When Inaction is Better.

There are some things better left unsaid. 

“Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day let him speak good or remain silent.”

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)

[Bukhari and Muslim]

A friend of mine recently told me that I have a talent for knowing when to say something and when to keep my mouth shut. The extent to which this statement is true (and how serious my friend was when she said it) I may probably never know, but to me it seems that for this to actually be called a talent kind of implies that many other people aren't very good at it.

Being an introvert, keeping my mouth shut comes more naturally to me than it does to others. Growing up, I've never really understood how some people can chatter on and on without so much as stopping to take a breath; personally, even ten to fifteen minutes of non-stop talking exhausts me and prompts me to seek out an excuse to take a break from the conversation. Add in the fact that I tend to speak in, shall we say, 'hushed' tones of a volume so low that I am constantly asked by others to repeat myself and it's clear why I don't talk much.

They say the tongue is sharper than the sword. One can only wonder how many arguments throughout history could have been averted had more people been able to hold themselves back from saying words they knew would be better off unspoken.

There are some moments better left uncaptured. 

Image courtesy of iamlostandfound.wordpress.com

The above image is from the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, one of my favorite movies of all time (just because it was released at the end of last December doesn't mean it's not better than other older movies I've seen). 

In this scene, the guy with the camera, who traveled all the way to Iceland, climbed up a mountain and waited for hours alone in the snow just so he could take a photo of a snow leopard, decides not to do the very thing he came all this way for. Simply because he likes the moment.

In a world that is obsessed with recording every single moment of every single day, as evidenced by the popularity of websites like Twitter and Instagram, it was warming to know that I'm not the only person on Earth who doesn't mind not taking pictures as reminders of a particular moment in time, even though I have the means to do so. Sometimes I just prefer to live in the moment, which might just pass me by during the time it would have taken to whip out a camera and snap a photo.

Some memories are just better off sealed away in the mind, where you are free to relive them at any time you please without limiting yourself to having to view something tangible like a photograph. Indeed, it's as if photographs are losing their value with people taking photos of everything from their breakfast to their own distorted faces.

Kinda makes you wonder if old-timers would reminisce so fondly about 'the good old days' if they had stacks of pictures to remind themselves of those times.

There are some stories better left untold.

In the days following my umrah in Saudi Arabia, I'd planned to write a great deal about the ten days I'd spent in the land of the Prophet. There was so much I'd wanted to say, share and reflect upon. However, travel fatigue prevented me from writing about my trip right away after I'd reached home. Eventually, I got lazy and just didn't feel like writing about umrah even though a part of me wanted me to.

I started to wonder if it was really necessary for me to write a whole post about it. I mean, I'd actually uploaded only two photos from the dozens my family and I had taken while we were there. It showed that, for some reason, even though the trip had been immensely memorable, I didn't feel the need to actually tell people about it - not in its entirety, anyway. Most people who asked me how it went were met with vague, generalized narrations.

In the end, I decided that it was a story that was better off kept to myself. People say that the experience is different for each individual that goes to Makkah, and I couldn't agree more. Indeed, why would I share mine with other people who wouldn't ever be able to relate to it?

I'm sure most people might disagree with this stance, and I'm afraid there's not much I can do about that. But the fact remains that umrah had a profound personal effect on me, and I do not wish to let the experience venture much further from the confines of my memory. Just as I said earlier: some memories are just better off sealed away in the mind.