Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Dear brothers and sisters, we begin with our praise of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And we bear witness that none has the right to be worshipped or unconditionally obeyed except for him. We bear witness that Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam is his final messenger. We ask Allah to send his peace and blessings upon him, the prophets and messengers that came before him, his family and companions that served alongside of him and those that follow in their blessed path until the day of judgment. And we ask Allah to make us amongst them. Allahumma ameen. Dear brothers and sisters, often when you hear terms like self-care and self-help and emotional burnout, they sound very much so like they come out of a self-help book or a five-week program online for $39.99 that'll change your life forever. And if you just start doing this or telling yourself this, then everything is going to change. And it's a growing genre for people to suggest ways out, programs to quickly shift our lives, and to get us on a path of happiness and fulfillment because this generation is suffering from loneliness, depression at rates that are not only alarming but unprecedented. Suicide rates, isolation, all of these different things that are growing in our time, and a lot of people try to deal with that by going to Google and searching for something to quickly get them on the right path. And it's about how do I make myself feel better and then this notion of self-care. And sometimes self-care means, it's really just a nice way of saying that I've given too much of myself to everybody else, now I'm just going to do me. And so it's going to be a radical shift of perspective. And the way that I live my life now, I've cared too much about everybody else and no one else has reciprocated. I gave too much to life and life did not give back to me.
I gave too much to my friends but they never gave back to me that way. You know what, in my marriage I've been the one that's been doing this, this, this and that, and that person has not, my spouse has not reciprocated, so forget about it. I'm just going to do this from now on. Right? So self-care, when people start searching for self-care, usually it's to turn a page after burnout. And because they feel like they've given too much of themselves and now they want to turn that page. And so I wanted to start this khutbah off with that because this is a different type of self-care that we're going to talk about today inshaAllah ta'ala. We're going to talk about it from the capacity of the sunnah. Particularly in regards to emotional burnout, compassion fatigue, and being completely overwhelmed by everything that's happening around you to a point that you feel like you have nothing more to spend emotionally. Kashmir happens and it's horrible. But I just got finished watching a report on Palestine the same day, Yemen the same day, and we have things happening in our border. Do I even have time to think about the kids that are coming up from Guatemala and El Salvador and Honduras that are getting put in cages and treated worse than animals just a few miles away from me? How do I even start to think about these people? I only have such a capacity when I'm thinking about the world's problems. How do I even direct that capacity? And at some point do I just burn out? I'm no longer able to cry anymore. You know, seeing images desensitizes us. We see so many of them, but at the same time ignoring them is not the solution. Saying, I'm not going to look at them anymore because they depress me. I'm going to stop reading the news because it depresses me. You know, that has a certain amount of privilege to it that the Prophet ﷺ did not afford to us. They just say, you know, I'm going to turn my back on it because I need to feel better. I don't feel good right now. I need to enjoy my life and these images are not helping me enjoy my life. And so I need to turn my back on it.
So the idea is how do I build capacity like the Prophet ﷺ to where I could be exposed to so much and still have much to give to all of that or something to give to all of that without depleting myself to where I am ineffective as a constructive person in society and also find myself in a place where I no longer can make any significant strides in my own individual journey to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and in trying to find the best of the hereafter and the best of this life in pursuit of the hereafter as well. And so you start off with the Prophet ﷺ and there is this incredible ability of the Prophet ﷺ when you look at him and there are so many times that you read about the Prophet ﷺ and you could actually just come away saying, well, he's a prophet. He was a prophet. He's the prophet. The only answer is that, you know what, I can't do all that. I can't serve the ummah day and night and then come home and still repair my shoes wa'akun fee khidmati ahli, the way the Prophet ﷺ was described, in the khidmah of his, in the service of his household when he came home. Can't do all that. I can't be Superman outside the house and be Superman inside the house. I can't give this to this person and that to that person. He's just the Prophet ﷺ. How amazing. Therefore, there's no need for me to even strive because that's just him. He's just Rasulullah ﷺ and it's an enormous capacity. How is it that a man ﷺ could still have the capacity to care for a bird complaining about its nest when he suffered so much human loss in his own life? How do you even have that potential? How do you have that capacity to think about a camel being overburdened or a bird complaining or a cat complaining or the animals and all of the rights of these other things when you've suffered such human loss in your life? How did that not diminish you to where you couldn't think about those things anymore but the Prophet ﷺ still could?
