Infinite Ink

My diary is my time capsule

According to an Upworthy article, writing in your journal for 20 minutes every day is good for you in every way you can think of. I do have a diary I write in sometimes, so I just need to make it a daily habit. Then again, there's always Wattpad...

Hmm. Writing one's daily diary of expressing feelings on Wattpad? Every day? I used to do that when I started out writing Infinite Ink. I don't know whether I want to do that now.

Funny thing is, what I'm writing right now...are...my feelings...on Wattpad. A bit of an ironic situation, don't you think?

Anyway, I am grateful that I have the time and space to read nowadays. Only, I keep switching between various books without completing any single one. Today I made significant progress with one book. I'm hopeful about completing it soon. Though, the purpose is not to complete it, of course, but it's still nice to finish a book and think about the entire work afterward, rather than a page at a time.

The other day, Mama was talking to me and I had a book in my hand. She made a passing comment, "Yeah, and you keep reading Ghazali!" Hey, I'm serious about reading his work, but yes, I do carry translations of his books around a lot, so that makes Mama think I read him all the time. Well, I do open one book or another of his every day, if only for five minutes. I just can't stop myself. The message of these works is one that really hits home with me.

Reading and writing is what I do. Call me bookworm, call me nerd, I'll die with a pen in my hand surrounded by books I was meaning to read. Most probably. And I would be happy to die in such a way. Hey, I'm not being morbid, I'm just stating facts. We're all going to die some day and maybe these words are coming from that place in my mind which is storing the contents of the book on death by Imam Ghazali. I'm not kidding...

What really touched me was the beginning of one of Imam Ghazali's books, where he says he wrote it in order for readers to pray for him after his death. That really touched me, and yes, I did pray for him.

I never had the concept of praying for someone I read, watched or listened to in the media. That is, until the day I saw a Nouman Ali Khan clip in which he asked whether the people who praise him ever actually bothered to pray for him. I felt ashamed. Deeply ashamed, because I hadn't prayed for him. Then I proceeded to do that. In reality I think I was doing it for my own self, to lighten the emotional burden on my heart, but Allah is the listener of prayers and He knows what to do with them. It's not my job to worry about how my prayers are received. I just have to focus on gift-wrapping them properly in proper manners and proper words.

Sometimes, typing away like this feels like a waste of time. Really, I'm writing for myself. It feels good to create this image of writing for the audience of the wide world, with the good of the world depending on the strokes of your pen (or the mashing of your keyboard buttons), but at the end of the day every writer is writing for their own self. This is not a bad thing. We write to be heard, to be validated, to express ourselves, to feel immortal, as if what we're writing away on this site is going to be read by people years down the road. Allah knows best.

Going through my earlier Infinite Ink posts is a remarkable experience. I find myself laughing at my own words. Sometimes I wonder where a particular expression, paragraph or entire post came from. Other times I shake my head in embarrassment or denial. In short, it is a learning experience to write down your thoughts and read them after a time period has passed. Try it. Read something you wrote a while ago, and tell me how you feel!