A different spelling of police. A familiar ingredient appearing in an unfamiliar cuisine. A building that suddenly reminds me of another country entirely. Every journey stretches my mental map a little further, making distant places feel unexpectedly connected.

A few years ago, while visiting Spain, I wandered into a museum in Barcelona called Poble Espanyol, an open-air museum dedicated to the country’s regional architecture, art and culture. I expected to learn something about Spain.

Instead, I found myself thinking about Iraq.

Inside one of the galleries were stone markers carved with scallop shells. Weathered wooden staffs polished smooth by generations of hands. Pilgrim passports filled with stamps from villages scattered across Europe. Worn leather satchels. Boots that had crossed mountains. Maps showing countless paths converging on a single destination: Santiago de Compostela.

For over a thousand years, people have left the familiarity of home to walk these routes – sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months – towards what Christians believe to be the resting place of St. James the Apostle.

Known as the Camino de Santiago, or the Way of St. James, this pilgrimage has drawn travellers since the ninth century, when the saint’s tomb was believed to have been discovered in northwestern Spain. What began as one of medieval Christianity’s great pilgrimages gradually evolved into something much broader.

Today, people arrive from every corner of the world: some seeking God, others searching for healing or clarity, grieving a loss, recovering from burnout, marking a new chapter in life, or simply longing to slow down in a world that rarely does.

The Camino is not a single road but a network of ancient routes stretching across Spain, France and Portugal. The most famous, the Camino Francés, winds nearly 780 kilometres across northern Spain. Some pilgrims spend more than a month walking its entire length, while others complete only the final 100 kilometres. In 2025 alone, more than 530,000 pilgrims completed the Camino, the overwhelming majority arriving on foot.

The scallop shell, now synonymous with the pilgrimage, is more than a simple emblem. Its radiating lines symbolise the countless paths taken by pilgrims from different corners of Europe all converging on a single destination.

I remember thinking how beautiful it was. But more than that, I remember the strange feeling that I wasn’t looking at something entirely new.

I had seen this before.

It reminded me of another road. Another shrine. Another sea of people walking.

This one was in Iraq. The road to Karbala, where Imam Husayn (as) is laid to rest.

The roads themselves couldn’t have been more different. One wound through vineyards, forests and medieval villages in Europe; the other crossed the open desert plains of Iraq. Yet beneath the geography lay the same instinct: human beings choosing to reach something sacred not by the quickest route, but by the longest one their feet could bear.

On the Camino, strangers greet one another as fellow pilgrims. They share meals, stories and places to sleep. Titles disappear. Occupations become irrelevant. Whether doctor or labourer, professor or student, everyone becomes simply a traveller.

On the road to Karbala, something remarkably similar unfolds, though on an altogether different scale.

Strangers become family. Entire towns transform into hosts. Food is given freely. Water is handed to anyone who passes. Doctors treat aching feet without charge. Families spend their savings not simply to make the journey themselves, but to serve those who do. Hospitality becomes an act of worship.

Each year, to commemorate the fortieth day (Arbaeen) after the tragedy of Karbala (Ashura)*, around 20 to 25 million pilgrims make their way to Karbala, making it one of the largest annual human gatherings on Earth. Many begin in Najaf, walking roughly 80 kilometres over two or three days, while countless others travel much farther from cities across Iraq and neighbouring countries.

Along the route, thousands of mawakib (volunteer service stations) offer food, water, medical care, accommodation, wheelchair assistance, massages and even laundry, all free of charge. There is no expectation of payment or reciprocation, only the belief that serving the visitors of Imam Husayn (as) is itself an act of devotion.

The miracle of the Arbaeen pilgrimage is the sheer scale of selflessness. There is no central organiser directing every meal. No vast commercial infrastructure capable of sustaining such numbers. The road itself becomes the infrastructure. Homes become guesthouses. Streets become dining halls. Service is offered not out of obligation, but out of love.

People are not simply walking to a city. They are walking towards the memory of a man who refused to surrender his conscience. And that intention is what elevates them from mere travelers to pilgrims.

Nearly fourteen centuries ago, Imam Husayn (as) stood on the plains of Karbala against overwhelming power. He was denied water, watched his family and companions fall one by one, and was ultimately killed rather than legitimise tyranny. His stand lasted a day, but its echo has lasted over a millennium – and will continue to do so for eternity.

Every year, forty days after Ashura, millions answer his call “Is there anyone who will help me?” with their feet. Arriving from all corners of the earth to pledge their allegiance and respect for his sacrifice. From newborn babies and young children to the elderly, men, women, the rich and the poor, healthy and disabled, Shi’ite Muslims and non-Muslims alike, people from different countries, backgrounds and walks of life, all walking together for the same cause and to the same destination.

