By Saad Yacoob
The meaning of purposeful existence is perhaps the most important question that confronts the person of conscience today. It was just yesterday that the great ideologies of Western thought - liberal-capitalism of America and Western Europe and communist-Marxism of the Soviet bloc - warred over not just the political and economic future of the world but sought to dominate the self-imagination of every person on the planet. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, the neo-liberal world order claimed not just economic victory but dominion over the very purpose of life.
“Greed is good,” we were told. Greed and the lust for every base pleasure of human existence was supposed to be the basis for finding solutions for every challenge confronting humanity. The spiritual, social, and human needs of society were treated as nothing more than a market, and the invisible hand of market forces was supposed to fill that gap which community, society, and spirituality once filled.
The Broken Promises of Modernity
As the world burns, however, we are confronted with the reality behind the lie.
International trade was supposed to eliminate poverty; instead, we have income inequality the likes of which the world has never seen. International law was supposed to eliminate war; instead, we have watched helplessly as the most well recorded genocide in the history of the world takes place before our eyes. Every promise has been broken; every dream has been shattered.
And, now, we stand at the precipice of worldwide disaster: the ever rising tide of global right-wing populism that is the harbinger of approaching fascism; the ever escalating security competition between the US and China that threatens to usher in a new cold war; the ever increasing trade war that threatens to collapse the world economic system; all the while the looming spectre of climate catastrophe hangs like a sword over the throne of modernity.
The Question of One’s Existence
In the midst of all this, the average person is forgiven for asking the purpose of his own existence. What does it mean for a person to exist; how can any individual matter? In comparison to the enormous machinery of a collapsing global order, what does one’s existence even mean? Should I simply put my head down, forget the bigger picture, and just try to be a good person in the best way possible and leave the grand things to God?
It is in moments like these that it behooves one to remember that the world is built, not found; that history is made, not read. The beginning of every river is a single drop: the drop that drips from the melting snow atop a mount; the drop that drips from a downpour a thousand miles away. If every drop were to stop in the middle of its drip, no river would ever flow; no garden would ever grow; no firefly would ever glow.
A River in Waiting
Islam today is made of two billion drops of water stalled in mid-drip because they question whether they will ever form a river. We are the river as long as we let ourselves fall to the floor; we are the waves of change if we let ourselves be moved by the hand of God. The purpose of this piece is not to offer the grand solutions to the problems of all of existence in five hundred words. The purpose of this piece is to simply say one thing as clearly as possible.
The world consists of two types of people: those who shape the world, and those who live in a world that is shaped by someone else. As long as you let yourself drip, you hold the potentiality of being the first; the day you allow your doubts about purpose suspend you in perpetuity in the air, you become the second.
The Choice Is Yours
Drip and become a river; stop and evaporate like you never existed. The choice is yours.
“Passion is the tool that brings pride to the powerless
A grain of sand becomes a dune; a drop of water becomes a river”
— Mirza Ghalib