The Intricacies of Language

I thought I'd be blogging a lot more during summer. But of course, I forgot that I lose my thoughts over summer when I'm bored, only to regain them when class starts and I'm too busy to do anything with the thoughts that bounce around my head. Now, enough of run-on sentences that don't make sense. I think all I have to say is a quick comment on something that's been going on in my head for a long time. Let's see if I can keep this short.

Recently I've become more aware of things. By things, I mean the daily usage of language, phrases people throw around naturally, and other matters of such. I’ve noticed so many common phrases that shouldn’t be said. Some I’d noticed a long time ago, others I had to have pointed out to me, while others yet I could spot very clearly only lately.

We’ve gotten so very affected by the media, and by globalization in general, that we seldom realize that we should not say or do whatever is it that we generally do and say. Now this does not apply to everything, but it surely applies to many things. Let’s take for example, this acronym: YOLO.

You Only Live Once. It was all over my twitter timeline a few months back. It’s still there, only in a lower frequency nowadays. I really cannot understand why people use this phrase. Let’s do all the reckless and stupid things in the world because you only live once so what the heck, let’s enjoy our lives. I’d agree whole-heartedly. However, have we really forgotten that our actions will be judged on the Day of Judgment? That’s what this phrase implies, even if we don’t mean it. We, as Muslims, believe we live twice. Once here on earth, and the second time eternally. Sure, you don’t mean it literally when you do say “YOLO,” but it wouldn’t really hurt anyone to use words that better reflected their beliefs. One could easily come to believe something they say often, subconsciously and unintentionally.

Continuing on the same train of thought, there is another “quote” that goes around quite a lot that is as equally as annoying to me as “YOLO.” I don’t know who comes up with these quotes, but we shouldn’t be the ones "quote-tweeting" them like we actually think the same way. “Life didn’t come with an instruction manual?” Really? Don’t you read the Quran? Isn’t that enough of an instruction manual for you? I guess not. There’s so much one can learn by just reading and thinking about a single verse in the Quran, let alone the entire 604 pages.

There are so many other examples that I can’t think of. Maybe I wasn’t as annoyed by them as these two did. I don’t know. But the point is that we should be paying more attention to the things we say. Many many songs contain things that involve Shirk. The cheesy love longs, quotes, and all the love related things people like so much happen to include at times some elements of Shirk too. We take words so lightly yet we fail to realize what they really mean.

The more I learn, the more I open my eyes to these subtle things, & the more I realize how sensitive the small things can be. They’re not really much. They don’t require a drastic change of any sort, they’re not asking for a change in lifestyle. All we need to do is to watch out for our language. There are many Hadiths that could be listed right now regarding one’s language, but I don’t think they’re quite needed to make the point here. You could look them up on your own if you wanted. We all know right from wrong; we just tend to not put enough weight on them.

We should learn to watch out for the smaller things, because they’re the ones that accumulate without us realizing.

That’s all for now. Let’s not get too westernized.