Family relationships are awe-inspiring.

Family relationships are awe-inspiring. It's amazing how a mother feels instant love, affection and protection for her child as soon as it's born, even before it is born. To everyone else it's a shrivelled up slimy shreiking creature with no personality, nothing to give or offer. It's amazing how a man and woman who have had completely separate upbringings, separate lives, separate set of ideals and dreams and aspirations - fundamentally strangers - can come together and experience feelings and emotions never felt before until he cannot imagine life without her in it and vice versa, until they think how was it possible this man/woman was not in their life all these years.

The mother/child and husband/wife relationship is more profound to me than others. It's natural; God made a mother so - if you wanna be scientific about it, I suppose maternal proptection is necessary for the continuation of the species. And God put mercy and affection between a husband and wife. Despite it being the "norm" it doesn't fail to make one wonder. I remember when I was studying philosophy of religion in college we discussed what a miracle means. Many philosophers defined anything that happens out of the ordinary (ie defying natural law) thus indicating God's intervention as a miracle. Of course I didn't agree with that as God doesn't "defy" natural law; natural law is His law and He does as He wills, not bound by anything. His actions can be witnessed in everything in the universe, including natural law, hence the most "normal" things can be viewed as miracles, like a baby being born. Or the love between a husband and wife.

I was flicking through some womens' magazines a few weeks ago and noticed the stories that most struck me were "imbalances" in these natural yet miraculous aspects of human relationships. For example parents dumping and disowning non-adult children, cheating on spouses etc. Things like that don't make sense to me, I conclude that these people are seriously disturbed and abnormal. They don't have what Allah puts in humans - and even animals - naturally. Closer to my own observations and experience, it saddens and even depresses me when I see children treating their parents like crap, thus completely disregarding the huuuge burden on us as children to do birr towards them. I hold my hands up and admit I'm far from an exemplary daughter and I don't excuse that when I say there's a difference between failing due to weakness and failing due to absolute disregard. Likewise when I see parents mess up their kids' marriage and thus their life for their own selfish reasons - aren't parents the one people who should love and sacrifice unconditionally? Similarly when I see husbands having very little or no mercy and love for the woman who has sacrificed and undergone hardship for him... It doesn't make sense to me. Love, care, consideration, compassion towards at least our children, spouses, parents is it not?

Me and My Mother

There's a lot of difference between my mother (may Allah preserve her) and I. Her resilience, patience, strength, independence, wisdom and self-assuredness strike me at times and make me feel like I inherited only some of her physical attributes and not the admirable qualities. These qualities would have definitely been indispensible in the last 2 years for me not to mention throughout life - which is inevitably full of injustice, hardship and tests.

But there are a lot of differences between my life and my mothers'. She can barely remember her parents as they passed away when she was very young. She was married off pretty much as soon as she reached puberty and thenceforth began a life of marital/in-law strife - typical life of marriage if you ask me, but hey I'm a (justified) cynic. She had to adapt to the settings God put her in and hence she either applied all the qualities she already had or acquired them - you can't really know which one but either way they became part of her character. Whereas me - I've had a life of ease. Of course, if this was 10 years ago I'd tell you I had the worst life imaginable but I was of a different species then - a teenager. My "hardships" amounted to my parents not letting me wear "trendy western clothes", not letting me go out with my friends, coming down on me like a ton of bricks if my brother spotted me in school within a 10 metre radius of a guy etc. I wasn't pressured to continue my education after college, I wasn't pressured to do housework, I wasn't pressured to even earn a living and after my family were fairly confident that I wasn't in any danger of becoming a tart :-D they let me wear what I wanted.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of person I would've been had my upbringing been different. Had I been accustomed to hardship, difficulties now would not be so trying. Of course, that's not really useful because I can't alter what has passed and I can't (and don't) regret the blessing of ease, walhamdulillah. What I can do is behave as though I have patience, fortitude, self-confidence, resilience. I can keep my mood swings under the wraps of smiles. I can don a fake coat of thick skin to sheild me from what others say and think of me. The outward actions will be pretty much the same as someone who already has these qualities naturally but inwardly it will be more of a struggle. Until insha'Allah they become second nature to me.