the center of the globe, known as the “core.” We know from geological findings that as we head toward the center of the Earth, the temperature increases immensely. It is known that the temperature near the Earth’s center is around 6000 degrees Celsius. Scientists believe that the core of the earth is as hot as the sun. Nursi argues that the Greater Hell to be underneath the Earth’s annual orbit around the Sun, a circle area around the sun, a place for the Great Gathering and Judgment Day. He thinks that when Doomsday comes, like a tiny seed turning into a huge tree, the smaller Hell will be transformed into the bigger one. That is, on Judgment Day, the Earth will cast all its inhabitants into its orbit around the Sun for resurrection. After the Judgment, those who will take their books in their right hands will go to Heaven somewhere above the Earth’s orbit and those who will take their books in their left hands will go to Hell somewhere under the orbit. While offering these ideas, Nursi properly reminds us that the other world is behind a veil of the unseen and it is impossible to see them with the eyes we have in this world.

Although Nursi mentions the place for Hell, he does not refer to a certain place for Heaven. He describes Hell and Heaven as two fruits on the tree of creation, which stretches into infinity. That is to say, they are the two results of the chain of the universe: “They are two pools receiving the flow of two streams, one carrying the wicked and foul while the other carries the good and pure. Paradise is the place where Divine Favor and Mercy manifest themselves, whereas Hell is the place where Divine Wrath and Awe are exhibited.” Both of them serve as an impetus to do good and refrain from bad. The following few verses from the Qur’an paint us a beautiful image of Heaven.

And give good tidings to those who believe and do righteous deeds that they will have gardens [in Paradise] beneath which rivers flow. Whenever they are provided with a provision of fruit there from, they will say, “This is what we were provided with before.” And it is given to them in likeness. And they will have therein purified spouses, and they will abide therein eternally. (al-Baqarah 2:25)

[Other] faces, that Day, will show pleasure. With their effort [they are] satisfied. In an elevated garden, wherein they will hear no unsuitable speech. Within it is a flowing spring. Within it are couches raised high and cups put in place and cushions lined up and carpets spread around. (al-Ghasiyah 88:8-16)

We can also mention a few hadiths telling us about the characteristics of Heaven.

“Abu Huraira reported The Messenger of God (may peace be upon him) as saying that: God the Exalted and Glorious, said: I have prepared for My pious servants which no eye has ever seen, and no ear has ever heard, and no human heart has ever perceived but it is testified by the Book of God. He then recited: ‘No soul knows what comfort has been concealed from them, as a reward for what they did’” (Muslim, Book 40, Number 6780).

“Abu Bakr b. Abdullah b. Qais reported on the authority of his father that the Messenger of God (may peace be upon him) said that in Paradise there would be for a believer a tent of a single hollowed pearl the breadth of which would be sixty miles. It would be meant for a believer and the believers would go around it and none would be able to see the others” (Muslim, Book 40, Number 6804).

“Abu Huraira reported the Messenger of God (may peace be upon him) as saying: Saihan (Oxus), Jaihan (Jaxartes), Euphrates and Nile are all among the rivers of Paradise” (Muslim, Book 40, Number 6807).

We know that God created everything with a purpose including all the stars we see in the sky when the night falls. They say we can see approximately 3,000 stars with the naked eye on a clear night. If we have access to a small telescope, the number of observable stars may increase to 100,000. Moreover, it is estimated there are about 100 billion stars (some estimates say even up to four times more than that) just in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Considering that there are an estimated 100 to 200 billion galaxies visible to us through telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and keeping in mind the vast number of stars in our own galaxy, the observable universe could contain over a billion trillion stars. Livio suggests that galaxies might exist in other unobservable and unknown universes, meaning the number of galaxies could be even greater.

We know from the Holy books that God created this world and all that is in it to show His own glory, power, and excellence. But what about the billions of stars in countless galaxies? Apart from their existence, we know nothing about them. We need eyes as big as the Sun to see what they are like. According to Said Nursi, countless stars we are unaware of host angels, jinn, and other spiritual beings invisible to the human eye. Just as fish of various colors and sizes swim in the oceans, vast constellations of stars journey through the universe. Surely, their purpose is to display His unique artistry and to inspire His creation to exalt and glorify Him, Al-Khaliq, the Creator. This is not so astounding when we consider that, according to Prophetic tradition, each raindrop descends from the sky with an angel.

