How does life feel? Prince Ghazi of Jordan in his delightful book 'The Thinking Person's Guide to
the Truly Happy Life' gives this succinct answer. How does life actually feel, well how will it always feel?
God answers this very simply in the Qur'an 'We certainly created man for toil and trial.' God
also says 'Surely We will try you with something of fear and hunger and diminution of goods and lives;
yet give good tidings to the patient.' In other words' (Prince Ghazi writes) 'it's going to feel tough -
at least sometimes, for everyone' (even royal princes) 'no matter how wealthy, clever, or pious, since
everyone will die and everyone has loved ones that will die and feel the diminution... of lives.
The trials of life are not something that happen by accident and without meaning again
as unpalatable as this may sound to modern people like us with our sense of self entitlement: life is
supposed to have these trials - to repeat: that life is supposed to have these trials.
This is part of the human condition, it tests our sincerity and hence our patience
and virtue both as God's servants and as His vicegerents. As God says in the Quran:
'Do people suppose that they will be left to say 'we believe' (in other words we believe in god yeah)
'and they will not be tried? And certainly we have tried those who were before them
so God will surely know those who are sincere and he shall surely know those who are liars
or do those who commit evil deeds suppose that they can elude us evil is that which they judge
whoever hopes to encounter god should know that god's appointed time will indeed come
and he is the hearer the knower and whoever struggles struggles only for his own
soul for truly god is independent of the creatures of all the Worlds.' End quote from the quran.
In fact it is the trials of life and our struggle (that's jihad in arabic) with our own egos
that determine the state of our own souls.' I think that's a wonderful summary there of the Quran's
teaching, and it when i read that when i first read that it immediately occurred to me that that
teaching resembles very very closely the teachings are one of the most well the best set one of the
best-selling books of all time in the United States by an American psychiatrist Scott Peck.
Now this book the road less traveled has sold millions and millions of copies
um and of course i've got my copy and in page one it says this i just want to read it to you in the
lines of what we've just read here so this is a top famous celebrated american psychiatrist
talking about the same issue about life he says in the very first opening words are this i don't
even have to look at the book: Life is difficult. That's the first sentence. This is a great truth
one of the greatest truths and then at the bottom here as a note the first of the four noble truths
which buddha taught was life is suffering it is a great truth because once we truly
see this truth we transcend it once we truly know that life is difficult in other words that it is
made up our conditions are made up of these trials of this uh of this testing that the quran talks
about once we truly understand and accept it then life is no longer difficult because once it is
accepted the fact that life is difficult no longer matters says scott peck most do not fully see this
truth that life is difficult and i can testify at times having been this way myself instead they
we i moan more or less incessantly noisily or subtly about the enormity of their problems
their burdens and their difficulties as if life were generally easy as if life should be easy
they voice their belief noisily or subtly that their difficults represent a unique
kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them or
else upon their families their tribe their class their nation their race or even their species
and not upon others i know about this moaning right Scott Peck because i have done my share
life is a series of problems we do do we want to moan about them or solve them do we want to
teach our children to solve them and then he goes on to explain uh what the uh the set of
tools are that we need to solve life's problems and i won't share that with you you can uh read
it in his book so i just wanted to um to share that fascinating you know there's a difference
this guy is a secular american psychiatrist um of course Prince Ghazi is a Muslim writing for
muslims and for a general audience and yet it's interesting the psychiatrist and the philosopher
uh broadly converge on the diagnosis of the human condition the realities of our life and
the illusions that we have about life that life shouldn't be difficult it shouldn't have there
shouldn't be problems and actually if you read both books they do uh point towards a very similar
solution to that as well anyway just thought i'd share that with you. Till next time.