Honestly I clearly do not want to proselytize, this is not the proper place, and this ain’t who I am! I’ll try answering, as genuinely as I possibly can, to the question that I’ve been asked pretty often:
“What is your secret?”
The first person to ask me this bluntly was Isabelle, a nurse resuscitator with 12 years of experience. Back then I had been in the service for barely a month, and I just came back from veeeery far… I can say the entire medical staff was amazed–I’m being modest. I eye-showed to Isabelle my Quran, it laid on the shelf. “I knew it”, she said out loud.
Coreligionists and I believe that God cannot impose us trials from which we can’t triumph; otherwise that would mean that God is unjust; and that is totally out of the question. We believe that trials are there to make us better human beings. This is why I’ve never been angry; I endeavored myself to accept them.
Folks, I ain’t saying “Hooray, for ALS!”. It was pretty tough; as it was hard for you too. I simply believe God had put that disease on my path for a precise purpose: become a better human being. This is my “basic premise”. Combined to His love, there is the unfailing love of my spouse – she never let me down –. Both loves were the mixture which grants me to be where I am now.
Therefore I think very useful to slightly open yourself towards your spirituality, whatever it may be, in order to be at peace along this struggle. I am a Muslim, and I deeply respect all beliefs and non-beliefs. I am not a better human being than another. If you have any affinities with any form of belief, I suggest you to deepen that. I did find a huge sum of love, hope and reassurance. In our position, everything is good for the taking, even what others would understand as being illusions.
I wanted to finish this letter with a quote that summarizes my opinion:
« To accept all-embracing providence without denying the irresistible experience of freedom is psychologically possible, even for people who cannot be accused of having simply failed to learn their first lesson in logic; they do not necessarily feel mental discomfort because they believe in, or experience, both. And when theologians ultimately admit that there is a “mystery” in combining providence and freedom, they do not claim to explain anything, but accept the inadequacy of “human reason”. » Leszek Kołakowski, God owes us nothing, p.43