How do you cry for others and still smile at them despite having buried six of your seven children? That's an enormous catastrophe. And having lost everybody in your life that supported you at some point, how do you still smile all the time? How do you still cry for other people's pain and not diminish their pain because your pain is so much greater than their pain? You know, in our situation we see the catastrophic nature of the world around us. We're not going through what they're going through. Our struggles are relatively minor, minuscule compared to the types of horrible things we're constantly seeing all over the place. So how does the Prophet ﷺ being on the other side of that, a man who has gone through so much, human loss, still have something to give not just to other human beings but to everything around him as well. How does the Prophet ﷺ, there's a different level of capacity too. The Prophet ﷺ's escape was prayer and sometimes there's an unhealthy escape that can take place. But the Prophet ﷺ's escape in prayer was not one that made him ignorant of everything else around him. No one loved his prayer more than the Prophet ﷺ, right? No one, no human being can say they had more khushu' more focus, more humility and awe of Allah in their prayer. But guess what? When he was leading salah, the Prophet ﷺ said, I heard a baby crying in the back and I wasn't too busy in my al-baqarah, al-imran and al-nisa' to hear that baby. He heard the baby and the Prophet ﷺ said, I sped up my prayer out of feeling for the mother that was probably stressed out over the baby. Not the musallim that want to pounce on the mother of the baby and beat up the father and look around, where is he at because the baby was crying in salah. No, he felt sad for the mother who was probably more stressed about her baby. How do you have that capacity? You're in khushu' no one enjoys his salah. جُوع إلى قرّة عيني في الصلاة The coolness of his eyes was prayer. The Prophet ﷺ said, أرحنا بها يا بلاد
Calmness with the prayer. Prayer was his moment ﷺ. But he still hears it and it impacted him. So it wasn't an escape that made him ignorant of the world around him. But it was different. He had capacity for this and capacity for that. How does the Prophet ﷺ have the capacity to not just love his companions that were around him, but هُم إخواني هُم أحبابي They're my brothers, they're my beloved ones. Who are they, O Messenger of Allah? الذين آمنوا بي ولم يروني Those who believe in me and they've never even seen me. Us. How do you even have capacity to love us when you've got so much around you? But the Prophet ﷺ actively connecting himself to people that he would never see. People that he would never know their names or their stories. But still the Prophet ﷺ felt a deep connection to them. So that's an enormous capacity. And the answer is that yes, he is a Prophet. He's not just any Prophet. وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَاكَ إِلَّا رَحْمَةً لِّلْعَالَمِينَ The Prophet ﷺ, Allah describes him as the following, We have not sent you except as a mercy to the worlds. Not even just a mercy to mankind. Not رحمةً للمسلمين, not a mercy to the Muslims. A mercy to all human beings. A mercy to all the animals. A mercy to the environment. A mercy to his past in reviving the best of it and correcting the misdeeds before. To his presence in reforming his world to the future and leaving behind guidance that is as pristine and clear as night and day that we can implement real life examples to better our world as well. To the future and the Akhirah with his shafa'ah, with his intercession. He is رحمةً للعالمين. So he's a mercy to all the worlds. Now here's the thing. He was sent as a mercy to the worlds but he was also sent as أُصْوَةٌ حَسَنًا As a great example for you. For you to adapt whatever you can.
And so if the Prophet ﷺ is described as a mercy to the worlds, the closer we become to resembling a رحمة, a mercy to everything and everyone around us, the closer we become to that status and to exemplifying the Prophet ﷺ in our own lives. The more we resemble رحمةً للعالمين, that idea of being a mercy to the worlds, the closer we get to his example ﷺ and to fulfilling our own human potential. So yes, he had incredible capacity ﷺ. Something that we could not attain in our own lifetimes. But he did leave behind something for us to try to implement and that is that the Prophet ﷺ, despite exceeding in every single sphere of life, still left behind remarkably an example of balance. You could take work-life-worship balance from the life of the Prophet ﷺ. You could take society-family lessons and balance from the Prophet ﷺ. He still left behind a sunnah of moderation too. Because there's still a baseline in every one of those spheres of the Prophet's ﷺ life that we can take from. Now again, I want to focus today on this concept of self-care. How do you build that capacity to be able to give so much to everything and everyone around you? Where do you even get to that point? And how do you not suffer from what so many people do, which is this level of just burnout where they completely shut off. I don't want anything to do with anybody because you know what, I've paid my dues. I'm retiring from da'wah, I'm retiring from the masjid, I'm retiring from khidmah. Somebody else take over this stuff, I don't want anything to do with this stuff anymore, I'm done. I'm retiring from trying to be super-husband, I'm retiring from trying to be a good dad, retiring from trying to be a good friend. I'm sick of it all, forget about it. It's the world's turn to repay me and to do good by me.
