Describing Oneself

Assalamu Alaikum Dear Readers,

Many often we are confronted with this question: “Describe Yourself”. And we all know how difficult a question it is to answer.

There are two ways you can describe yourself. One is with respect to the external factors. And the other is with respect to the emotions you experience. You can write down the tags that you can think of yourself and classify it into two buckets. Just write down whatever that comes to your mind one after the other, without ‘thinking’ and being judgmental .

I described myself with respect to the external factors, and it followed this pattern:

Name, profession, place of origin, date of birth, income etc..

Then described myself with respect to how I felt, and tag cloud looked something like this:

Seeker, Weak, Lucky, Guided, Sinner, Forgiven, Loved, Happy, Ignored, Accepted, Bachelor,  Writer, Friend, Friendless, Sad, Depressed, Desperate, Angry, Lonely, Optimistic, Careless,  Insensitive, Empathetic, Bold, Stupid, In-calculative, Spendthrift, Chaotic, Grudger, Impatient, Tender, Loving, Lovable, Caring, Young, Mature, Immature, lustful, Tired, Unforgiving, Creative, …

(You can see positive and negative emotions and even conflicting tags, but they all fit in in different contexts.)

It is the second category that constitutes a life for any person, no matter who he is. And when Allah asks you to “Describe Yourself”, it is this category He is looking into.

When we inspect who we are, do our tags match with those of our Prophet whom we say we follow?