It made me wonder why. Why have human beings, across continents and centuries, repeatedly chosen to walk towards what they hold sacred?

If reaching the destination were all that mattered, they could simply arrive. Today we have cars, trains and aeroplanes. Even centuries ago, many pilgrims could have chosen easier routes where they existed. Yet they walked.

There seems to be an ancient understanding shared across cultures: that some truths cannot be rushed. They must be experienced over time. They require effort and presence.

Walking has a way of stripping life back to its essentials. The first things to disappear are comfort and convenience. Then distraction. Then vanity. Eventually, all that remains is breath. The rhythm of your footsteps. The ache in your legs. The silence between thoughts.

Prayer begins to feel less like something you say and more like something your whole body is doing. Perhaps this is why nearly every civilisation has preserved some form of pilgrimage. Because walking changes consciousness in ways that speed cannot.

And that reveals something even deeper. Life has always been a pilgrimage; pilgrimage reminds us of what life truly is. None of us are staying. Every one of us is travelling. Some roads are smooth. Others are steep. Some journeys are painfully short. Others stretch across decades. We meet companions. We lose them. We carry burdens we never expected to carry. We stop to help strangers. Sometimes strangers help us. Every milestone we celebrate eventually becomes another point behind us. The road keeps unfolding.

Religion simply gives visible form to what has always been true. Life itself is a journey towards God.

Long before the internet connected people, roads connected civilisations. Faith, stories, languages, cultures and wisdom all travelled on foot. For thousands of years, humanity has been drawing invisible lines across the earth, with footsteps.

From the forests of Spain to the plains of Iraq. Across deserts, mountains and valleys. Different languages. Different religions. Different prayers. Different histories. Yet the same movement. Human beings placing one foot in front of the other, believing that somewhere beyond the horizon there is something worth becoming.

Viewed from space, these ancient pilgrimage routes would be invisible. Satellites can photograph highways, cities and borders, but not devotion. Yet perhaps these are among the deepest marks humanity has ever left upon the Earth. Not monuments, empires or borders. Just roads worn smooth by hope. Journeys of love.

Perhaps that is why pilgrimages continue to move us, even in an age obsessed with speed and convenience. They remind us that transformation rarely happens at the destination. It takes time. It happens somewhere between where we began and where we hoped to arrive.

And that is the path back home, to God. God never needed us to walk to Him because He was far away. Perhaps He invited us to walk because we were. Every road to the sacred teaches us the same lesson: the destination is not the only holy place. The person you become along the way is part of it too. You need to transform to truly arrive.

*To learn more about the Arbaeen walk, the world’s largest peaceful gathering, read here. To learn about Imam Husayn and the event of Karbala/Ashura, read here.

Ashura is less an event in history and more a permanent feature of reality, like time, light, or death itself. The idea that the universe was built with this sorrow already sewn into the fabric of its existence is deeply rooted in narrations about the foreknowledge of Karbala.

Ashura was not the beginning, only the moment creation caught up with what heaven had always known.

Long before Karbala entered history, it had already entered prophecy. Allah unveiled its sorrow to His Prophets, one after another, as though no messenger could carry the weight of revelation without first carrying the grief of Husayn (as).

Adam stumbled upon the land and wept without yet knowing why. Nuh (Noah) passed by it and was overcome with sorrow. Ibrahim (Abraham) was shown the sacrifice that would one day eclipse every sacrifice before it. Musa (Moses) grieved upon that earth. Isa (Jesus) mourned a grandson he would never meet.

Different Prophets. Different nations. The same tears. As though Karbala was never meant for one people or one century, but was written into every revelation that descended from Heaven.

Before mankind knew of Husayn, the Prophets already had.

Among the tears shed for Husayn (as) were his grandfather’s, the Last Messenger of God ﷺ. In Madinah, on the day he was born.

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ held his newborn grandson in his arms as the angel Jibra’il descended. The angel came not only with congratulations, but with news of a fated tragedy that had not yet entered time.

The Prophet smiled at the child. Then he wept. From the very first breath Husayn (as) took, the grief of Ashura had already reached him. His life began with tears. Because of what heaven already knew.

As the angels descended to celebrate the birth of Husayn (as), among them was Fitrus, the angel who had been left without wings after failing in a divine command.

Jibra’il instructed him to seek healing through the newborn child. Fitrus touched the cradle of Husayn (as). His wings were restored. The outcast of Heaven was welcomed back through the blessing of an infant who had not yet spoken a word.

