بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم.

Maybe: it’s something in the sunshine today. And, watching my brother and his friends play football the other day… Against them had been a team with a taller, older player in it. I later found out that he (the taller, older-looking player) had been a friend of my sixteen-year-old cousin م’s.

So I’m thinking about optimism. Determined optimism. There’d just been a moment, in that ‘mundane’ match, that I’d remembered.

The other team: a moment of determined optimism. Getting the energy up, just being a force of excitement and togetherness. Even if it felt like they were going to ‘lose’. I think optimism, in these times, might just be a ‘win’ by itself.

It’s committing to finding the positives in things. In the ‘ups’ and the ‘downs’, ‘wins’ and ‘losses’.

From what I understand, Muhammad (SAW) had been a very optimistic personality. He’d been human, and had his times of sadness, distress.

And he smiled more than anybody. If we expect good from our Lord , He Returns. He Adds and Increases. Disproves the things that our relatively weak, fallible (very capable of being wrong) minds may lay before us.

To be secure and confident and optimistic. Not from our ‘selves’, for even our own ‘rationalities’ are aware of how ‘irrational’ we can be, and are. Not from our selves, which can be shaky, and everywhere, and confused.

But: from the One who created… the very Sun.

Best believe that everything can change, for the better. So, to race towards the graces of Allah :

That energy, that commitment. Teamwork, excitement, really trying to have fun. And: being optimistic. It’s not ‘foolish’. ‘Foolish’ would be: relying on our own minds, instead of the One we need, always. In Whose Hands are everything, everything we have ever wanted, needed, and been, past, present, future.

Optimism. Reliance upon, and worship of, Allah is the point. And not: egoistic forgetfulness. To be aware of your Lord, and to rely upon Him alone:

That is, well… the goal (Gooooaaaal!)