11 November, 2010

To Take On The Extreme

There is an extreme side of me that I always try to control. In fact, Islam IS my moderating influence, for it keeps me from requiring others to keep things as simple as I would like things to be.

I have an extreme side, and I try to keep it away from my religion, for Islam is a path that is some sort of medium path -- one that is not leaning towards either extreme (a moderate path that leans towards neither lax flexibility nor towards morbid rigidity). That is why I gravitate towards activities that allow me to channel my extreme side in positive ways (as my high school Physics Teacher used to say: "Constructive, not destructive!"): laser alignment work (and the like), background reading, and designing experiments for research are very demanding, and allow me to be extreme and be useful to human kind, as I think Allah wants us to be, and skiing (and the like) allows me to be extremely demanding on myself while doing something personally fulfilling.

The way I see it, some people are just born extreme, and it is their duty, and their lifetime challenge to be useful (I don't think Islam encourages us to live as hermits, so I take it that we have to live in society and be useful) and to either tame their inner extremism, or to simply channel it in a useful manner -- well, that is just my take on it.

No comments:

Post a Comment