Rija

kahin main khirki tou nahin?

[Rija @rijayusufzay]

وَصْل🤍

[Rafey Jabal @MuslimPhil]

…a liberation from all terrane concerns, a life unaccompanied with human pleasures, a flight of the alone (soul) to the Alone (God).
—Plotinus

[Dera Ojobo @deraojobo]

:)

[zayden @pemilo123]

The neurodivergent experience of feeling like I was mentally older than my peers as a child and now feeling mentally younger as an adult

[ᅠ @artindetails]

magical forest

[positivity moon @arrtnem]

The cold does something merciful. It narrows your focus. You are not thinking about five years, ten plans, flourishes of destiny. You are thinking: my face is cold, my feet hurt, my nose is running a little, my lungs are working, I am here. No aesthetic. No performance. Just a body under falling snow who has, against all odds, made it to this stupid quiet morning.

There is a grief in that stillness too, if you let it in.

Standing under those trees, you can feel every version of you who never got this. The one who was too busy proving something to ever wake up early on purpose. The one who thought rest had to be earned by breaking first. The one who believed that stillness was the same as failure. They all live somewhere in your nervous system, tapping their feet, waiting for you to get moving again.

You stay anyway.

You let the seconds stretch. You let your phone sit in your pocket like a muzzled animal. You do not take a picture. You do not open a note to make content out of it. You do not check the time every thirty seconds like someone whose life is shrunk to a series of blocks on Google Calendar. You just stand there like a person who has nothing to prove to the sky.

“Be still” sounds like spiritual wallpaper when you read it on a screen. Out here it is something more violent. It means letting the noise drain out long enough for you to notice what is left. Maybe that is loneliness. Maybe that is relief. Maybe that is panic because without your constant busyness, you do not know who you are. Maybe it is all of that layered over each other like snow.

Stillness is not the absence of life, it is life when it finally stops performing for you.

You might stand there for three minutes. You might stand there for twenty. At some point the cold will push you back inside. Your face will sting as it thaws. Your phone will light up again. The day will start. Tasks, messages, people, problems. All of it will be waiting like it never paused.

But something tiny shifted.

You will carry that dark-blue sky in the back of your mind like a secret tab that never closes. You will remember that there is a version of you who can exist without answering anyone for a full five minutes. A version who knows how trees sound in the snow when no one is watching. A version whose worth is not measured by how quickly they respond, but by the fact they are still here, breathing fog into the cold.

And maybe, the next time your life starts to feel like a flickering screen instead of a place you actually live, you will remember that morning.

Remember there is always the door, the cold, the trees, the black sky.

Waiting for you to shut up and just stand in it again.

[Saufiyah Ali @saufiyvh]

I don't think Muslim creatives understand how rare their position is. You have access to both worlds: the deen and the dunya's tools. You can build, design, write, film, code, and every single thing you create can be an act of worship if the intention is right. Most people never get that clarity. Most people spend their lives chasing meaning through work that has no connection to anything eternal. You already have the answer. Use your skills for Allah. That's it.

[shy fawkes @butterbooter]

I think the reason so many people are returning to God is that we’ve spent so many years now seeing what man does to himself with no regard for God

[We don't deserve cats 😺 @catsareblessing]

When you arrive in heaven and God says: Someone has been waiting for you

[dead poet’s honor @l4ststraw]

at the end of the day

[Islamicize @islamicize]

After all the theories, revolutions, and reforms, we discover the solution was Islam the whole time.

[HALAL AKHI  @Pengpappi_xo]

One of the scariest punishments in Islam is not the fire, but when Allah stops guiding you. When you are left alone with your own ego and desires, thinking you know better, thinking you are fine. No reminders move your heart anymore. No advice reaches you.

[Divya George @divz_i_am]

Been surviving my 30s on this thought alone.

[Dr. C @chao_mbogho]

What's beautiful about this is I'll cry my way into good things. I'm never ashamed of my tears. Grief has done a number on me in so many ways that crying is a default shock therapy.

