Lesson 5 of 6 · What feeds it, and what to stop adding
Four. The advice that is meant kindly
Have more sabr. Be grateful. Do more dhikr. Think of people worse off than you.
Every one of those is said with love and every one of them lands as an accusation, because you are already trying and it is already not working. What the person hears is that they are failing at something simple.
Al-Ghazali, in the Ihya, treats character as something acquired by training, by driving yourself into the acts a trait requires until the trait becomes yours. Ibn al-Qayyim puts sabr through the same mill in Uddat as-Sabirin: repeated practice yields settled dispositions, and the servant keeps forcing himself to endure until endurance has become second nature to him. In both of them sabr is a capacity that is exercised and built, not sitting still and waiting.
That is worth knowing, because have sabr is the single most common thing depressed Muslims are told, and it is almost always understood as do nothing and endure. The report below says the same thing in one line. Whoever seeks to be patient, Allah gives him patience. It is given to the person who is already trying.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Whoever seeks to be patient, Allah gives him patience. Sabr is a capacity that is exercised rather than a matter of sitting still and enduring, and this says the same thing in one clause: it is given to the person who is already trying.
Narrated Abu Sa`id:Some people from the Ansar asked Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) (to give them something) and he gave to everyone of them, who asked him, until all that he had was finished. When everything was finished and he had spent all that was in his hand, he said to them, '"(Know) that if I have any wealth, I will not withhold it from you (to keep for somebody else); And (know) that he who refrains from begging others (or doing prohibited deeds), Allah will make him contented and not in need of others; and he who remains patient, Allah will bestow patience upon him, and he who is satisfied with what he has, Allah will make him self-sufficient. And there is no gift better and vast (you may be given) than patience
Sahih al-Bukhari 6470graded sound, sahihaynthe Arabic and its grading