groundhog day's life lessons

Groundhog Day is a great movie which I have seen many times. It has a lot of very interesting messages/ideas/concepts within it. It is very interesting to see the character transformation of Phil. I believe he reflects how many people act when something happens that is not in there comfort zone.

When he first began to experience being stuck in the same day, he was frantically trying to find new ways to escape it. After realizing that he was stuck and even death wouldn’t allow him to escape the situation, he began to cause mischief and harm his surroundings while benefitting his own self. Finally, he figures out to help himself and others as well as being a benefiter.

This reminds me, generally, of how people react to situations in life that don’t quite fit into our own preconceptions of how things are supposed to be. As a Muslim, I see this happening a lot now that Islam is at the forefront of news headlines and people are reacting to it. Before, the 9/11 attacks, nobody really even thought of Islam. Then the attacks happened and the initial reaction was to fight against Islam (although it had nothing to do with the attacks). So, we had the creation of the Patriot Act, the imprisonment and expulsion of thousands of Muslims from the US, and many Muslims’ assets within the US were frozen. Then, we felt like we had to cause mischief by invading two Muslim countries. Now, we are at a point where Americans are realizing that doing good and helping Muslims, just like other people, is actually more productive and a better policy for our country’s security and authority. The same thing happened with so many groups of people throughout history and is still happening with even the most common occurances in everyday life on the individual level.

Lastly, relating back to the cave, the man was released from his bindings but it was an unknown that set him free. In the movie, I felt like this unknown was Rita. Phil wasn’t expecting Rita to help him, but, it was her that really influenced him, not only to change, but to take advantage of his time by helping everyone and thing, not benefitting himself with self-satisfying pleasures. In the end, helping and befriending everyone was better and solved his problem more than being disdainful towards everything and fighting against it. I think we can all learn from Phil’s transformation.

the cave in my eyes

Plato’s Cave is always very interesting to read and think about. I do think there is a path to guidance, but it varies, slightly, from the allegory and class discussion.  Mainly, there are two parts I would like to address and relate to my life.

In class we started with the assumption that he had always been locked up in the cave. This can be taken that, naturally, since birth, we are already bound in our minds from finding the truth until we are set free. On the contrary, I believe that a man, in his natural state without any influence from outside entities, is born as a Muslim. Then, his parents or some entity converts them to believe something else. When I say he is born a Muslim, I do not mean “Muslim” as in he knows the Quran and Prophets (peace be upon them) or Sharia or any of that. Rather, I mean “Muslim” as that person will have a natural inclination to worship Allah alone without any partners. So I believe that I was born in a natural state of Islam, then my parents locked me in the cave or, in other words, converted me to Christianity, then I was set free.  This is supported by the hadith in which the Prophet (peace and blessings upon him) said, “Every child is born with a true faith of Islam (i.e. to worship none but Allah Alone) but his parents convert him to Judaism, Christianity or Magainism, as an animal delivers a perfect baby animal. Do you find it mutilated?" Then Abu Huraira recited the holy verses: "The pure Allah's Islamic nature with which He has created human beings. No change let there be in the religion of Allah. That is the straight religion but most of men know, not."

In the Cave, the chains, which bound the man, are, suddenly, set loose, releasing the man to be able to search and find freedom and truth. This part is interesting because Plato doesn’t tell how the man was released, he just was. I attribute this releasing to three things. The three things I attribute the releasing to are reason, guidance, and the qadr. I attribute being able to be released to reason because without reason, the man would not know he was chained in the first place, nor would he come to the conclusion that there is such thing as being free.  Secondly, I attribute being released as guidance, because I am a Muslim, I believe Allah is the only one who guided me to accept Islam as my religion. Thirdly, I attribute it to the Qadr. Qadr may be a term incomprehensible to a non-Muslim. Qadr means the divine decree of Allah. I believe that everything that Allah has already willed to happen will happen and what he has not willed to happen will never happen. So I believe I was released from ignorance due to my reasoning and the guidance of Allah, which were only allowed to come to me because of the Qadr. This is supported by the famous hadith reported on the authority of Abdullah bin Masud, who said: the messenger of Allah, and he is the truthful, the believed narrated to us:

"Verily the creation of each one of you is brought together in his mother's belly for forty days in the form of seed, then he is a clot of blood for a like period, then a morsel of flesh for a like period, then there is sent to him the angel who blows the breath of life into him and who is commanded about four matters: to write down his means of livelihood, his life span, his actions, and whether happy or unhappy. By Allah, other than Whom there is no god, verily one of you behaves like the people of Paradise until there is but an arm's length between him and it, and that which has been written over takes him and so he behaves like the people of Hell-fire and thus he enters it; and one of you behaves like the people of Hell-fire until there is but an arm's length between him and it, and that which has been written over takes him and so he behaves like the people of Paradise and thus he enters it."