Newness
There is a joke often shared that…..
When a man opens a car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife.” Our impulse and motivation for newness is natural.
But the world worships a certain kind of newness.
The advertising industry capitalizes on this natural human tendency and calls it the “the newness effect”, where they understand that exposure to “newness” stimulates the part of our brain responsible for regulating motivation.
identifying something as “new” triggers the motivation centre of our brain.
People are always talking about a new car, or a new house, a new dress, a new mobile phone and the list goes on.
But these things are not truly new, are they? They begin to get old the minute you acquire them you look for the next one. Creating an endless cycle of wants and drowning our planet. New is not in things.
A fever of newness has everywhere been confused with the spirit of progress. Similarly Change is not always progress.
So as a new year’s resolution many of us make resolutions to bring change.
What are a few of the top ten resolutions that people make as the New Year begins? Exercise more? Eat healthier? Spend time with family? To tame the bulge? get fit…, get a qualification etc
However, all these things are a quest for newness on an external level. We can all renovate our homes, get new cars, or even have a facelift, but if there is not a shift on a deep, internal level with our attitudes, beliefs, and character then we will soon fall back into the old habits.
Newness in the soul is really a desire for change at a deeper level.
The Quran says:
“Whoever works righteousness, man or woman, and has Faith, verily, to him will We give a new Life, a life that is good and pure” (16:97)
Therefore, we as Muslims have been given a prescription to bring renewal to the soul.
Once in a lifetime I am encouraged to make the pilgrimage, which is a journey of self-reflection wiping the slate clean and starting afresh. It is said when one returns home after taking the pilgrimage, he/ she is like a newborn baby.
Then we have the yearly month of fasting that also gives us an opportunity for renewal. For Muslims, Ramadhan is an annual training exercise which provides an opportunity to fine-tune the body and to develop qualities of endurance and self-discipline while finding empathy for those less fortunate.
Daily we have the 5 prayers to connect to the divine and be washed by His grace of impurities and feel renewed under His protection.
Our holy prophet Mohammad saww who is the perfect role model has said that praying is like immersing yourself in a river 5 times a day.
We have zakat meaning charity, the word zakat itself means purification.
The transformed soul asks — what can I give to humanity? rather than what can humanity give to me?
We don’t need to wait for the New Year to instigate newness; every moment can be a new one if we decide to make it such.
New is within us. The truly new is something that is new forever: you and me.
Every morning of our life and every evening, every moment is new. We have never lived this moment before, and we never will again. In this sense the new is also the eternal.
Spiritual self-renewal means relinquishing our old, limited identity and becoming something more expanded, powerful, and closer to our true self.
Rumi so beautifully put it.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
We put our Hope in God the Almighty to grants us 12 transformative months full of possibilities.
Because Hope is nothing but Holding On, Praying Expectantly.
I would like to share an extract from a small supplication called the whispered prayer of the hopeful taught to us by the grandson of the Holy Prophet Imam Sajjad. (pbuh):
In the Name of God, the All-merciful, the All-compassionate
O He who gives to a servant who asks from Him,
takes him to his wish when he expectantly hopes for what is with Him,
Who is the one who has dismounted at Thy door hoping for magnanimity,
and to whom Thou hast not shown it?
How should I have hope in other than Thee,
when the good – all of it – is in Thy hand
My God, I have fastened my hand to the skirt of Thy generosity,
I have stretched forth my expectation toward reaching Thy gifts,
Thy gifts, with that which will gladden my eye, through hope in Thee, with that which will give serenity to my soul,
and through certainty with that which will make easy for me the afflictions of this world and lift from my insight the veils of blindness!
By Thy mercy, O Most Merciful of the merciful!
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