I've done enough good for the world around me. So how do I actually start to get that? Now first and foremost, let's look at the framing. Because sometimes you've got to start from the beginning, from the asr. The framing of why this is important in the first place. Because it is dramatically different in the Islamic conception than it is in our secular conception today. In an era of hyper-individualism, everything is done, everything that you do is so that you can make yourself a happier person. Meaning you engage acts of charity, not to the extent that that charity is needed to support someone else's cause or to get some other cause over the hump. You do enough acts of charity to where you feel good about yourself being a charitable person. You don't engage acts of prayer or devotion or service to where they're required of you or obligatory upon you. You do them to the extent that they can fit into this perfect puzzle to make you the most fulfilled and happy person. It's still greed. It just has nicer aesthetics. It's still self-serving, it's just serving the self in a different way. Using others to serve self, not using self to serve others. That's not the Islamic conception of it all. I don't have to tell you that fajr is going to make you happier on the day for you to do it. It's obligatory upon you. Zakah is obligatory upon you. These things are mandatory. Sadaqah, basic courtesies, khidr. These are things that Allah has made obligatory upon you and it starts from that place. And yes, from the mercy of Allah, is that good deeds make you feel good too. They bring about more fulfillment and goodness in life. But you've got to start from that place, not from the place of, I'm going to engage spirituality and religion only to the extent that I feel better about myself. That's not how it works. That's why activism becomes very performative. Let me go take place in this protest and catch a selfie in the protest and say, yeah, I freed Kashmir. Kashmir is still under occupation.
What's your next step? But I feel good about myself because I went and shouted a bunch of slogans about Kashmir. Alhamdulillah brother, good for you. I'm glad you went to the protest. Are you making dua for them at night? Are you trying to think about avenues of way to actually rectify the situation? So it's you engage things just to the extent that I feel good. I press share. I am woke on social media. Well, wait a minute. Start from here. The Islamic conception is actually the opposite. It's how do I become the most able abd to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and the most beneficial khadim to the people. How do I become the most able servant to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, slave to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, worshipper of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. How do I become the most obedient worshipper, the most complete worshipper to Allah and also the most beneficial servant to the people. How do I fulfill self to a point that I can get to a point where I'm doing the best in those regards. See the difference? It literally is the complete opposite. In the first conception you try to fit others into the pieces that fit yourself. In the second conception you try to put yourself in the best place to work for something that's bigger than you. And that's the one that Allah and the messenger salallahu alayhi wasalam call us to and it speaks to goal. It speaks to goal that you involve yourself in goodness not to the extent that it fulfills you but to the extent that it's needed. And you try to get yourself to a place that you need to be to be able to do all of that good and to have that capacity to take on those things. There's an example that they have in self-care now, talking about self-care about why you need to take care of yourself to be able to take care of others. It's often used. They talk about the airplane.
If any of you have ever been on a plane and they announce the emergency procedures and protocols and you have not already fallen asleep or started to watch a movie or whatever it is. They tell you that before you put your oxygen mask on your children put it on yourself first. That's not because they want your children to die. That's not because they're telling you, hey you know this is so, you're more important than your children. That's not the message here but they're not going to explain the maqsad, the objective of that on a plane video. What is that for? It's because if you don't put it on yourself first in all likelihood you're not going to get it on your child on time. And so you won't be in a place that you're functioning enough to be able to save yourself or the child. And so you'll have a bunch of people acting frantic on the plane as opposed to actually trying to do what they need to do. Is this Islamic? Yes. قُوْ أَنفُسَكُمْ وَأَهْلِكُمْ نَارًا Protect yourselves and your families from Jahannam. Protect your family, protect yourselves and your families. أَهْلِكُمْ نَارًا Why does Allah mention yourself first? Because you cannot prescribe these things on your family and take care of family if you're not taking care of yourself. There's a spiritual level of this too by the way. You want your children to become Huffadh but you're not even attempting to finish Juz Ammah. What's the point? What are you doing for yourself so that you can do for your kids too? You've got to protect yourself and protect your children. You've got to take the spiritual necessities for yourself and then embark that upon or impart that upon your children as well. Embark on that journey together. You can't do it for them if you're not doing it for yourself. You cannot protect your spouse or involve your spouse or involve your children, involve your siblings or everyone else around you if you're not doing it for yourself. So Allah mentions a conception of this as well.
