After Hardship, Ease - A Prose on 'Yusra'

Man has always ordered his brain to comprehend all the missing things in his life more quickly than the ones that are already present there. It’s our selfish nature that likes hoarding all that we don’t have while withholding thanks to all those things that are already present and getting neglected by us. Man is afraid of difficult times. He likes his being to be kneaded and wrung out of life all because he doesn’t want the difficulties of his life to elevate. Little does he know that to escape one hardship, he is just engrossing himself in another. And the ease, where does it get lost? Or is it just a part of the cycle?

Upon encountering difficulties while handling the ages of my life in this world, I seek refuge in the manual– The Qur’an, to get the proper instructions for living this life. This is the only book whose Author has written the deepest sentences in the simplest forms. The only book I have read over and over again. The only book that I read every day and I still come up with something new in it on a quotidian basis. There is another strong inkling that has adhered me to it. This book, more than once, has my name in it. What’s more riveting is that I was told that my name was chosen from this very same book. So whenever I see my name lying in the pages of this book, I stall the recitation and get tempted to soak in the meaning of it. I stare at it and admire it. I feel ecstatic on the mention of my name in the Holy book.  It makes me happy to know that I’m reading my name as the word of Allah. I feel exalted to know that Jibraeel carried this word from the seventh sky all the way down to this Earth and presented it to the prophet Mohammad (Sallallaho Alaihe Wa’alihe Wasallam).

But to get the meaning of life and in the quest of ease, I ended up interrogating myself.

‘Yusra’ in its true meaning means ‘ease’. As in, easing the path or easing out a way. Come to think of it, in the long run, we all want our lives to be spent in ease. We earn money because we want to bring ease to our family. We cook food because we want to bring ease to our taste buds, our stomach, and our health. Even now I’m finding satisfaction, bringing ease to my soul while doing what I like to do; writing. We all are basically in the need to ease the hunger of our body and soul. So if my name is ease, what my Creator sitting above on His glorious throne is expecting me to make of it? He must want me to bring ease to people's lives? I'm not the tiniest bit of what this holy book is about. Not even the zillionth part of a speck. But as I see my name in between the pages of the Qur'an, it makes me want to at least integrate the standard ethical and moral requirement that I, as ‘Yusra’, am supposed to portray. I ask myself whether I’m doing justice to the name I am bestowed with. Am I the ease the Qur’an talked about? Somewhere in the back of my head something tells me that it is my moral obligation to do justice, no matter how infinitesimal, with the meaning of my name.

Ease is mostly mentioned with difficulty which makes me ponder over how we would never get to taste the beauty of ease, if we don’t swim through the ocean of difficulty to get to it. I take it as a real life example and realize how true it is. How truer the concept of ease becomes after surviving through a difficulty. But this is not what the difficulties and hardships in our lives are all about; the trial, the difficulty always brings something as a lesson to you. I just want everyone to know that we are not supposed to whine about the hardships all the time. We need to learn the lessons that these hard times bring along with them. Like they say, “you either learn or win.” I wish we all would become fortunate enough to be able to gather the knowledge and learn more through these inevitable hardships. 

Who hasn't seen hardships in their lives? Who hasn't felt like drowning into an uncertain ocean of difficulties? But then again, aren’t we all still here, surviving and living this life? We have come up to the surface after drowning inside the deepest oceans of hard times. We have learned to breathe again. We have seen the difficulties and we have encountered the ease. This life is a big, giant trial that we’ve been made a part of. It’s a trial because we are here without our consent. We are here to survive and come out chaste without letting down our defenses in front of the guilty objects lying there only to make our will to win weaker. Don’t mind the bruises that you’ll get, wear the scars with a pride. Just don’t let the cuts and bruises received by this world bleed the life out of you. All I know is every difficulty, every single incident of my life has taught me so much that I always ended up thanking my Allah for all the things I never had and for all the difficulties that locked their horns with me. I'm thankful to Allah for not easily giving me the things I yearn for because I want to earn them. Once I'll earn them, I'll take better care of them because getting something easily has never the same value as getting something you earn. And I'm thankful to Allah for all the hardships because every difficulty has just added up another slab of iron and made me stronger. All I know is, every difficulty makes you a better, a more learned and dare I say a more fortunate person. Had these strains not affected me, I would have been a different person. Every hardship opens up the lock of one of the many doors of my mind and doesn’t let my thought process to catch the rust. All I know is that you learn from practical experiences. The rest is just education mired in our brains without learning. To me, education is not akin to learning. How many educated people do you encounter in a day who, very spontaneously, use the swear words? Many of you would be surprised to see that I’ve quoted such an example. Many of you would think I’m a naïve who doesn’t know the art of living. Well, this might be a very naive example for many of you but it sure is the one that vexes me the most. I believe that using bad words is just a downgrading and disparaging act which, for the record, does not make a person 'cool' and only shows how impure a person’s thoughts are. Education alone does not chisel your character, it's the learning that needs to hold hands with education and walk along with it.

Even if nothing of this makes sense or isn’t convincing enough, there is one thing that puts my heart to rest like nothing else. It’s the fact, the knowing that when Allah, the greatest of the authors, the Almighty, has said that He will bring ease to my life then I know that He will. He will because He said so. The sincerity of my Lord’s words calm the storms raging inside my heart and I am put to ease in an instant. If this works for me, I believe I have a duty to tell all of the agitated hearts and minds out there that they will find peace and that their life will witness harmony.

My curiosity and fondness for seeking the lost ‘Yusra’ made me pick up the verses from the Qur’an in which my name was mentioned, and I put their Arabic and English translations together with the references. I want to view these verses everyday and try to become what the Qur'an has wanted me to become.