Jihad: A Struggle

Life is a journey. Life is a process. Life is discovery. These are incantations concerning the theoretical adjectives that life should be like. Though many of the people that are surround me subscribe to such idioms, I find them to be flawed for me. A process describes a cyclical venture that does just that, keeps someone in a cycle. It is often very difficult for upward mobility in terms of spiritual, emotional, and mental intelligence, or if one does go through the cycles, they take a much longer time to come to the same realizations, and often by that point it is futile or too little too late.

A journey describes a path of which one often gets caught up in the surroundings. Yes, it is an open-minded focus, but often times people get too focused on the surroundings, too focused on the actual journey and the enjoyments of life, that they forget the end path, the end result. I am not a follower of such journeys as I believe life is a struggle not a journey. The word ‘jihad’ has been butchered by Americans, but in reality, it means “a struggle”. I struggle each day to overcome these illusions in order to keep working toward my purpose, keep working on my inner growth. I am not professing the life of a yogi by giving up all happiness, giving up all mechanisms of self-enjoyment and pleasure, but I do not believe that these things should define a person. I do not believe that these things should be an aim, but rather ways to keep a person on their path and journey. They should serve as a means to bolster a person’s resolve in his path in life, rather than distract him or cause him to go in a round-about either backwards or lead him in circles.

A discovery is that ‘Ah-Ha’ moment in which one stumbles upon a higher realization which propels them forward in life. While this is a beautiful way to look at things, when this idiom is dissected most people think of it to mean that with the flow of things, that with fate, that by simply drudging forward, they will attain the fruit of their labors. But that is exactly where the fallacy lies in my opinion. Where is the labor in the discovery? We often believe that things should be given to us, that we deserve enlightenment and success and happiness, that we are ENTITLED to it even. Sure there are discoveries in life that come from labors, but these labors, in my opinion, should be done through the acts of jihad, they should be found through a push to attain the final end results. A struggle to find the inner peace and inner enlightenment will push a person beyond any comfort zone, and it is this struggle that shall ultimately let them reap its benefits.

It is very weird to see how much I have transitioned as the years have gone by. I believe that I have successfully transitioned myself out of adolescence and the pettiness that comes with high school or undergrad environments. From this though, I have become introverted and use myself as my own support even if I let others believe that they help act as pillars of support for me. This is not to say that I do not care about people, but I have just learned that my parents, my God, and my soul are the only three things that have never betrayed me, the only pillars that have never let me fall as I began to collapse. They are the pillars that support me through my own jihad.