Islam advises all Muslims to be steadfast and positive in their daily way of life and never to give up hope. Negative thoughts are prohibited. Previously I thought about having hope as not being realistic enough. I wasn't posting much last week as I was lost in an amazing book, "When Breath Becomes Air" and it was an eye opener for me. The following blog is going to be an upfront and honest post about my chains of thought regarding hope and it will simultaneously be reviewing the book as well. After reading about a neurosurgeon who got diagnosed with Lung Cancer in last year of his residency I learned a thing or two about hope. It is not possible that people haven't suffered from depression at least once in their lives. Happiness and sadness are aspects of lives that cannot be avoided. Now that I glance back, I think even as a kid I suffered bouts of depression occasionally. It is an uneasy feeling, making you feel hopeless, suffocated and miserable. I would blame the feeling on not having enough cousins my age who I could play with or spend time with. Of course as an eight year old I didn't know what depression was.
Hence, "How to be happy?" is something I have been finding the answer to for a long long time. Then hit puberty and the transition into teen ages and I literally adopted pessimism, turned it into a way of life. I would go about claiming I am a pessimist. I believed that hoping was merely having unnecessary expectations. After being severely depressed in late teen ages, I discovered Superwoman aka Lilly Singh and I was over the moon to put it lightly. I would watch her vlogs every night before bed. She emphasizes gratitude very often in her vlogs. But at the end of some particularly bad days, I'd think exasperated, "What's even there to be grateful for?" When I read Lilly Singh's book, "How to be a Bawse" in which she talked about vision boards I was enameled and that book led me to read "The Secret" because I was curious about unraveling The law of attraction. And when I read it, I wish I had discovered it earlier like when I was in my early teen ages. I will be reviewing The Secret series separately too. But in short, it was all about conditioning your brain and how your thought process eventually results in achieving your goal.
So far I've discovered life for me is realizing just how right the commands of Islam are. All the books I have mentioned above made me realize how absolutely crucial it is to hold onto the pinnacle of hope. To hope, is to live. It also made me realize that being grateful was important too. For if we didn't appreciate what he had now, how would we appreciate what we were to have later? The trick is to appreciate what we have now while working towards what we aspire to have. At the same time being in a positive space of mind is significant in achieving what we wish to achieve as well.
Reading about Paul in "When Breath Becomes Air" and him not giving up in the face of adversary made me feel small, almost speck like. We are so quick to give up on things. But Paul wasn't. He was a neurosurgeon, in his last year of residency he got diagnosed with Lung Cancer. Prior to his medical education, he had a bachelors degree in English literature, human biology and history and philosophy of science and medicine. He always strived to understand life better. He wanted to discover what made human relationships meaningful and wanted to find what linked life and death. It was in finding answers to all these questions that he studied such totally unrelated fields. He was so dedicated as can be seen from his thought process. This line from the book got me,
Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job- not a calling.>
This book taught me a lot about hope. Even when Paul was dying he wanted to be just to the education he had gained, the answers he had so far found. He wished he knew how much time he had left so that he could focus either on writing/literature or invest his time in being a neurosurgery scientist. After his first line of treatment for cancer he even went back to finish his residency! Commendable! I would expect a diagnosed cancer patient to give up hope entirely and lay in bed looking up at the ceiling. But so wasn't Paul. Which is how we all got bestowed with this beautiful book. Paul passed away in March, 2015 aged 37 after having tried first, second and third line of treatment for his Lung cancer. But he taught me something. And I'm pretty sure to all those who read his book too. He left a legacy. The legacy was, "Never give up hope." Even while having cancer he was more focused than any other human being. Some of my favorite moments from the book were:
Resilience goes hand in hand with hope. It's only when you have hope that you will fight for the things you want. Never give up without a fight! Having hope is like having a light in your life. It illuminates your life, guides your life to the goals you wish to achieve.