Years later, when that same child lay upon the sands of Karbala, Fitrus returned once more.

Ashura was not just a tragedy on earth — it was a rupture in the order of the heavens.

The sky rained blood. The sun eclipsed. The soil turned red.

For forty mornings, the heavens wept blood over the brutal killing of Husayn (as).

Jibra’il descended from the skies with a group of angels, beating their wings upon the earth and crying out: “O people of the earth, today the grandson of your Prophet has been murdered!”

There was not a single angel who was unaffected by the events that occurred on that day. Thousands of them descended to earth and stormed the battlefield, seeking permission from God to defend Husayn (as). But Divine Will withheld their hands. So they remained on the plains of Karbala, wings folded in grief, weeping, watching helplessly.

Among them was Fitrus — the angel once cast aside without wings, reborn through the blessings of the birth of Husayn (as). When Husayn (as) was killed, Fitrus came to his grave and wept over him and lamented loudly.

Allah appointed a group of angels to his shrine who will continue to weep until the Day of Judgement. Fitrus remains among the angels appointed to the shrine of Husayn (as), weeping until the Day of Resurrection.

The wings he regained at Husayn’s birth have never carried him far from Husayn ever since.

Angels were not the only winged creatures who have never been the same since the day of Ashura.

Owls were beautiful, joyful creatures that lived in gardens, palaces, among humans. They were daylight birds.

But after witnessing the horrors of Ashura, they abandoned inhabited places and moved to deserts, mountains and ruins, saying: ‘What an evil nation you are! You killed the son of your Prophet’s daughter. We will never feel safe among you again.’ Till today, they fast during the day in grief until nightfall, and when night comes, they lament over Husayn (as) until morning.

Then there are the pigeons. It is narrated that birds, especially pigeons, linger around his shrine and circle it in continual visitation, as though their wings have been entrusted with a form of dhikr they themselves do not fully comprehend.

They return again and again to that sacred ground, as if drawn by an unseen pull older than instinct, as though the air above Karbala still carries a call they cannot abandon. Their circling is seen as mourning, an inherited remembrance passed through creation, where even the smallest winged beings are made participants in the grief of Ahl al-Bayt.

When they saw humans had turned their backs on Imam Husayn (as), the other realms begged to intervene. Among the unseen beings, groups of jinn descended when the tragedy of Ashura unfolded, overwhelmed by what they witnessed and seeking permission from Allah to defend Imam Husayn (as).

Yet divine decree had already drawn the boundaries of that day, and they were withheld, just as the angels were withheld, returning instead to a grief that had no body and no battlefield to act upon. From that moment, their role shifted from intervention to mourning.

They continue to lament the tragedy of Karbala in their unseen gatherings, carrying its sorrow through dimensions we do not perceive, circling the memory of Husayn (as) in a world parallel to ours.

Every dawn rises beneath the same heavens that once witnessed Ashura. The stars have changed, empires have risen and fallen, and civilisations have forgotten. But the heavens have not, the angels have not, the earth has not, the birds have not. How could they?

The day the event of Karbala occurred, creation itself learned how to grieve, and it has never stopped since. Because Ashura was not simply an event in history; it became part of the architecture of existence. And in this order of being, this grief is destined to continue until the Day of Judgement. Until Husayn’s (as) blood is avenged.

The day of Ashura was not just a massacre.

It was the turning point of a world that would never be the same.

A day when the earth stood still in shock–

And the heavens wept.

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*If you are unfamiliar with the tragedy of Karbala referenced above, you can learn about it here.

*Everything in this article is derived from Shi’a narrations. Sources include Kamil al-Ziyarat and Bihar al-Anwar.

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Before you learned your name, before you spoke your first word, before your first breath filled your lungs, you floated.

Suspended in water, carried by it, formed within it.

The first home of every human being is an ocean.

And when you emerge into the world, the world that receives you is an ocean too.

Seventy percent water. Seventy percent oceans. Seventy percent of you.

The planet and the pilgrim share the same composition.

You are water, temporarily given a shape. Water falls from the heavens. Every river, every spring, every tear, every drop of rain began as something that descended.

“And We made from water every living thing.” (Qur’an – 21:30)

Life begins where water touches dust.

Water is sacred. We survive on it. We cleanse ourselves with it. We prepare for prayer with it. We wash our faces, our hands, our wounds, our dead.

Water purifies. It removes what the eye cannot see. It gives us a message: Remember where you came from. Remember what sustains you. Remember what is above you.

Yet among the greatest tragedies ever witnessed by the heavens, there was a child reaching for water and finding none.

