Physician. Muslim. Was lost for a long time. Found my way back. Writing about the return. ↓ Read The Sunnah Protocol
Joined June 2023
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The sun came up at 6am after a night shift and for a second it felt like college.
Except in college there were people around.
This one hit different. 🧵
The most valuable moments of my life were never the achievements. They were the moments I was actually there. All five senses. No part of me reaching for the future.
You get to set the world down. You get to settle in. You get to receive what was always yours.
I was sitting in a hotel room in Medina, glorifying Allah in the tongue my grandmother used, looking out at the mosque of the Prophet. Every part of me was home.
I wasn't checking my phone. I wasn't comparing my life. I was there.
"If you are grateful, I will surely give you more."
I always read that as a transaction. Be grateful, get more.
Standing in the holy cities, two trips less than a year apart, it landed differently. The gratitude itself is the increase. The peace of finally being satisfied.
I was creating extra suffering — the kind that comes from believing I didn't have enough, that I wasn't there yet. A wound wearing ambition's name.
The Sunnah Doc retweeted
Detachment is loosening your grip. Surrender is handing over the wheel.
Most people do the first and call it the second. Put your focus on a higher power and let Him set the direction.
Standing at the Prophet's grave (PBUH), what broke me wasn't the crowd or the rituals. It was realizing what he sacrificed. His peace, his comfort, years of his life. He kept moving because he knew Allah had his back.
His job was to show up. The results belonged to God.
The hit lasted seconds. The wanting lasted all day. The hours in between — scrolling, comparing, checking tasks off a list nobody asked me to make — that was suffering I was manufacturing myself.
I'd modeled my life after an addict. Different substance. Same mechanism.
I kept a list on my phone. Dozens of tasks, color-coded. Check them all off, the day counted. Leave one unchecked, failure.
Then I'd close the list and doom-scroll someone else's milestones. Close it. Open it. Close it. Open it.
I knew what I was doing. I just couldn't stop.
Stop waiting for the mental model that will finally make everything click.
Your mind doesn't have enough information.
Take the step in front of you. Keep what gives energy. Let go of what doesn't. And when the direction shifts — don't panic.
That's not failure. That's growth.
You'll have moments when you think you've arrived.
Then months later, a stirring.
The direction needs to shift.
Your instinct will be to fight it.
But purpose isn't a forever answer — it's a forever conversation.
The target moves because you move.
That's not a flaw.
"Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves."
You don't get the guidance and then move.
You move, and the guidance comes.
"Those who strive for Us — We will surely guide them to Our ways."
The striving earns the guidance.
Not the thinking. Not the planning.
The walking.