May 01 , 2020
Keep Throw Change
I coined the KTD acronym and Marie Kondo became the millionaire. Decades ago yielding to my near-OCD clutter-phobia, I created a method to deal with organizing rooms. It is simple and works well: you start from one corner of the room and for each item ask the question of whether you should keep, throw or donate it. Marie Kondo has the exotic Japanese twist to basically the same premise. And I certainly don’t identify with the rolling up of clothes instead of regularly folding them that she does.
With the Covid-19 crisis we can extrapolate the KTD practice to what has suddenly become a massive individual, national and global issue. And the KTD can become KTC, keep, throw, change.
Individual
I want to keep the breakfasts with my mother with no background pressure of things to do. Also the drives with my family in which the conversations are deeper and more spiritual as the content has shriveled, being that interaction with friends has gone down, and mundane stuff has exited.
Health and time
Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said that the two most valuable things we have are health and time. And I want to treasure these. I had a schedule before Ramadan and now that fasting is here, the schedule has to change a bit but productivity, contentment and joy lie in creating another schedule and then dutifully following it. Being near-OCD, multitasking, female and physician have been assets to me. And though time now does not run away from me like it used to, I want to keep valuing it and harnessing it, and keep it front and center, as life slowly returns to normal.
Rushing around
We’ve got to get rid of the rushing around. A lot of us realize that all we were doing was jogging on the spot. We’ll need to choose how we will fill our day. A conscious, perhaps a written plan, is vital to reintroducing items in our schedule. Life has this bad habit of descending into automatic chaos unless you rein it in, train it. Whether it is office or house work, it is essentially endless and can swallow you whole if you’re not careful. We must be controllers of our time, not let it control us. Which reminds me of another Mahjabeenism: if you don’t lead life, it tends to lead you.
My needs are not that many
Many years ago I was talking to a physician colleague who is also in solo practice. We were discussing the challenges of practice and not wanting to be bought out by hospitals and dealing with practice finances. I asked her how she made it, as she only worked in the office, and didn’t do hospital rounds. Her response has stayed with me and I dredge it up when the going gets tough. She said: my needs are not that many. Cloistered at home we realize that our needs are really not that many, and as we return to normalcy, not immediately expanding our needs is paramount.
Life trajectory
All this time has afforded us a unique, albeit forced, opportunity to assess the trajectory of our lives. Professionally and personally we can assess and decide what combination of keep, throw, change we should use.
Qur’an immersion
For years I have wanted to reach a point of understanding the Qur’an when it is recited or read. Even before the Covid-19 crisis, I’ve been working with the Quranic app and it is amazing in the way that it teaches Quranic Arabic. The current cloistering situation lends another unique opportunity for Qur’an immersion. Previously in Ramadan iftar parties and taraweeh prayer really ate into the already chopped up day. I’ve discovered another great book that takes each Qur’anic Arabic word and places the English meaning below it The Glorious Qur’an Word to Word translation. Hopefully when Ramadan ends I will continue to have a daily relationship with the Qur’an.
National
Daily condolences
Pre-Covid I would write a condolence message once a month or maximally every two weeks. Muslims write the Qur’anic text of “to God we belong and to Him is our return”. Last week I had pasted it in Arabic calligraphy to someone. This week I have sent condolences twice each day. It first started with deaths narrated on television, then of relatives of friends, then distant relatives. I dread how it is closing in. This has to stop.
Social inequity
The tales are harrowing. “I used to earn $250,000 a year and now it is zero” said a radio interviewee. “Thank you for donating to our fitness club” is gratitude from a business owner who needs donations to get through this crisis. Seeing the miles-long car lines in Texas to get donated food is difficult to process in our minds. Is this America? A Mercedes in the line gets its turn. The owner can get his car payment deferred for a month or two but has clearly run out of money for groceries. It seems people have become paupers overnight. The factors that have led to the tremendous inequality in our society need to be redressed.