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The sun burned. The earth cracked. The Euphrates flowed nearby. Yet the family of Imam Husayn (as) thirsted. Not from lack of water… there was an abundance of it. But because of blackened human hearts, a lack of mercy so far-removed from the Most Merciful.

The universe is mostly water. The earth is mostly water. The human body is mostly water. Yet on the plains of Karbala, water became rarer than gold. A single drop became a dream and a sip became an unfulfilled prayer. A child became a martyr before reaching it.

Abbas, the brother of Imam Husayn (as), rode toward the river carrying not a sword’s ambition but a brother’s promise. He was not seeking victory, simply seeking to quench a child’s thirst.

The most ordinary substance in existence became the most precious thing in the world.

He reached it. Touched it. Held it in his hands. And remembered the thirst of Husayn.

History records countless warriors. But how many became immortal because they refused to drink? How many lost both hands while carrying water to children? How many transformed a river into a proof of loyalty?

The universe remembers. Water remembers. Every Muharram, millions still offer water to strangers. As if humanity is trying, century after century, to apologise to Karbala.

Some thirsts will never end. Every glass of water carries a hidden lesson. The oceans rise and fall. Clouds ascend and descend. Rain returns to the earth. Rivers return to the sea. Nothing truly disappears. It only journeys.

The water you drink today may have touched a mountain, a cloud, a prophet, a pilgrim. The same water cycles through creation, changing forms, never ceasing. Like the soul. Like love. Like a heartfelt prayer.

And at the end of all journeys, the traditions tell us of another kind of water. A fountain beyond the limits of this world. A river untouched by drought. A thirst that can finally be quenched.

Al-Kawthar.

Where no child cries from thirst. Where no tyrant can block the river. Where no caravan is denied mercy.

And there, among the gathered souls, Ali (as) stands waiting. The gate of knowledge. The door of heaven. The commander of the faithful. Offering water once more, from a river flowing from eternity itself.

The story of humanity begins with water, and perhaps it ends with water too.

A raindrop falls from heaven. A tear falls in Karbala. A river flows through history. A fountain awaits in paradise.

And between them all, is the human soul, thirsting for the Source from which every ocean, every tear, every raindrop came.

*If you are unfamiliar with the tragedy of Karbala referenced above, you can learn about it here.

And then there are years when life feels like a wall. A door closes. Your health betrays you. You lose someone. A dream dissolves quietly in your hands. You pray for one thing and receive another. You spend months mourning versions of yourself that no longer exist.

Eventually, if you live long enough, you begin to notice an unsettling truth… that life rarely goes according to plan.

There is always some variable missing. Some test hidden beneath the surface. Some limitation. Some longing you cannot fulfil. Some grief you cannot reverse. Some desire that remains suspended just beyond your reach.

There is always someone living the life you imagined for yourself. Always some old version of reality you wish you could return to. Always a gap between what is and what you hoped would be.

But this is where most suffering comes from: not the pain itself, but resistance to what God has written.

We spend our lives trying to force reality into alignment with our desires. We grip tightly to identities, timelines, ambitions, relationships, expectations. We convince ourselves that peace lies in control.

But the older you grow, the more life humbles you into a terrifying realisation: that you were never in control to begin with.

Terrifying at first, but when you truly understand it, it lifts a weight off your shoulders.

وَعَسَىٰ أَن تَكْرَهُوا شَيْئًا وَهُوَ خَيْرٌ لَّكُمْ ۖ وَعَسَىٰ أَن تُحِبُّوا شَيْئًا وَهُوَ شَرٌّ لَّكُمْ ۗ وَاللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ وَأَنتُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَ

“Perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. Allah knows, while you do not know.”

— Qur’an 2:216

There is a narration attributed to Ali ibn Abi Talib (as) in which he says:

“I recognised Allah through the breaking of my resolutions and the failure of my intentions.”

Not through miracles, or ease. Not through getting everything he wanted. But through plans collapsing.

Because there comes a point where your shattered expectations stop feeling random, and you begin to see a pattern hidden beneath them. A wisdom larger than your own desires, a force constantly redirecting you away from attachment to the world.

This is why sacrifice sits at the centre of Islam as a philosophy of existence.

We often think martyrdom begins only at death. We imagine sacrifice only in its most dramatic form — bloodshed, loss of life, heroic endings. A person who gave up their physical life for a greater cause.

But there is another kind of martyrdom that happens invisibly, every single day, while you still remain in world.

The quiet martyrdom of surrender.

The sacrifice of the life you thought you would have.

The sacrifice of comfort when truth demands hardship.

The sacrifice of unhealthy love because your soul knows it leads you away from God.

The sacrifice of worldly ambition when it begins to corrupt your character.

