Among the greatest of blessings is to have a calm, stable and happy heart. For in happiness the mind is clear, enabling one be a productive person. It has been said that happiness is an art the needs to be learned, and if you learn it, you will be blessed in this life.
But how does one learn it?
A basic principle of achieving happines is having an ability to endure and to cope with any situation. Therefore, you should neither be swayed nor governed by difficult circumstances, nor should you be annoyed by insignificant trifles. Based on the purity of the heart and its ability to endure, a person will shine. When you train yourself to be patient and forbearing, then hardship and calamity will be easy for you to bear. The opposite of being content is being shortsighted, being concerned for no one but one’s own self and forgetting about the world and all that is in it.
It is as if such people see themselves as being the whole universe, or at least at the center of it. They think not of others, nor do they live for anyone but themselves. It is incumbent upon you and I to take time out to be preoccupied with more than just us, and to sometimes distance ourselves from our own problems in order to forget our wounds and hurts. By doing this, we gain two things: we make ourselves happy, and we bring joy to others.
Basic to the art of happiness is to bridle our thoughts and to restrain them, not allowing them to wander, stray, escape, or go wild. If you leave your thoughts to wander as they wish, then they will run wild and control you. They will open the catalogue of your past woes. They will remind you of the history of your misfortunes, beginning from the day that your mother gave birth to you. If your thoughts are left to roam, then they will bring to you images of past difficulties and images of a future that is frightening. These thoughts will shake your very being and will cause your feelings to flare. Therefore bridle them, and restrain them by directing them to the concentrated application of the kind of serious thought that begets fruitful and beneficial work.
[Don’t be Sad, Dr. ʿĀ’iḍ al-Qarnī, Page 90-91]
Moulana Huzaifa Saleh