text – My Little Breathing Space – I write for the few, not the many. The few that are left out!

SOCIAL MEDIA & PATIENCE

SOCIAL MEDIA & PATIENCE ? ~~~~~~

Engineering Patience … In An Age of Instant Gratification

I remember reading a book, and the kids in there were arguing over who got to sit near the window.

I was confused. Why would they want to sit next to the window?

I was accustomed to wanting to sit in the middle because that was directly in front of the vents blasting cold air from the AC.

This was especially important if the car had been parked outside and had become an oven when you went to sit inside.

My dad used to do something that would drive me crazy.

He would start the car and not turn on the AC. He would let the fan run, and tell us we could roll down the windows (which doesn’t do much when its 95 degrees Fahrenheit).

I would plead with him to turn on the AC on max, and he would just sit there and tell me to relax.

Once, with the creativity only a kid could muster, I told him “Allah blessed us with AC, so turn it on.”

He explained that he was trying to teach us to relax, and to be patient.

This is how parents are. They see the ease with which we enjoy the world, and we lose sight of hardships others went through.

In many places in the world, especially 20 years ago, air conditioning in a car was a major luxury item instead of a standard part of life.

Now when someone complains about a YouTube video buffering too slow (or not fast enough for HD), I feel like yelling at them to try using a 28.8kbps dial-up connection – the kind I had to grow up with.

In fact, a study of the viewing habits of 6.7 million people showed that people abandoned watching a video if it buffered for longer than two seconds. TWO SECONDS !!

Social media has made everything quicker.

What used to be a 24 hour news cycle is now barely 30 minutes.

The half-life of a tweet is less than 3 hours.

With this quickening of pace, our expectations have changed as well.

If someone doesn’t reply to an email within a few hours we get upset.

If they don’t respond to a text message within an hour, we get impatient.

There is a manufactured hurry to each of these interactions.

Patience and gratitude go hand in hand.

Patience, as we famously know from the hadith, is at the moment calamity strikes.

To have patience in that moment requires a gratitude mindset.

It comes down to being cognizant and intentional about each situation – Am I exercising patience?

Am I being grateful to Allah?

One way to reclaim this is to engineer moments of patience in our lives.

Sit at a red light without touching your phone. It’s only 30 seconds, but we are at the point now where the mere thought of that is agonizing for some.

Sit down with your kids and just be bored for a little while. Reflect on what is around you and enjoy the quiet moments.

The fast pace of technology is now the norm.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it does mean that sometimes we just need to sit in the car for a few minutes before turning on the AC – to give ourselves a small reminder and lesson.

FiqhOfSocial.Media – A Faith Based Guide to Navigating the Social Media Lifestyle

http://fiqhofsocial.media/

The Loss of Conversation

Sister Fazila Bux, 1st Ethical CT/

May 21, 2012

We live in an age where we are all ‘connected’. The phenomenon of the World Wide Web, manifested in Facebook, social networking sites, phone apps, and so forth seem to offer us endless and ever easier ways of keeping in constant touch with each other. In spite of this, many sociologists are finding our quality and quantity of conversation is actually poorer than a few years ago.

Why the paradox? Typing a smiley emoticon in a text message is certainly not the same as witnessing a real facial expression. Teens today are so engrossed in their online worlds, that they are simply not picking up the art of verbal conversation, which was a rite of passage even a mere decade ago. Even in workplaces, staff are less focused in meetings, reflexively checking phones and emails.

It is worth considering what the art of language represents, for we may be unwittingly degrading one of our most important qualities. Human beings are defined as “al-haywan al-natiq ” meaning we are the ‘talking animal’. The word for ‘talking’ in Arabic shares the same root as the word for ‘logic’ given speech is intrinsically linked with intellect, and this ability to externalise our intellect by meaningful sounds is the key factor differentiating us from animals.

Speech, and its corollary, the written word, therefore are gifts bestowed upon us by our Creator. The mightiest of gifts, the Quran, whose wisdom and depth transcend the limits of human intellect, was transmitted orally. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was known for his eloquence and brevity of speech: the ability to say a few words strung in a manner that conveyed vast meaning.

Limiting the art of conversation to only its online forms is not only depriving us of the irreplaceable warmth and depth of a face-to-face conversation, but is also depriving us of the ability to contemplate and reflect.

As Muslims we believe we can draw closer to God through pondering on His signs, both His word and His creation. To be less able to recognise these signs is therefore calamitous. Indeed the Qur’an states: “In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of night and day, there are signs for people of intelligence” (Qur’an 3:190) .

Constantly being online makes it difficult to concentrate on anything, never mind contemplate.

Conversation is an art, and effective speech is a Prophetic trait to aspire towards.

In today’s world, properly conversing with our loved ones, and reflecting on life is something which no longer happens automatically but which needs proactive planning and effort. The sooner we realise this, the sooner we put a stop to a subtle degradation of our humanity.

Umar bin Al-Khattab (Allah be pleased with him), the second caliph and Companion of the Prophet (peace be upon him) once said that if it were not for three pleasures, he would not find any joy in life.

One of these three pleasures was “sitting in the company of men who like to pick good topics for conversation just as people like to pick good dates from a tree.”