The sacrifice of pleasure, pride, vanity, greed, resentment, envy.

To achieve a martyr’s death, you must kill your ego while you are still alive. You must surrender to God’s will.

This is the spirit hidden inside Ramadan.

People often reduce it to hunger and thirst, but fasting has never merely been about food. Hunger is symbolic. It is training. A reminder that the human being was not created to obey every desire that passes through them.

Every fast is an act of resistance against the nafs (the lower self). You sacrifice comfort. You sacrifice impulse. You sacrifice indulgence. You sacrifice the illusion that happiness comes from endless consumption.

And then comes Eid al-Adha — perhaps the most misunderstood symbol of sacrifice in the modern world.

People see animals. But the essence of the story was never the animal. The real sacrifice was attachment.

The willingness of Ibrahim (as) to surrender even what he loved most if God asked it from him. Because the spiritual journey is not about abandoning the world physically. It is about loosening the world’s grip on your heart.

To own things without being owned by them. To desire without worshipping desire. To grieve without losing faith. To love while understanding everything temporary eventually leaves.

You are allowed to have ambitions, wants, dreams and hopes. But you must hold them with open hands. Because the moment a desire becomes something you cannot emotionally survive without, it begins to own you.

You can build a beautiful life and still remember it is temporary. You can love deeply and still understand that all human beings are passing through one another’s lives like travelers. You can grieve what was lost without believing God has abandoned you. You can pray for doors to open while accepting that some were never written for you. And that’s okay.

Faith is not the absence of desire. It is the refusal to let desire replace God at the center of your heart.

And then Muharram arrives. A wound carried through centuries, revived every year. The martyrdom of Imam Hussain (as) and the blessed family of the Prophet (PBUH).

A reminder that truth has always demanded sacrifice. That dignity sometimes requires loss. That faith is not proven in comfort, but in what you are willing to endure without abandoning your principles.

Our entire calendar is filled with reminders that this world was never meant to fully satisfy us.

That is intentional. If the world gave us everything we wanted, we would never look beyond it. Maybe broken plans are not interruptions to life. Maybe they are life. Every loss is slowly teaching the same lesson: Detach. Surrender. Trust.

You find peace the moment you stop demanding that reality obey you. When you remember who is servant and who is Master.

And strangely enough, surrender is not hopelessness. It is actually the birthplace of hope. Because once you stop worshipping the specific form your future must take, you become open to possibilities larger than your imagination. You begin to understand that God’s mercy is not always visible in the moment it arrives. Sometimes mercy enters your life disguised as limitation. As delay, as redirection. As endings.

There are prayers you will thank God for unanswered. There are doors you will later be grateful remained closed. There are versions of yourself that had to die for your soul to survive.

Because that is what faith really is: to continue walking with God even after the collapse of the life you expected Him to give you. And to be fully content with it. Because it is what He chose for you. And His plan is always the best for you.

وَمَكَرُوا وَمَكَرَ اللَّهُ ۖ وَاللَّهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ

“And they planned, and Allah planned. And Allah is the best of planners.”

— Qur’an 3:54

Not because they aren’t important enough, but because they’re doing their work too well. Quiet things are easy to overlook. Things that don’t demand attention, the ones that simply hold. No one notices equilibrium, we often realise the presence of something only when it leaves.

Space, for instance, is not gentle or peaceful… contrary to what it looks like from down here. It’s not just a neutral backdrop for stars and planets. It is violent, cold, flooded with radiation. Objects move at speeds that would obliterate anything unprotected. Entire worlds lose their atmospheres, get pulled apart by gravity, or drift into permanent darkness.

Life is not what the universe defaults to. And yet, against all the odds, here we are.

Not barely surviving, either. Breathing oxygen. Drinking liquid water. Standing on solid ground. Building homes, forming memories, having children, asking questions about meaning.

That alone should give us pause.

Earth exists in a very narrow window where any of this is possible.

Move the planet slightly closer to the Sun and the oceans would have evaporated long before life had a chance. Move it slightly farther away and everything would have frozen. This “sweet spot” is so precise that it’s almost uncomfortable to think about. Earth is hung in perfect balance. In perfect measure.

And it isn’t just distance from the sun. In fact, planets all around us, that we assume have little to do with us, are quietly protecting us in the background.

Jupiter sits far out in the dark, enormous and unassuming, quietly pulling asteroids toward itself with it’s massive gravitational pull. These asteroids are often on their way to Earth. Without Jupiter, our planet would be hit far more often, repeatedly reset by destruction, life wiped out.

