Saturday, September 22, 2007

Which way are you heading?- Reflections Ramadan 10

This almost happens everyday. W and M represent the women's and men's exits respectively.

From what I can see on the projector screen, there must be over 1000 men during taraweeh. The rest of the congregation are 300+ women and children. After taraweeh, everyone leaves as fast as they can.
The street with all those cars leads to the exit.
[The Random shopping cart is from the supermarket nearby, some people just bring them home and then leave them outside their houses or in the middle of the road]

When everyone is going towards the masjid before Taraweeh, there are cars parked on both sides, and the two-way street becomes one day. Which makes sense because at that time of the evening near the masjid, people are obviously coming to pray, not leaving the mosque.

But after taraweeh, imagine the crowd exiting the place. Although it doesn't take too long, many people still try to rush. The picture is a scene from a few days ago. The mustard car is ours. [Of course, the crowd is much worse than this!]
All of a sudden we're faced with the red car, and I get annoyed at that. Why is the car coming this way, when there's so much traffic and everyone's trying to leave? I ask out loud. My father says, the other driver is in the right lane, and he merges in with the other cars slowly. I kept arguing- He could have come later, or from the other entrance (not shown) which is less-crowded and so on.
The next day, my father stuck to his lane, and there was no incoming car until we turned right towards the exit, and a couple of taxis were coming in.
Yesterday there was just one car again, and goodness knows where it was heading!

I thought about how this situation affects me. The red car after all, was right. Even if the traffic dictated that the laws should be changed during rush hours (according to me). My car, and the ones behind us trying to switch to the incoming lane, was wrong. But it was some 20+ cars against 1. Also, when we were faced with the incoming red car, it's driver had to wait for sometime for my father to merge back in. I was almost worried he'd honk at us, but he didn't.

So, what did this teach me?

  • That sometimes, you're the only one who's right.
  • And when you are right, and face an obstacle, you should be patient, because the situation is difficult for others as well, and they are also trying to find solutions to their problems.
  • If their solutions are wrong, you don't back away. If you really care about them, you make them realise that they are wrong, and they need to correct themselves before it's too late.
  • Making them realise they are wrong is good, because they may not know that there are bigger obstacles around the corner.
  • If everyone follows the rules and sticks together, then they make it very easy for the few who don't have a strong enough voice but are trying to get on with their lives.
  • When you are correct, and doing the right thing, you have the support of the truth. Nothing can change what's right no matter what anyone tries to do. And that should be enough for you to stand by the truth.
  • However, when you are wrong, you begin to make excuses, and try to make the wrong look right, but deep down, you know the truth that you are doing the wrong thing.
  • Before we make any decision, it's important to step outside of the situation and look at the bigger picture.
  • If you see a shopping cart in the middle of the road, move it, for that action is charity.

It's all too easy to analyse a scene like this and think about right and wrong, so I tried to think of previous situations in life that were similar to this, and I came up with a couple. Inshallah I'm going to try to apply this next time I'm going the right way in my lane.

4 comments:

Hafsa said...

wow...that's deep.

how are the driving rules different in uae compared to canada?

Anonymous said...

tell baba to use the four wheel to his advantage!
man i miss going to that mosque.. :'( I can only imagine how beautiful it must be to pray at that mosque..

Anonymous said...

About your second last point, one of the biggest problems people have when confronted with a problem is distancing themselves to view it objectively. It's very hard to attain the mentality that you or your loved one might be wrong when it comes to a dispute.

What's even more interesting and can serve as a good test is to analyze your response when:
1. a point of conflict or dispute happens to someone else
2. and when that same thing happens to you

By the way, how long did it take you to make that pic?

Humairah Irfan said...

Yea, it's quite hard to see the bigger picture. I believe it comes from understanding why the other person is doing what they are doing- Beyond Reason is a great book that helps one be able to analyse situations of conflict.

I was part of an organisation that made a decision that it's best of a certain individual not continue in it. Till today, I felt their decision was completely wrong- I had voiced my opinion to almost every person part of the organisation for months, and they mostly told me that... it's because I can't see things from their point of view. When I was sitting in the car at that time, it reminded me of this whole incident, and I had to appreciate their concerns and point of view of why they took that decision.

Don't ask about the picture :D
It took me about 25 min (+some minutes of laughing over it), and I just used photoshop's autoshapes.