Fairy Tales
One of my good friends, may Allah grant her Jannah, posed an interesting question that I took a second look at recently. She asked if it was wrong to want a fairy tale, or in the bigger sense, have a “perfect life.”
It got me thinking, which is actually very rare for me nowadays to ponder over such a thing, but reading some of the opinions people had and seeing both sides of the coin going at it, it was a great opportunity to see how Islam fit into all of this.
Off the bat, we must understand that this “fairy tale” for lack of a better word, is our perception of the “perfect life,” or being “extremely happy.”
What I came to understand was this. Life is a fairy tale in and of itself, the reason why I think we feel the way we do about these “fairy tale stories” is that we’ve been subjugated to them since childhood.
Magic happens every day, from the rise of the sun over the horizon up until the moon shining in the night sky, the reason it does not appeal to us as much is because it has become something we take for granted. Every single being created by God has their own destiny, or their own story to play out over their lifetime.
The vast majority of all of us will, sooner or later, experience seeing a birth, a death, or even unconditional love with another throughout our lifetime. Things we can’t explain, feelings we wouldn’t be able to describe in language, coincidences that puzzle us, all of these things exude the perfection of the world that God has created for us.
Thus, if we understand that God has created such a perfect world for us, how is it so that God cannot make our lives something like a fairy tale, just as he made the lives of the Prophet’s (may Allah be pleased with them) or their friends and kin something to behold? Ask any ordinary elder person about their life and you could write a separate book or a series of books for each of them.
Your life has every potential to be the greatest fairy tale of all time, sincerely ask what you would want from God and pray that it is granted, whether in this life or the next.
If we can train ourselves to live, breathe, and feel like servants of Allah, as people who understand that this is not all that we are, that this is not our final destination, we would start to see the most beautiful and extraordinary creations of Allah in the simplest of objects, moments, and emotions.
Having this feeling of contentment, this spiritual connection, is the first step on the road to happiness. If we learn to fall in love with our religion and strive to stay on His path of righteousness, He will never abandon us, and will never leave us to ourselves.