Then there’s the moon. It stabilises Earth’s tilt, keeping our seasons from becoming extreme, regulating the tides that once helped life emerge from the oceans. It slows our rotation just enough to give us days instead of violent spinning.

None of this is mystical language, it’s physics.

But taken together, it begins to feel like something more than luck. Like a system that is actively working to maintain these perfect conditions.

Then there are the layers closest to us; the ones we never think about unless something goes wrong.

Our atmosphere is astonishingly thin, yet it burns up falling debris before it reaches the ground. It filters radiation. It holds heat at just the right level. Strip it away and Earth becomes Mars: silent, frozen, abandoned by life.

Beneath our feet, the planet’s molten core generates a magnetic field that deflects solar winds capable of stripping that atmosphere away entirely. We don’t feel this protection. We don’t see it. But without it, we would not last.

We wake up every day under shields we did not build, maintained by forces we do not notice, let alone control.

This is the kind of care that doesn’t announce itself, it works constantly in the background, quietly shielding us. It protects us even when we don’t realise we’re being protected at all.

Even our location in the galaxy matters more than we tend to realise.

Too close to the galactic centre, and radiation would make complex life nearly impossible. Too far out, and the elements needed to form bodies would be scarce. Instead, Earth sits in a relatively calm region of the Milky Way, not untouched by danger, but buffered from its worst extremes.

It’s not the obvious place you’d expect life to thrive. But it’s not an impossible one.

The Qur’an speaks about this kind of cosmic order. “Indeed, We created all things with precise measure” (54:49). Not loosely or approximately, but with qadr, exactness.

It describes a universe where day and night, the sun and the moon “move by precise calculation” (55:5), where “each swims along in its own orbit” (21:33), never colliding, never overrunning one another. The sun is said to “run to its resting place”, and the moon is measured through phases until it returns “like an old date stalk” (36:38–39).

And then the Qur’an makes the principle explicit: “He raised the heaven and set the balance — so that you do not transgress the balance” (55:7–8). This is far from randomness. It is restraint, boundaries established with care to allow something as delicate as life to exist at all.

To better understand these layers of mercy, we can look to some of Allah’s 99 names.

Allah is Al-Hafīẓ: the Preserver. Not only the One who saves in moments of crisis, but the One who sustains continuously, quietly, without pause. The kind of care that doesn’t wait for disaster before it acts.

Allah is Al-Latīf: Subtle beyond perception. Care so gentle it is easy to mistake for coincidence. Protection that works through balance, timing, distance, restraint.

This is not a God who needs to break the laws of the universe to show mercy. This is a God who writes mercy into the laws themselves.

Gravity, orbit, measure, limitation. One begins to see them as expressions of care rather than cold mechanics.

We often imagine mercy as something emotional, or dramatic, or reactive.

But there is another kind. One that shows up as stability. As systems that hold long enough for something delicate to exist. As a world that doesn’t collapse the moment it can.

Allah is Ar-Raḥmān: mercy that encompasses everything. And Ar-Raḥīm: mercy that reaches intimately, specifically. Not abstract kindness, but care that accounts for fragility.

He is Al-Wadūd: The Loving. Al-Wadūd does not abandon what He brings into being. Love, here, looks like continuation.

And He is Ar-Rabb: The Nurturing Lord. The One who raises, grows, develops, and brings things to maturity through time.

And there is Al-Barr: the Source of Gentle Goodness. Not loud or indulgent, but kind enough to let fragile life remain, that does not overwhelm what it cares for.

That is what life on Earth feels like. Not indulged, but protected and nurtured.

If these layers of mercy were loud, like if the sky split open or the laws of physics suddenly paused, we would call it a miracle.

But because they are quiet, we call it chance.

Chance, however, has a hard time explaining why life exists only when everything precisely aligns, and why, on our planet, everything does.

It begins to feel less like coincidence and more like allowance. Like space was made just safe enough. Like danger was not eliminated, but held back. Like life was given a narrow opening, and protected within it.

To live beneath layers of mercy does not mean life will be easy. Bodies still ache. Loss still arrives. The world remains fragile.

But existence itself, and sustenance of it, is already a form of care.

Every breath depends on fine balances we do not maintain or even realise. Every heartbeat relies on protections we did not design. Every ordinary day is supported by a universe arranged carefully enough to let us have one.

God gives without needing recognition. And perhaps that is the most striking thing of all. He does not loudly defend life on Earth, He quietly preserves it.

And whether we notice it or not, we are living inside that mercy, every moment we remain here.

A five-year reflection is about sense-making more than about evaluating success or failure. It’s about recognising how identity evolves through experience, how pain rearranges priorities, how certain values endure while others fall away. It helps you see which cycles are complete, which ones are still unfolding, and which direction now feels honest rather than inherited.