Stampede through the eye of a needle
The CARES Act 2020 through the Paycheck Protection Program was intended to help small businesses across America. But appears that no safeguards were put in place and the stampede through the eye of the needle got sharks across America, with slick lawyers and smooth relationships with bankers, to run it dry within a week. 71 publicly traded companies received $300 million of the $346 billion that was allocated to help small businesses leaving many small businesses out in the cold. Even though payroll documentation has to be provided, and the assistance was meant for companies with less than 500 employees, the loophole that Shake Shack used was of having less than 500 employees in one location. Due to public condemnation, Shake Shack has returned the $10 million assistance it got, but the other billionaires are enjoying the money. This ever-widening gap between rich and poor also needs to be addressed urgently, and quickly become a thing of the past.
The great equalizer
Covid-19 takes the rich, famous, regular and poor, and its humiliation of America is hard to process. Regression to the status of a developing country, and the dubious distinction of being the world’s Covid hotspot is ignominious. Americans deserve better than the performance of the federal government having essentially no stockpile of ventilators and personal protective equipment and the lack of an integrated federal and state response to tackle the pandemic. Our disaster response needs urgent and intense overhaul.
Medicare for all
The first domino has fallen. More than 16 million Americans have filed for unemployment which terminates their health insurance. Our health care system was already very flawed, leaving large segments of the population uninsured due to the ridiculously high monthly insurance premiums. That flaw is now going to involve a large swath of the population. Medicare for all is the only way that the sequelae of Covid-19 can be addressed.
Tyranny
If a person in any organization had suggested that disinfectant be inhaled, ingested and injected, they would have been fired on the spot. There is a rise in emergency department visits of people that have done exactly what was suggested three days ago and the number of calls to Poison Control have skyrocketed!
Tariq Jameel too
Maulana Tariq Jameel is a Pakistani preacher a’la Billy Graham. He is charismatic and has a large following in Pakistan. His lectures have been attempts at humor, with superficial and distorted religious teachings. The fake-crying really gets me. As does the fact that seemingly educated people, including Prime Minister Imran Khan and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, just love him. His latest edict is that the Covid-19 pandemic occurred because women are shameless and not properly clothed. Religion in Pakistan, as elsewhere, is a multimillion-dollar industry and especially in Ramadan, the money really flows. Revolutionary poet Habib Jalib has a beautiful verse:
Muflis jo agar tan ki qaba baich raha hai
Waiz bhi to minbar pey dua baich raha hai
Doanoan ko hai darpaish sawaal apney shikam ka
Ik apni khudi, aik khuda baich raha hai
The poverty stricken is selling his clothes
And the preacher sells prayers at the altar
Both are faced with the question of hunger
One is selling his self-respect, the other is selling God.
There is no priesthood or confession in Islam; it is entirely deeds based. On the Day of Judgement, we will be presented with a pictorial representation of our worldly life and our accounting will be individual, with no parents or preachers intervening. The accounting of religious clerics however will be a notch, or many, above the simple individual accounting that we will endure, because they have the ability to guide or misguide large groups of people. Previously the flock was restricted to the mosque and its surroundings; with the advent of technology, it now is millions at a time worldwide. It behooves the likes of Tariq Jameel to remember that frank misguidance of millions of people will be an insurmountable obstacle on the Day of Judgement. Pakistanis would be well served to listen to the calm, logical, scientific and current-day applicable lectures and interpretations of Javed Ahmad Ghamdi
Global
Climate change
The videos and photos of the skyline of cities around the world since the Covid-19 quarantine are quite stunning. The clarity of the air and the chirping of the birds is such a balm in these troubling times. As the pandemic subsides the world must actively decide on what industries it will re-allow and the massive polluters it should not. Passivity in this regard should be avoided. We have damaged the planet enough; it is now a time of introspection and revision.
Cooperation
Cooperation among world health bodies such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations, The World Bank etc. are vital so that we truly work together as we are all in this together. The bullying and threats first to the United Nations and then to the World Health Organization should cease. If it is one thing that Covid-19 has demonstrated is that it will attack nations of all stripes and the best response is a concerted and not divided one.
We are taught that after fasting in the month of Ramadan, or after Hajj the Muslim pilgrimage, one should work toward and notice a change in ourselves. Similarly, we should keep the valuable, discard the unnecessary, and change some issues/people as we emerge from our Covid-19 quarantines. And as documented in world history and known individually, if we don’t learn from our mistakes, we are made to repeat them. The price next time might be incalculable.
(Mahjabeen Islam is an addiction and family medicine physician practicing in Toledo Ohio. - mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com)