Similar to Islam, Christian sources mention many properties of Heaven such that all things are new, there are no tears or pain, there is perfect peace, there are splendid buildings and vineyards, and fruitful gardens; unfortunately, they do not talk about its location. For example:

“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

“They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.” (Isaiah 65:21)

“The wilderness and the wasteland shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.” (Isaiah 35:1)

The Bible says, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained” (Psalm 8:3). This verse may imply that Heaven might consist of the stars and galaxies. Another verse says that the future existence of mankind after resurrection will take place on the present Earth, which will be recreated and renewed to its ideal form(see Revelation 21:1-4; Isaiah 65:17-25; John 14:2, 3).

All this considered, I believe the vast collections of planets and stars in the universe may have another profound purpose—one not explicitly found in either Islamic or Christian teachings. Who knows? Perhaps God intends to turn these heavenly bodies into realms of Heaven for His obedient people and other spiritual beings. It is possible that, based on qualities like loyalty, obedience, righteousness, and goodness, individuals might be granted a heavenly domain proportionate in beauty and size. In other words, prophets and messengers may dwell in grander, more magnificent stars than those reserved for a typical believer, whose prayers and deeds were fewer. To illustrate, Islam’s prophet could be given UY Scuti—the largest known star, with a radius around 1,700 times greater than the sun—as his heavenly abode.

Everything is possible for God, “The Originator of the heavens and the earth. When He decrees a matter, He only says to it, ‘Be’, and it is” (al-Baqarah 2:117). He can easily transform stars into realms of Heaven for His faithful and righteous followers. Finally, the true location of Heaven is beyond our comprehension. While only God knows the true purpose behind the creation of stars, we, as people of faith, can strive to earn the greatest heavenly reward by engaging in prayer, charity, and good deeds. Surely, the existence of all these celestial bodies reflects His power, wisdom, and grace. Ultimately, Heaven may be anywhere, as the Almighty creates His places of manifestation wherever He wills.

References

• https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/how-many-stars-are-there.html#:~:text=Therefore%2C%20using%20a%20very%20rough,anywhere%20up%20to%201024.
• https://www.space.com/25303-how-many-galaxies-are-in-the-universe.html
• https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/questions/where-is-heaven
• https://www.space.com/41290-biggest-star.html

After the exhausting hustle and bustle of the day, you finally throw yourself into your seat and take a deep breath. For a while, you keep on staring at a point, and your past life, which you are about to leave behind, plays like movie scenes in front of your eyes. Eventually you tell yourself, “It’s over,” without realizing that, in actuality, it is just starting.

After a several-hour journey, the plane lands at your new destination and you face your new “homeland.” You assume and hope that, that this place will become your new homeland. The most remarkable thing you notice is the condensation of your breath due to the cold weather. It’s one of the spring months, and everywhere is as green as can be. You have great expectations, and your heart is full of hope. Everything appears “rose pink,” like a dream you never want to wake up from. It feels as though everyone around you will vanish as soon as you open your eyes, revealing the “truth.” You observe everyone smiling and laughing, even for simple reasons. You dismiss others’ descriptions of the people in that country “as cold as its weather.” Many would describe it as a fragment of Heaven.

You finally decide that you have found your new homeland. This decision feels good for a while, silencing the voices whispering for you to wake up. However, the sweet dream doesn’t last long, and gradually you start realizing the “truth.” Your inner voice repeatedly whispers that something is going wrong. Even though your satisfaction is gradually declining, you try not to surrender. An indescribable feeling makes you perceive that everything is not as it seems. Under the bright sky, with a sweet breeze and drizzling rain, you see a small pit where a little water has accumulated, reflecting your image on its surface. You begin to question your reflection: “What are you doing here?” “Do you really belong here?” “Don’t you ever feel like you are suffocating in the black hole of loneliness?” “Is it necessary to be liked by people to have them around? Why would they betray and backstab you?” These questions bombard your mind, threatening to drown you in an ocean of interrogations.

