Test of Today - Trust and Optimism
November 17th, 2025
Salam.
I’m not sure where the majority stands in terms of their trust and whether they give it freely or sparsely. I’m part of the latter group but I wasn’t always conditioned to be this way.
As a teen, my friends would always say that I was just “book smart” because I was often too trusting or naïve. I took what people said at face value and often quite literally.
As an adult, I have my suspicions that there were reasons for my behaviour beyond innocence and optimism, but I won’t speculate here.
Now, I have swung in the opposite direction. I find myself cynical and justifying it by labelling it as pragmatism.
Without rehashing my medical history for the umpteenth this year, I will say that living through the last four years, I have become extremely grateful for my circumstances. I know I complain a lot and I still struggle, but I know that I have been blessed with so much as well. To be able to get better, I had to trust that the advice I was given and the medicines I was taking, were eventually going to result in a healthier version of me, regardless of the obstacles.
I could not say the same if I was born in Gaza. I could not say the same if I was born in Darfur. Even if I had been born in rural Iran or Iraq where my family was from, I could not guarantee that I would be where I am today, and I must be thankful to Allah SWT for that but also acknowledge that I am so very privileged.
When I was going through inexplicable pain myself, I was able to walk to the hospital and get seen by a doctor the same day. Granted there was a wait time, but who cares? I also got scans that would have likely put me in crippling debt had I not been in Canada. I was blessed to have been diagnosed, to have been validated in those moments by the medical team, rather than dismissed as being dramatic. It was a stark contrast from the care I had been receiving in hospitals in previous years.
I’m still waiting for treatment and a full diagnosis that can only be done after surgery, but I should be “hopeful”.
Except that I am constantly feeling guilty for even being able to seek this treatment. Countless women who could have been saved from the violence, were now gone. I feel guilty because this violence is either funded by the same government who guarantees our healthcare system or our government chooses to normalize the violence for their own gain.
My tax dollars, fund violence. Not by my desire. Not by my vote. I’ve signed petitions to Parliament. I’ve called and written to government representatives, not nearly as much as I should have, but I did and I was always met with the same generic response “AB really cares about your opinions, and this will be brought to their attention” or some auto-response like that.
So, how can I not feel guilty? When my peers, my sisters in Islam and in this world, are suffering a fate that could have been my own?
That’s why I struggle to feel optimistic about the future, be it my own or others. I strongly feel that no human is above another. We all deserve the same access to safety and comfort and a decent quality of life.
The only reason that world peace isn’t a reality is because of people who think they deserve better and are above others.
There are no ethical billionaires. Why do they even exist? I could not tell you.
My literal thinking expects that the world powers at would find fault in this system and try to rectify it so that equity and equality may actually become part of our society. Maybe that is naïve of me, to assume that people would just do as they say, to live up to the values they claim to have.
Thus, my struggle with trust and optimism will likely never end.
Salam.