فَاقِضُ الشَّيْءِ لَا يُعْطِيهِ That the one who does not have, لا يُعْطِيهِ, cannot give. If you don't have something, you can't give it. Eventually you give, give, give and you're so depleted that you frustrate the people who now have expectations of you. And you deplete yourself in the process to where you no longer have anything. And so you burn out and they burn out too. And it's a bad situation for everybody. Same thing with sadaqah, right? You can't give to a point that you ruin yourself. Allah does not tell you to give charity and put yourself in debt. Allah tells you take care of your debts and give charity. Get yourself to a place of financial self-sufficiency and give charity as well. And your charity is proportional to that because you've got to be in a place to where you can give to others. All of these things matter. They're all interconnected. The Prophet ﷺ mentions to us balance even in worship. In our deen you don't worship until you exhaust yourself or burn yourself out. And there's something very beautiful about this that the Prophet ﷺ taught us to see sleep as ibadah, to see sleep as part of worship, not just as an enabler of worship. To see sleep itself as a form of worship. Why? Because you're sleeping so you can do better in your wakefulness. Mu'adh ﷺ said, إِنِّي لَأَحْتَسِبُ نَوْمَتِي عَنْدَ اللَّهِ كَمَا أَحْتَسِبُ قَوْمَتِي I seek the reward for my sleep the same way that I seek the reward for my standing up in prayer at night. They're both for Allah. I'm sleeping to give myself the energy to do good at night, to stand up and to pray at night. I have that intention when I go into my sleep that this is to build my capacity to worship Allah. It's ibadah, it's worship, it's sunnah, self-care. And so how do you equate that then? If that's how you deal with your ibadah, how do you then equate that to your amal?
So in worship, anything that you do to make yourself more able at worship is worship itself, right? So then cast that on everything else in life. Imam Ibn Al-Jawzi, he said that when you do something that is merely halal to enable you to do good, to do something that is mandub, which is recommended. So when you engage in something that is merely permissible, there's no haram in it. You do some form of action that is merely permissible so that you can be better at doing something that is good. Or you can abstain from something that's forbidden. So you take up a halal habit or a halal pastime or a leisure or whatever it is, to abstain from something that's forbidden or to get you to a place where you can do more good. So he said, rahimahullah ta'ala, to do something merely halal for the sake of being able to do more of mandub becomes mandub in and of itself. It becomes a rewardable act in and of itself. When I do quote-unquote self-care for the sake of being better at something else, that act itself is rewardable in the sight of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Because I made sure that I complied with halal, with things that are good and permissible and lawful. I didn't indulge in forbidden things so that I could get myself to a point where I've got more to give to people. Because if I'm not taking that time off to mentally refresh, emotionally refresh, physically get my place to it, so yes, your workouts are halal, not necessarily all the Instagram videos of you working out, but your workouts are halal, getting to a place where you're healthy, why am I physically healthy, why am I mentally healthy, why am I emotionally trying to be healthy, so I can give more to my family, so I can do more for the community, all of that in the capacity of being a better abd, all of that becomes sunnah.
All of that becomes rewardable in the sight of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with the right intention. It's analogous to sleep and praying at night. And notice Mu'adh did not distinguish between the qiyam and the sleep. They are in the same category because Allah is not increased or decreased by the amount of your output. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala requires of you the best effort, and when they're both in the capacity of the effort, they're both just as rewardable. So taking your time out, allocating some time to work on yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, taking care of all of that to make you more able to build capacity, that in and of itself becomes sunnah. The exercise of gratitude. Subhanallah, if you go to any one of these things on what's called compassion fatigue, you burn out, and they talk about people that lose the luster of life, and they no longer can see anything. All of them, all of them include as a core element, literally, gratitude exercises. What did Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala say in the Quran, وَلَا إِن شَكَرْتُمْ لَأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ If you are grateful, I will increase you. And Allah did not limit the capacity of what the increase is in. So don't limit it yourself. Allah did not say if you increase in gratitude, Allah will increase you in faith. Allah did not say if you increase in gratitude, Allah will increase you in wealth, or increase you in health. Allah left it unlimited because the potential of it is unlimited. The potential of what comes out of a person sitting with themself in a regularly prescribed time of the day or the week, to think about what they're grateful for, and to actually contemplate their blessings, what comes out of that is unlimited in its capacity.