Suddenly, you find yourself in a world full of noises, laughter, screams, flashlights, and crowds. Everything revolves around you at high speed. You can’t do anything but stand and stare, wondering about your purpose of existence in that place and the reason behind the circumstances you’ve experienced so far. You conclude that you haven’t found what you were looking for there. The way people treat each other and their actions make you feel even more detached from that place. The strong desire for belonging and the longing for a homeland lead you to seek another place where your heart feels at home. This yearning intensifies your longing for the land where you were born, spent your childhood, smelled the roses, and touched the soft snow. The loss of your loved ones, one after another, adds to your sorrow. Although you are aware that they are no longer with you in this world, accepting their absence remains difficult. You recall the truth of “death” when observing the snowman in your garden, melting in front of your eyes each day. Eventually, only the carrot nose and olive seed eyes are left. Tears fill your eyes with a childish sadness for reasons you can’t quite explain. Just a few days ago, the snowman was there, smiling at you from outside your window, but now it’s gone.

Life and death, two words that complete each other, are truths that you witness and cannot avoid. You often hear the phrases, life before and after death. Yet, you still desire to keep the candlelight of hope burning within you and avoid falling into despair. You need a branch to hold onto in the stream you’re drifting through.

You recall someone asking you who has the most hope: the rich or the poor, the strong or the weak? Are wealth and power the only sources of hope? Are all the others in a pitiable condition? Are these things necessary to have hope in life? When everyone comes onto the stage, plays their role, and then leaves, what is the reason for taking ownership of certain places in the world and pretending you will never die? Is there a need to be so greedy and selfish?

When everything around you has a purpose of existence and life, even a tiny earthworm adding nutrients to the soil and the delicate stapes bone in the human ear sending sound vibrations, is it reasonable to live without understanding your own life’s purpose? Is being social the only difference between you and an animal? Is life meant only for eating, drinking, and enjoyment? When plants and animals aren’t given the ability to think and seek answers, why do human beings have that potential?

Still searching for a place to belong and seeking satisfying answers to your questions, you can’t even find what you long for in your homeland. Nothing is the same as it once was. The laughter of children is no longer heard, the roses have faded, and everything has turned dark as if touched by a witch’s magic wand. You can no longer sense the sweet breeze carrying the scent of your homeland. The craving for the “eternal” one is never satisfied with the mortal. Pain is what remains with you when happiness disappears. The awareness that even worldly happiness is transitory fades the smile on your face. You accept and surrender to the truth that wherever you go in this world, you will never truly feel a sense of belonging. And that’s when the last candlelight within you extinguishes…

“No!” your still-alive inner voice, which had been whispering quietly until then, yells. “You can’t give up this easily! You can’t surrender to self-despair! Wake up and come back to your senses! Be like a honeybee that sits on every flower but never hurts any of them, even if they might hurt you. Enter every garden and ignore the trash in the corner. Because you can’t perceive the meaning hidden behind existence, you look for what you desire in the wrong places—those that are mortal and fading. You consider them faultless at first glance, but realizing their defects gives you more pain. Redirect your aims toward the right one and head down the right path. Leave the wrong, find the truth. Stop looking for satisfaction among mortal things because even if you were given the whole world, you wouldn’t be satisfied. Choose the Enduring One. Love for the sake of the Eternal One. With everything you love, you open different windows to the same Beauty. Even if people and places seem to make you suffer, you won’t get hurt because you will say, “I loved you for the sake of the Eternal One.” Long for the day you will reach the endless destination you can truly call your homeland, “where no one will ever be discriminated against…” “Wake up from your unawareness,” exclaims the inner voice, bringing you back to your senses. “But how?” you ask. “How do I achieve this, and reach this endless destination?”