But will I stop having a successful year? Heck, no.

We can cry & win at the same time, friends.

[Eckhart Tolle Quotes @EckTOLLEQuotes]

Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.

[Zaira Wasim @ZairaWasimmm]

“Remind yourselves of Allah, for it is a cure. Do not remind yourselves of the people, for it is a disease”

—Umar ibn Khattab رضي الله عنه | az-Zuhd pg 101

[Dr. C @chao_mbogho]

I cannot re-emphasize this enough. So so aptly put.

And as you make your world bigger, leave room for curious optimism and allow your beliefs, values, and world view to shift and grow within your agency & reality.

[positivity moon @arrtnem]

Because “whimsyness” NOT a personality trait the way people talk about it online. It’s not a vibe you put on like an outfit. It’s a kind of inner permission. Permission to be light for ten seconds without immediately paying for it with shame. Permission to look at a dumb cloud shaped like a dog and actually smile. Permission to dance in the kitchen while the pasta boils even though your life is a mess. Permission to laugh at something stupid at 23:41 when you were sure you had nothing left.

life does try to tax that out of you.

It does it in boring ways first. Bills. Deadlines. People disappointing you. The slow accumulation of little betrayals. The feeling of being responsible for everything. The way you start waking up already tired. The way your phone turns into a conveyor belt of problems you didn’t ask to carry. The way you slowly stop making plans because it’s easier to cancel than to hope.

Then one day you notice you don’t do the little things anymore.

You don’t sing in the car. You don’t draw for fun. You don’t send the goofy voice note. You don’t stop to look at the sky. You don’t even watch movies the same way. You half watch while scrolling because full attention feels unsafe now, like you might feel something.

that’s what adulthood steals if you let it. Not joy in a dramatic sense. The tiny reflex to play.

when someone says “I hope you maintain your childlike playfulness,” what they’re really saying is: I hope you don’t turn into the dead version of yourself.

Because we’ve all met that version. The person who is only practical. Only cynical. Only correct. They’re never impressed, never moved, never surprised. They talk like everything is cringe. Their humor is contempt. Their opinions are armor. They act like caring is for stupid people.

you can feel how lonely that is, even if they pretend it’s strength.

The childlike part isn’t naive. It’s not ignoring reality. It’s the part of you that still knows how to metabolize pain without becoming it. The part that can carry heaviness and still find a stupid little moment of sweetness, not because the world is fine, but because you are still alive inside it.

survival skill, honestly.

Because the people who lose that playfulness don’t become more mature. They become brittle. Everything hurts them, and they can’t admit it, so they become mean. They start treating softness like a weakness because they’re terrified of how much they miss it.

Keeping whimsy is not about being positive all the time. It’s about refusing to let the worst parts of life colonize your entire inner world.

There’s a scene I always think about. It’s late, like 00:12, and you’re exhausted, and the kitchen is messy, and you should be asleep, and you open the fridge and the light hits your face and you just stand there for a second. Not thinking. Just existing. And then you see something stupid - a tiny leftover container, or a note on the counter, or a mug with a goofy design - and you smile without trying. For a second you’re not “coping.” You’re just human.

the thing worth protecting.

Not because it makes you a better person. But because it keeps you from going numb.

The world will always give you reasons to shut down. Always. That’s not going away. There will always be moments that try to convince you that the safest move is to stop feeling, stop hoping, stop playing, stop expecting anything good.

if you let those moments win completely, you don’t get a safer life. You get a smaller one.

I like that you wrote it as a hope instead of a command. Because you can’t force whimsy. You can’t bully yourself into playfulness. You can only protect it with small choices. The choice to laugh when you can. The choice to make something for no reason. The choice to keep one corner of your life unserious even when everything else is heavy.

maybe the real line under your message is this:

I hope you don’t become someone who only survives.

I hope you keep the part of you that still notices the good without needing to justify it.

Not because life is gentle.

Because you are.