Advice from my Dad

Because it has been wedding season, and holiday season, I've been spending a lot more time with family. Alhumdulillah, I have been blessed with a lot of family, and we all keep in touch - even the ones who live abroad. One of my cousins who was visiting from abroad was saying how much it meant to him that the family threw him a surprise birthday party at a time when things weren't going so well for him. He was talking about how you can be the flavour of the month with certain people for a very short time, and when things don't go well for you, they'll all ditch you at the drop of a hat, but to your family, you're always beloved, so we should appreciate them. It just really brought my priorities home to me, and the importance of the Islamic emphasis o keeping family ties strong

Also, recently I was travelling on a 10 hour journey with my Dad in Ramadan to help one of my relatives move to another city. My Dad finished work, had a couple of hours sleep, then we packed stuff up into a van and travelled from midnight to about 10am, got there, went to sort out their rental agreement with the estate agent, came back, unpacked the van, helped them set up and did the journey back the next morning! I honestly don't know how he does it mashaAllah.

Anyway, I helped!

We ended up having proper heart to heart conversations and he gave me some advice I didn't expect. InshaAllah by sharing it, he'll be rewarded from any benefit others take from it too.

"...continue to be generous - with your time, money and everything else, but never to the point that it will ruin you - financially, emotionally, or otherwise. Don't give more than you'd be able to write off and never expect that if you do something for someone, they'd do the same for you. The people who you love - the people who you would drop everything for to help them - they are the ones who can - and probably will hurt you the most at some point, so be careful."

"Your family and sibling links are strong just now, and that's very good, but when your parents pass away, people will behave in ways you would never have expected. Just be aware of that."

To be honest, I was quite taken aback, but it's one of those conversations that will probably come back to me at an important time later in life