“You must develop your abilities and reach your full potential. You have taken on a heavy burden that even the enormous mountains could not bear; you have committed to the great duty of being a steward on earth. Each day, strive to grow a little more. Shake off the dust and let yourself shine like a diamond. Your biggest mistake is focusing on material things while ignoring the art within you and all around you. Learn more about your Creator and observe the signs of the hereafter in this world, as you long for the ultimate union.”

“Wake up, wake up,” the sounds grow louder gradually. You feel someone shaking you. When you open your eyes, you see someone trying to wake you from your deep sleep. You regain consciousness and a smile forms on your face. “I’ve finally found it,” you whisper, even though the person in front of you can’t understand what you mean. Under their surprised gaze, you sit up, staring at a point in the distance. With a determined tone that indicates hope in the core of your heart, you say, “I have woken up, and I will stay awake no matter where I am or what troubles I face, until the day I reach my true destination…”

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” Lao Tzu

In the beginning

The parable of the Good Samaritan in the Christian tradition tells the story of a wounded man who receives help from a stranger, a stranger who goes above and beyond for a man he does not know and who will not owe him anything in return. The significance of this story is inexhaustible, and it has been used as an instrument by Christian communities to preach the power of beneficence; a trait that has been mainly packaged to serve an allegorical function. Although this story is ecclesiastically volcanic, underneath it is a quality, a quality whose truth we hold to be self-evident: the power of attention.

The abundance of choices in modern life diminishes focus to the extent that much of what is consumed is rarely retained. The modern world has been engineered to exacerbate our proclivity for distraction, a feat that is accomplished in part by top-class entertainment and in other ways by the onslaught of ads that literally pop up on our screens.

The onslaught of attention in the modern world expresses a very old and true fact: life is bivalent, it gives with one hand, and it takes with another. In the case of the 21st century, we seem to be given more than we can take. However, receiving something also implies losing something, and in this scenario, what has been disrupted and disengaged is our most prized and scarce possession: attention.

In 1977, Nobel prize winner Herbert Simon wrote: “Information consumes attention, hence a wealth of information produces a poverty of attention.” This prediction symbolizes the harm that large-scale distraction can inflict on the quality of our lives when we are bombarded by sensory data from all directions. The wisdom of our parents turns out to be true: too much of everything is bad for us. Just as excessive food intake can, in some cases, lead to gluttony, a constant diet of large-scale information will lead to an impoverished mind.

The cost of distraction manifests itself in multiple ways, but perhaps the most direct implication is how it affects us as individuals. Parents are too consumed to notice their children, teenagers are engrossed in their phones as a substitute for life, and lovers are texting on a date. The problem of distraction has metastasized to affect us both uniquely and globally.

Attention is a crucial element in human development, to the extent that newborn children have died due to a lack of it, with touch being the critical factor. It is such a vital resource that companies resort to creating Maslow-pyramid-type schemes to garner it from us. The finitude of attention is one reason why the distraction-laden 21st century is insidious, despite the prosperity and technological sophistication we enjoy.

Criticism of technology has always been a part of our culture. Ted Kaczsynsyki’s 1995 manifesto, “Industrial Society and its Future,” is one such example where he begins with the statement: “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster to the human race” [1]. Despite the pessimistic tone (and general barbarism by the author) there are signs that technology comes packaged with its own set of problems.

David Foster Wallace in his 1990 argumentative essay “E Unibus Pluram” identified that the average American has a preternatural preoccupation with television watching and identifies the source of this preoccupation viz.:

“Television’s minute-by-minute appeal is that it engages without demanding. One can rest while undergoing simulation. Receive without giving. In this respect, television resembles other things mothers call “special treats” – e.g., candy, liquor – treats that are basically fine and fun in small amounts but bad for us in large amounts and really bad for us if consumed as any kind of nutritive staple” [2].

Despite the vast differences between the authors (temperamentally and otherwise) one can’t help but conclude that the positive aspects of technology cannot be separated from the negative. They are inextricably linked, like a braid or the symbol of the caduceus in the medical arts.

Digesting the cow

One of the things that unites us as a species are events that have a universal quality, events that have been characterized as the Human Condition. “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum pluto,” said the Roman playwright Terrence: nothing human is alien to me.