I’m using the prompts below to look back on the last five years of my life as a whole, because on both a micro and a macro level, the world has changed completely, and so have I. With these questions, I aim to uncover turning points and realisations I missed while I was in the midst of it all. We often keep staring ahead at how long the journey is, but forget to pause for a moment and look back on how far we’ve already come.

I plan to share my insights, epiphanies and lessons learnt once I’ve gathered my thoughts. But until then, I’m sharing the prompts here in case you also feel the urge to step back, gather the threads, and ask what kind of person the last 5 years have subtly shaped you into.

And perhaps, in seeing that arc more clearly, you can begin the next chapter of life with a little more trust and tawakkul. In yourself, and in the way God works slowly, but surely, over time.

🌌 1. The Arc: What were the last 5 years about?

• What began in my life five years ago that’s still unfolding?

• What season was I in at the start, and what season am I in now?

• What part of me died, dissolved, or had to be shed?

• What part of me was being moulded?

🧬 2. Identity & becoming

• Who did I think I was five years ago? Who am I now?

• Who did I become through experience, not intention?

• What core values stayed consistent despite everything?

• What does “being myself” mean now compared to then?

• How have my priorities evolved over these five years?

🧠 3. Patterns, cycles & repetition

• What patterns repeated across different contexts (work, health, relationships)?

• What lessons took me more than one year to learn?

• Where did I resist change, and what did that resistance cost me?

• What cycle feels complete now?

• What cycle feels ready to begin?

🧱 4. Pain, rupture & resilience

• What was the most defining hardship of these five years?

• How did suffering reshape my priorities?

• What did loss teach me about attachment?

• How did my relationship with control change?

• What did I survive that I once thought I wouldn’t?

🌱 5. Growth that isn’t obvious

• How did my emotional intelligence deepen?

• Where did I learn patience, surrender, or discernment?

• What strength did I build slowly, without noticing?

• How did my relationship with my body and mind change?

• What inner resources do I now trust?

💼 6. Work, purpose & direction (long view)

• How did my idea of “success” evolve?

• What kinds of work or contribution feel meaningful now?

• What ambitions softened, and which ones became clearer?

• What skills or perspectives did I gain that can’t be taken away?

• If I zoom out, what through-line exists in my career choices?

💞 7. Relationships & belonging

• How did my approach to love and friendship mature?

• Who entered my life for a season, and what did they teach me?

• Who stayed, and why?

• What boundaries did I learn to set?

• What kind of partnership or community am I now ready for?

🕌 8. Spiritual evolution & worldview

• How did my relationship with God, faith, or meaning transform?

• What beliefs were refined rather than abandoned?

• How did hardship, and ease, deepen (or challenge) my spirituality?

• Where did I learn to trust God?

🧭 9. Freedom, agency & alignment

• Where did I reclaim my agency?

• Where did I give it away, and why?

• What does “freedom” mean to me now compared to five years ago?

• What am I no longer willing to compromise on?

🕊️ 10. Integration: making sense of it all

• What story can I now tell about these five years without bitterness or fantasy?

• What am I grateful for because it was difficult?

• What do I forgive myself for?

• What do I give myself credit for?

• What wisdom did these five years carve into me?

• What did I achieve in these last 5 years? (material and non-material)

🔮 11. Looking ahead: the next chapter

• What are my priorities in life right now?

• What do I want to carry forward from the last five years, and what do I want to leave behind?

• What are my goals for the next five years, what do I want to build and work on?

• What intentions, habits, routines, mindsets, philosophies, do I want to maintain or introduce in myself going forward?

Patterns begin to reveal themselves. Repeated thoughts, choices, and emotional states are highlighted and identified more easily. You start to notice what drained you, what sustained you, what you kept returning to, and what kept asking you to let go. This kind of reflection isn’t about overthinking the past; it’s how growth happens. Awareness is what gives us direction for the future, and it’s the perfect time to recalibrate as we enter a new year.

Looking at the year from a little distance often reveals things we couldn’t see in the moment: why certain experiences mattered, how challenges changed us in subtle ways, or how we’ve already shifted more than we realised. From that clarity, the next year feels less random and more intentional.

I’ll be using these prompts to reflect on my own year, and I’m sharing them here in case they’re useful for anyone else too. Slow down and take your time with them. Let this be a little check-in with yourself, and with God, before stepping into whatever comes next 🤍

🌑 1. The Big Picture: What kind of year was this?

• If I had to name this year as a chapter in my life, what would I call it?

• What theme quietly ran through everything, even when I didn’t notice it at the time?

