Do I have to change who I am?
There is a thought that shows up at two in the morning: maybe the problem is not what I did. Maybe it is me.
There is a thought that turns up at about two in the morning, after a bad week.
It is not “I made a mistake.” You can live with that one.
It is worse than that. Maybe the problem is me. Not the thing I did. Me. The way I am.
And once it does, you start looking for the part of yourself you could cut out.
A man asked his mother this exact question
A man was going through a hard time and rang his mother from the car.
He asked her the question directly. Is the problem me? Do I have to change who I am?
He was expecting her to say yes. She had been telling him to sort himself out for years, and she was not the type to soften it.
She said: never change who you are. Never.
Then she said the thing he could not forget. This part of you that you are telling me about, I have seen it in you since you were a baby. This is who you are.
He was ready to throw the whole thing out. She told him which part to keep.
She was not telling him to keep his sins
This is the part people get wrong.
She was not saying you are perfect, never fix anything. She was pointing at something underneath the mistakes and telling him it was good, and that it was his.
Allah says He made the soul, and showed it both roads: the wrong one and the right one. The one who wins is the one who keeps his soul clean.
Keeps it clean. Not trades it in for somebody else's.
Allah did not make a mistake when He made you
He says He shaped you, and shaped you well.
That is not said to make you feel better. It is a fact about you. Nothing you were made with is broken.
What you do with it is the test. What you were made with is not.
So what are you supposed to change?
Nabi ﷺ said people are like gold and silver in the ground, and the ones who were best before Islam are the best in Islam, once they learn.
Gold does not come out of the ground shiny. It comes out stuck in a lump of dirt. Nobody turns that lump into gold. They wash it.
That is you. The good in you was already there. Becoming a better Muslim does not swap you for different parts. It cleans you up and puts you to work.
Best at what?
“The best of them” sounds like it means people in a different league to you. It does not.
It means the ordinary things people already respect in someone. He is generous. He keeps his word. He does not lose his temper. He is brave enough to say the true thing in a room where nobody else will.
None of that arrives with your shahada. A generous man was generous before he prayed a single prayer. What changes is that he now knows who he is being generous for.
Nabi ﷺ told people this to their faces
A man came to him once. Instead of opening with a correction, Nabi ﷺ told him there were two things in him that Allah loves, and then said what they were.
That he does not lose his temper. And that he does not rush into things.
Two very ordinary things. No miracles, nothing dramatic. Just the way the man already was, said out loud, to his face.
Most of us never do this. We notice the good in people all the time and say almost none of it. The corrections come out straight away.
Now go back to that thought at two in the morning.
It is not only yours. Your wife has it. Your brother has it. The man you sit next to at work has it. Every one of them is quietly wondering whether the problem is them.
You are in a position to answer that for one of them.
Say it this week
Not a speech. It does not need to be emotional and it should not sound like a film.
Pick one person. Name one real thing you have seen in them for years, and tell them you have seen it for years.
Say it before you point at anything they need to fix. Most people have never once been told what is good about them by somebody who has known them long enough for it to count.
What to do
- Tell one person this week something good you have seen in them for years, and say how long you have seen it.
- When somebody comes to you doubting themselves, name the good in them first, then talk about what needs work.
- Write two lists for yourself: this is how I am made, and this is a habit I have to break.
- Work on the second list, and stop apologizing for the first.
What not to do
- Do not read this as permission to keep a sin because “that is just how I am”.
- Do not hand somebody a correction before you have ever handed them a kind word.
- Do not decide at two in the morning that all of you is the problem.
- Do not wait for a big moment to say it. One sentence in a car park is enough.
One last thing
Somebody who has known you a long time could probably tell you, in one sentence, which part of you is worth keeping.
You could probably do that for somebody too.
Most people go their whole lives without hearing it. It costs you nothing to be the one who says it.
Source: Quran 91:7-10; Quran 64:3; Quran 40:64; Sahih Muslim 2638; Jami` at-Tirmidhi 2011; Sahih al-Bukhari 6029
SM
The teaching in this post comes from the Quran and the hadith listed above. I only put it in plain words. The tips on what to do and what not to do are my own advice. If you want to talk about anything in this post, write to me at salam@sunnahdaily.com.
For a ruling on your own situation, please speak to a qualified local scholar. You are welcome to email me about it as well, and I will help if I can, or point you to someone who can.