You could argue that's the Prophet's ﷺ capacity, the secret of his capacity. أَفَلَأَكُونُ عَبْدًا شَكُورًا He could stand up and pray at night and pray at night and pray at night and pray at night, and do things that other people could not do. Stand longer than everybody else. Out-worship everybody else. But what is it? I'm a grateful servant. I'm just trying to be grateful for all the things that Allah ﷺ bestowed upon me. When you sit with yourself, I'm not talking about, you know, alhamdulillah, that quickly. No, I'm talking about actually taking time out to sit with yourself at night and to say, you know, what am I grateful for? What are the things that I'm grateful for in my life? What are the things that I should thank Allah ﷻ for? If you don't do that, you will be miserable, always complaining, always unhappy, always depleted, always diminished, even if Allah gives you everything. Always going to be upset. Always going to be bitter. So you increase your capacity with gratitude, and Allah ﷻ made that unlimited. When they talk about celebrating your wins, that as human beings we need to find that we're actually doing something meaningful. What did the Prophet ﷺ say? لا تحخيرن من المعروف شيئا. Don't belittle good deeds. He ﷺ said, إذا سررتك حسناتك وساءتك سيئاتك فأنت مؤمن. If your good deeds make you happy, and your bad deeds make you sad, you're a believer. That means your heart is alive. If when you do something good you feel better, and when you do something bad you feel worse, that means there's iman in your heart, there's faith in your heart. That means your heart's alive. That's a good thing. It's when you become prideful and boastful over your good deeds, that it becomes problematic. But we need to feel that as human beings. So when people look at every good effort and they diminish it, how many times have you seen that people who diminish good efforts actually have an alternative good efforts? How many times do naysayers provide an alternative? They don't.
They depress you and they depress themselves. من قال أهلك الناس فهو أهلكهم. The Prophet ﷺ said, whoever says people have no hope, they've all perished, they're done, he's the most worthless of them all. You make everybody else worthless, you make yourself worthless. No, as people we need to feel like we're making strides. So look at your wins, look at your victories, just don't become complacent with them, or proud as a result of them. When they talk about personal boundaries and this idea of protecting yourself, the Prophet ﷺ he had that as well. As giving of a person as the Prophet ﷺ was to the community around him. When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ entered his home, that was it, it was just him. It was just his family. And that's why the people would call out to him from beyond the hujurat, beyond his doors, and ask him to come out and prod him to come out. Because once he was home, he was home. So the Prophet ﷺ knew how to set those boundaries in order to make those things most useful. And lastly dear brothers and sisters, to come back to this, this is not just a prescription for you. This is a prescription for everybody around you as well. Too often we want that self-care and that space for ourselves to be able to build our emotional health and our compassion. I need to get better, I need this time for myself. But we don't afford the same things to our spouses. They need that too. They need that feeling of meaningfulness and that feeling of capacity and refreshment and all of that too. Brothers and sisters, a beautiful narration of Aisha radhiyaAllahu anha and the Prophet ﷺ, where the Prophet ﷺ asked Aisha permission to go pray qiyam ul-layl early in the night. Because he used to, alayhi salatu wasalam, spend a dedicated time with her. And the Prophet ﷺ would sleep and then he'd wake up and pray.
But this time he told Aisha radhiyaAllahu anha, as soon as he hit the bed, he said, would you give me permission to go and spend some time with my Lord? Meaning I want to start my qiyam right away. He asked permission, alayhi salatu wasalam. And Aisha radhiyaAllahu anha responded, she said, listen, I love your companionship, but I love what makes you happy. SubhanAllah, it makes you happy. This is good for you, this is what you need right now. I understand. So she told the Prophet ﷺ to go ahead. And she said, this was the most amazing thing I ever saw of the Prophet ﷺ. She was asked the most ajeeb thing, the most wondrous thing she ever saw. She said his whole life was ajeb, was wondrous. But this night he stood up and he prayed the entire night. Reciting, inna fee khalqis samawati wal ardi wa khtilafi al-layli wal nahari wal fulki allati tajree fi albahri bima yanfa'u al-naas. The long ayah in surah al-Baqarah about contemplating on the heavens and the earth. And he cried and cried and cried and cried. But look at the pretext to that. The Prophet ﷺ showed consideration, like look this is your time. And Aisha radiAllahu anha prioritized, said I know you need this. I know you need this. Now brothers and sisters, it would be good for us to need more qiyam in our lives. But if your spouse is not having that time and having that moment, then it's going to be a depletion for them and a depletion for you and a depletion in the whole household. You've got to negotiate that with each other and show that consideration for each other. Your leaders, and wallahi I'm not talking about myself, why do we beat up our imams and not give them that time that they need for themselves? They have families too. Your volunteers at your masajid that get abused, they need their spiritual time as well. Your volunteers in your organizations, you need to give people that chance to be able to grow
and that's to the benefit of the community because everyone has to have that capacity. So we ask Allah to make us more complete as ibad of him, as slaves and worshippers of him, and more complete as a khadim, as servants to his creation. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to accept it all and to protect us from burnout and to protect us from isolation and to allow the best of our deeds to be reserved for the last of our days and the best of our days to be the day that we meet him subhanahu wa ta'ala with those deeds qualified for his mercy. Allahuma Ameen.
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