• How did this year change me compared to who I was at the start?

• What illusion did this year break for me?

• What truth did this year teach me that I can’t unsee now?

🪞 2. Inner Landscape: Mind, emotions, identity

• What emotions did I live in the most this year? Which ones surprised me?

• When did I feel most like myself? When did I feel furthest from myself?

• What patterns (mental, emotional, behavioural) repeated again and again?

• What did I finally stop fighting?

• Where did I outgrow an old version of myself?

🧠 3. Lessons & Realisations: the wisdom harvest

• What did pain try to teach me this year?

• What did ease teach me?

• What belief did I release, even if imperfectly?

• What am I now more compassionate about, in myself or others?

• If I could send one lesson back to my past self at the start of the year, what would it be?

🧱 4. Challenges, setbacks & resilience

• What was the hardest moment of the year, and how did I actually survive it?

• What strength did I discover that I didn’t know I had?

• Where did I expect myself to be “better” than I was, and can I forgive that?

• What didn’t go to plan, but quietly redirected me somewhere necessary?

🌱 5. Growth & becoming

• In what ways did I grow that aren’t visible on the outside?

• What habits, boundaries, or mindsets did I start (or let go of)?

• Where did I choose patience over panic?

• How did I show up differently than I would have a year ago?

💼 6. Work, purpose & direction

• How did my relationship with work and ambition change this year?

• What kind of work drained me vs. nourished me?

• What did this year clarify about what I don’t want anymore?

• What small signals point toward my long-term purpose?

• If I removed external pressure, what would I want to build?

💞 7. Relationships & connection

• Who felt like home to me this year?

• Who did I grow closer to, and who did I quietly outgrow?

• Where did I learn more about my needs, boundaries, or attachment?

• How did I show love differently this year?

• What kind of connections am I now ready for?

🕌 8. Spiritual & existential reflection

• How did my relationship with God shift this year?

• When did I feel most spiritually grounded?

• When did I feel distant from God, and what was happening in my life then?

• What prayers were answered in unexpected ways?

• What is my soul asking me to trust more deeply?

🕊️ 9. Gratitude: beyond the obvious

• What am I grateful for because it was difficult?

• What quiet moments deserve more recognition?

• What part of my body, mind, or heart carried me through?

• What am I proud of that no one else sees?

🔮 10. Integration & closure

• What am I ready to leave behind with this year?

• What unfinished business can I release without guilt?

• What do I want to consciously carry forward?

• What changes do I want to bring in myself going into the new year?

• Based on the patterns I’ve identified this year, what are my priorities and goals for next year?

This is essentially my journal made public. Curious, contemplative, whimsical, written in search of meaning, in search of God.

The kind with crossed-out thoughts, cosmic doodles, spiritual tangents, philosophical rabbit holes, and epiphanies that could shatter everything you thought you knew (in a good way).

I’m sharing this part of myself not because I think I’ve figured anything out, but because I’m still learning. Still searching. Still trying to understand what it means to be human, to be Muslim, to be alive in a world that feels both unbearably fragile and impossibly divine.

I write essays, reflections, poetry, and occasionally design visual frameworks inspired by Islamic philosophy and esotericism, history, art, psychology and the questions that pull us inward. This is a space for sacred ideas, hidden patterns, and finding meaning in it all.

Over the years, I’ve spent collecting and documenting my insights; from Islamic philosophy, esotericism, history, geometry, symbolism, cosmology, personal experience, pain, love, loss, and the strange magic of everyday life. Writing has always been my way of making sense of it all. It’s a lantern I hold up to the darkness, a quiet conversation with God. A map I redraw every time I grow.

So I’m sharing a piece of myself here. The part that wonders, questions, reflects, and dreams… in the hope that it might help someone else on their way.

Maybe you’re looking for God.

Maybe you’re trying to understand life.

Maybe you simply enjoy hearing the random thoughts of a friend you haven’t met yet.

Whatever brought you here, I’m glad it did.

I’m not here to preach, I’m here to explore. To re-examine what we think we know. To trace patterns in chaos. To uncover beauty in the unnoticed. To reflect on the unseen layers of this world, the worlds beyond, and the worlds within us. Some pieces will be philosophical, some spiritual, some historical, some whimsical, some deeply personal. All of them will be honest and from the heart.

If this space becomes a small companion on your journey, whether to God, to clarity, or simply to yourself, then it will have already done what I hoped.

So, come join me on my journey of exploring the depths and beauty of the unknown. Of finding the Divine and His design in everything.

I hope you find answers to things you’ve always wondered about, and leave with more questions than before.

Much love,

Maryam

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