This phenomenon, aka life, contains within it the tragedies and serendipitous wonders that we all encounter – experiences that on average, can be overwhelming, from dealing with acne during puberty to the demands of adult life. Life is challenging and most of it necessitates consistent effort day in and day out. As a consequence of this, there arises a need for relaxation, a need that is supplied to us in very high doses.

As a function of its definition, distraction is anything that takes a person’s attention away from what they are trying to do. A battle between meaning and expediency, one that the former seldom wins.

A huge problem with the reliance on technology as a solution to the difficulty of life lies in the addictiveness that the process spurs. This addictive process is a cycle where one moves from the downward slope of liking the activity a little-too-much, to downright needing it. Technology’s “evil,” following Kafka’s assertion that evil is whatever distracts, is twofold: (a) its ability to seize focus effortlessly and collectively, and (b) its role as a relief from the very problems it causes. The result of both (a) and (b) is a form of engagement that is phylic.

The primary source of distraction is emotions—they guide attention, and the less one is attentive to their emotions, the more these emotions will unconsciously steer us. An unguided missile is a very dangerous one. These emotions are manipulated and influenced by sophisticated and enjoyable multi-modal mediums, making modern life feel like a boa constrictor swallowing a cow.

Part of the allure of the game of chess lies in its nature as a bounded game with specific rules. In the midst of its finitude, there exists an infinite amount of possibilities—inexhaustible options that do not overwhelm the player but rather contribute to the creative expression of tactics and strategies within the game. Distraction, on the other hand, operates in the opposite manner. It takes our most prized resource and moves in more ways than we know what to do with, a process that leads to the humorously-named yet not-so-amusing state: frazzled.

Not all who wander are lost

If we consider how the anxiety stemming from a large and intimidating item on our to-do list can prevent us from approaching it, we can liken the anxiety-induced paralysis to the to-do list that encompasses our entire life—a list with a yet-to-be-revealed deadline, where the consequence is, quite literally, our existence. This predicament is certainly understandable.

Life involves suffering, there is no doubt about that, and our continual encounter with the unknown can generate anxiety. Yet, anxiety is, in many ways, the ticket to living. It is the price we pay for the beauty and profundity that is existence. Birth, death, and everything in between contribute to the adventure of our lives, each having its own individual meaning.

We perceive the world through the palette of our values; the elements we prioritize the most shape and direct our perception and actions. It is therefore crucial for us to establish a hierarchy of values, one that condenses the vastness of life into a set of actionable plans.

Words like sacrifice, work, and faith have lost their currency in the modern world, as instant gratification often overshadows the value of these concepts with its immediacy. But the yearning for something more unites us, a collective need for a task or goal that is greater than ourselves, one in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

To work is to sacrifice the present for the future, and to work properly is to take a leap of faith. It involves having faith in a situation and in oneself, the ability to see layers of potential that may not be immediately here but are ultimately there.

Meaning is a very private and subjective experience. It is a quiet joy that reveals itself in moments of true engagement and attention: the birth of a child, a revelation of love, the song from a choir, the deep sense of engagement and joy that is derived from work.

The capacity to pay attention and to connect with the mystical oneness that connects us all is a process rather than a destination. It’s not something one attains overnight; it requires showing up day in and day out. It involves understanding that we are not the center of the universe but rather individual centers, each with an immeasurable impact when actively participating in the machinery of life.

Psychologists have suggested various methods of curbing distraction, often referred to as “mindfulness.” While these approaches are beneficial and hold great value, the ultimate antidote to distraction lies in the ongoing dialogue we have with ourselves. The self, identified by Rene Descartes in his famous phrase “I think, therefore I Am,” is what defines us as individuals.

Modern life is a wonder to behold, the structures that surround us are a testament to human ingenuity. Despite its high demand for attention, we must consistently remind ourselves that the situation is changeable, but we cannot force the river to alter its course.

References

1. Theodore Kaczynski, “Industrial Society and its Future,” The New York Times, p.1
2. Wallace, David Foster, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” Review of Contemporary Fiction, p.14