“Self-care” is an expression we often see being used. Starting as a medical term coined in the 1950′s for mentally ill patients, it became a concept borrowed for political reasons by women in the civil rights movement, before moving to San Francisco bay where the public’s attention drew towards a holistic approach to fitness and healthy life style. Today, the term is used more than ever as a way to tell a person to take emotional breaks, to overcome compassion fatigue, burnout and others. While the concept of taking care of yourself physically and emotionally is beyond important, it’s not exactly a concept we should be throwing around easily either. Especially when constantly using it as an excuse to isolate yourself from people that care for you.
The prophet (saw) suffered countless human loss in his life but had the capacity to listen to a bird complain about its nest, and a cat complain about its treatment. After burying over six children and many other loved ones, he was still able to smile. He even felt a deep connection and love for people he never met... us. Yes, he is a prophet, sent as a mercy to humanity, but even so, he was also sent as an example, as a human - just like us. How did he manage to stay strong without resorting to depending on the tactics of self-care that we generally turn to?
First, his escape route was prayer. And while no one can match his level of focus and devotion during prayer, we can still learn from it and perceive the importance of inherently depending on prayer in our daily lives. And this route never made him ignorant of the problems faced by everyone around him. Instead, it enabled him to become more involved physically and emotionally with his surroundings. It made him stronger. At the same time, the five daily prayers are structured in a way to balance our work and spiritual matters in life. They serve as necessary frequent breaks between the day and give us time to find tranquility in the moment. It’s a form of self-care that is constant, an essential ingredient in the recipe of every single day of our lives.
A part of prayer is making dua’a. This includes changing our mindset about our personal goals and the world around us. For example, a dua’a found in Surah Furqan ayah 74 is, “Oh my Lord, make our spouses and children a comfort to our eyes and make us leaders of the virtuous.” This journey in life is not just about ourselves; it’s also about the people around us. Taking care of our family, neighbors, friends is our responsibility -- not just a means of doing good deeds to make us feel better about ourselves. We have a greater purpose in life, and every single person is accountable. Asking God for help is a perfect starting point to making us fulfill this purpose with the capacity that we have. We should always ask the question, “how can I get myself to a place where I am able to take care both of myself and others?” Self-care is only one miniscule step in a long, worthwhile, journey of actively taking care of the people around us.
Another important point to digest is that ‘isolation’ from people is actually not inherently bad. On the contrary, the prophet used to isolate himself during the night time to organize his thoughts, especially before prophethood, and this brought him a lot of benefit. A healthy lifestyle, spending time outside (i.e playing sports), breathing in nature, silence, reading, and spending time alone are crucial to our well-being. Especially as work of school assignments pile up on out desks, it’s hard to stay focused constantly. These intervals are necessary to our livelihood, programmed inside of us. We yearn for love and change; we enjoy silence after noise; we see poetry in the darkness after spending time in light; we want peace. However, this is not only self-care; it is human nature. It is crucial to our health and peace of mind. Today’s version of ‘self-care’ however, has turned into something more - an industrial concept that seems to imply that humans are capital, that family is hardship, and that empathy, or feeling sad, are harmful.
Finally, most importantly, the key to finding the great potential and strength in ourselves is gratitude. Not just experiencing occasional flickers of the feeling - but rather, turning gratitude into a lifestyle. Sincerely reserving time to deeply contemplate the blessings we can count before we start noticing our worries grow smaller. One specific self-care practice includes something called “gratitude exercises.” Islam introduced the practice of internalizing the word Alhamdullilah, and saying it after every meal, after every injury, after every success, long before 2019 updates of this “secular” method popped up on our search engines.
Before we start using self-care as an excuse to deliberately allow ourselves to become emotionally exhausted over matters that have practical solutions, we should look towards the stories of the prophets, prayer, and gratitude. We should also look into ourselves. What exactly is bothering me, or causing me to feel a certain way and how can I fix it? Of course, self-care is important -- but it should not include the act of creating a personal bubble that disjoins us from others. And it shouldn’t simply involve a hobby that makes us happy, or an action of worldly-gain. And it most certainly shouldn’t cause us to view empathy and sacrifice for the sake of others as qualities that are more harmful to us than virtuous. Most importantly, self-care should not be done just for our sake. It is actually a serious requirement of our religion that should empower us to do effectual good for others without expecting reward from anyone else except God, who will, with his grace and mercy, shower us with blessings both in this short life and the eternal hereafter.