how loud silence is

It has been three years since I moved out of my parents’ home, and it has been the most transformative period of my life. The experiences I’ve gathered during this time are remarkable, and this chapter is one I’ll always cherish. Learning how to look after yourself and take care of yourself is one of the highest forms of self-love and the fastest way to discover who you really are.

I come from an extremely loving home, so don’t get it twisted; I love my family deeply. They have always supported me in everything I’ve done and never restricted the direction I wanted to take in life. They never asked me for anything, which only makes me want to give them everything in return.

But being in an environment that is designed for you will never truly challenge you. It will never force you to meet the most important person in your life: yourself.

who are you?

It wasn’t until I had no distractions that I began to seriously ask who I was. And to be honest, I’m still figuring it out. Who I am as a multi-ethnic person, shifting between identities depending on who I’m around. Who I am as a Muslim. Who I am as a friend. Who I am as a man.

For a long time, we accept the idea that whatever structure was built for us growing up is simply who we are. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. You are exactly who you set out to become. You have to realize that life comes from you, not to you. So pick up the pen and take ownership of your story. The scariest part about living alone is waking up every day, looking in the mirror, and realizing that everything is your fault. Every up and every down. Every pound lost and every pound gained. Every missed fajr and every made tahajjud. Every regret and every moment of bliss.

There is nothing wrong with fault. We just have an inherent negative view of accountability because we associate it only with failure. But when will we start crediting accountability for the good things in our lives: the discipline, the growth, and the peace that comes from intentional living?

faith without pressure

At this point in your life, you find yourself at a crossroads of who you want to become and where you want to go. This especially relates to your religiosity and whether or not you want to subscribe to your faith.

With no one to push you to find your deen or to pray namaz, you ask yourself why you are doing these things to begin with. Every action becomes a question when no one is watching, and you evaluate for yourself whether you want to do it. You have the power to shake off bad learned behaviors you got as a kid when sculpting yourself or indulge in whatever you please. No one is watching, and what you do is between you and yourself.

In my head, this is where I really embraced my Muslim identity. This is when I actually took my shahada.

integrity

With no one watching you, you get a new appreciation for people who work hard. You’re not working hard to show it off for other people, but rather for yourself. It isn’t that it’s not fun to dunk on your haters—for sure, it is—but it’s simply too weak of a reason to keep me going.

Life is dark, and if the only thing that is keeping you going is contingent on other people, you’re one step away from derailing your entire success. If you determine your success based on others, you never will really live for yourself. Besides, proving people wrong isn’t going to put food on the table. You need to find a greater reason, and that only comes from within. I had to learn that consistency and effort go a very long way and is an integral part of a successful life. And what you do in private always shows up on your face in the form of genuineness. Integrity isn’t something that you can fake and life has taught me that the truth will always come out regardless if you want it to or not. Integrity isn’t something you turn on when people are watching. It’s who you are when nobody is.

hours in silence

When in isolation, you really don’t realize how quiet life is. When you’re not speaking for 12-14 hours of the day, all you have is your thoughts. You learn to live in hours of silence and the the side effect of it is finding out who you are. The good news is that you’re able to finally able meet yourself. The bad news is that you're finally able to find yourself.

With so much silence throughout the day, you find that often more than not you are just an anxious person busying yourself. No wonder why you can’t sleep at night because your subconscious that you thought is healthy has been cooking at 425° and you forgot to turn the oven off. AirPod culture has completely killed us as people and is lowkey signifying the end of times. You can’t walk somewhere without having AirPods on. You can’t drive without music or a podcast. You can’t eat without a YouTube video. You can’t even clean yourself in the restroom without doom scrolling for 10-15 minutes. If you take it a step further, its quite concerning that the media that we consume is called a feed which is the same things that domesticated animals and cows consume. Cows don’t even choose what they consume either and we are all just cattle being directed to wherever we are pushed wherever the feed is. Whenever you decide to stop consuming so much and sit in the silence, everything just stops and life really begins.

time diet

It is quite scary at first in all honesty. When you stop consuming everything at once, you deal with a lot of repressed emotion at hand. You become aware of how many things you want to change about yourself. You address all the issues you have personally, and for the first time your scope is completely focused on yourself. We as people are conscious about what we consume as food, but not when it comes to our spirituality, mental health, and most importantly time. With no distractions, you’ll finally be able to meet yourself, seeing where your mental health is after denying so many apparent problems in your life. The beauty about it all is how you’re able to sculpt exactly where you want to go from there.

Slowly but surely, I was able to start cutting out the things in my time diet to see what fits best for me. Like a physical diet, not everyone’s body functions the same and it is crucial to figure out what foods work best for my mental and time. Taking back the time to invest yourself has been the first step at least for me to feel like I’m actually living. I am able to be present in my experiences and try to step away from consuming so much. My hugs have become tighter, my laughs have become louder, and my smiles have become wider. Knowing myself has allowed for me to know others deeper and able to formulate relationships that will last lifetimes. To be transparent though, when it becomes too quiet, I do end up phoning my friends and my friends are all victims of it. I’m not a monk who will stash myself away from society a but took out the necessary time to meet someone who I’ve never met. The journey to understanding one’s self has to begin with yourself and only focus on yourself. Then and only then will you be able to love the main character in your life.

what’s next?

To come to these realizations makes me feel like my life truly started when I started to look after myself. I felt like I was born at 19 and my memory started to form only afterwards. There are so many things I’ve missed out on by not being present and I hope to just be there for not only everyone, but for myself. You come into the world alone, get sent back to Allah alone, get judged alone, and either suffer or cherish because of it. Might as well come to find yourself so that you don’t have the false presumption that someone will be there every step of the way.

To better the quality of your life, you need to implement the changes necessary and in all honesty it can be excruciating. It is easy and comfortable to just not be aware of yourself and live life on airplane mode, but once that switch is turned on it can never be turned off. How can one not be excited in determining who you are, in finding individuality that you can bring to the world? Exploring yourself is an absolute necessary human experience because at the end of the day if you are not going to take control of your life, who will? So before I meet Allah alone, I want to make sure I’ve truly met myself.