This morning, I looked at my little cat, while she was sniffing for food in the kitchen. While the cat did it in its cute way, it struck me that what the cat does in its day is mainly to eat, and rest. If it was a stray cat, like another one that I call Hazel (as it is orange) and lives around my house, it will have to do more work to find the food rather than being served, but still it is the main thing that it does. Well, you can add reproduction season and that will be almost all of it!
It struck me that the house cat’s life to me is quite boring! But then two things struck me even more:
The first one is that the cat does not look bored at all. It will seem quite happy when it is eating food it likes, and very peaceful and content when it is resting on a couch or a carpet! When it comes to you and sits beside you and starts purring, it conveys waves of happiness, satisfaction and love. Someone who is bored cannot radiate such emotions; so it cannot the case that the cat is bored at all!!
The second thing that struck me is that a human life at the fundamental materialistic level is not so far away from that of a cat!! Eat, rest, reproduce!
Yes, we don’t just find our food, but in general we have to work to earn it, but also Hazel (the stray cat) does that.
Yes, we have education and we study a lot, but it is quite amazing that the cat comes packaged with a huge amount of knowledge (whose source cannot be explained materialistically) that it just “knows”. Who are its enemies, what food is good for a cat, and what not, how to hunt, and how to hide, and what animal to challlege and what animal not?! Plus even a robust language which all cats seem to know and use to communicate together! So, we need education because we don’t have what the cat has, and because our ambitions are higher that those of the cat!
We are curious and we do research, but even cats are curious, and they say that “curiosity killed the cat”; but our science, cats don’t need!
BUT,
how many of us would just lie down care-free like the cat?
How many persons do you know who would radiate upon you the happiness and love that a cat would radiate when he/she sits around you?!!
Well, you might count few of them. Those few in my experience are the ones who know God and have a heart that is connected to him! Those are typically ordinary people who don’t intentionally advertise their relation to Allah, but rather live it inside of them, at every moment!
Those are the luminous stars that walk the earth in silence and simplicity, and when they sit down, their smile of content shines over everyone close or even to those who just look at their faces! Their satisfaction is not explained by the materials they own or the kind of eat-rest-reproduce life that they lead with all its troubles and hardships, except that those hardships always seem external to them while their inside shines.
Are we better or the cat?
Faith has the answer.
Ahmed.
Finding Truth.