You Stop Knocking

Some lessons you hear when you're younger don't land until life catches up. The words stay, but you still haven't lived enough to feel them. Then years pass, and one day everything finally makes sense. I had a moment like that recently. My mind keeps going back to an afternoon in Ustadha Amina's class years ago. She read us a piece of wisdom from Kitab Al-Hikam by Ibn Ata'illah and told us we probably wouldn't understand it yet. But she said we would, when the time was right.

The wisdom reads:

مَتى أَوْحَشَكَ مِنْ خَلْقِهِ . . فَاعْلَمْ : أَنَّهُ يُرِيدُ أَنْ يَفْتَحَ لَكَ بَابَ الْأُنْسِ بِهِ

"When Allah makes you feel distant or alienated from His creation, know that He actually wants to open for you the door of intimacy with Him."

Ustadha explained that when someone feels alone, or like a stranger even among our own friends, it's not a sign that something is wrong with us. Allah is the One who placed that feeling there to pull us back to Him. This kind of loneliness isn't there to break us from the inside. It's an invitation to turn toward Him instead of wasting it by drowning everything out. "Don't run to people first," she said. "Run to Allah first. Be happy with Allah. Truly."

I thought about her words again the other day while scrolling through my phone. We stay online all day now, but somehow we still feel unseen. All these group chats and notifications are going off, but we can sit there and feel completely empty. You know that feeling of standing at a packed train station. Surrounded by a sea of people, rushing past you, yet you remain almost invisible. Socializing starts taking up so much energy, and conversations that used to feel warm suddenly lose their life. Dealing with people becomes exhausting even when you don't hate anyone. We end up drained from pretending like everything is okay.

We often treat this restlessness with people like a problem that needs to be solved by finding better company. In Al-Hikam, this restlessness is understood as a signal. Scholars call this al-wahshi, a kind of wildness that makes a person feel like they don't belong. It's the opposite of uns, that deep sense of intimacy and belonging. Sometimes Allah uses al-wahshi to quiet things down so He can open bāb al-uns for us, the door of intimacy with Him. The word for human being, insān, shares its root with uns. Maybe that's why no amount of attention from other people ever fully settles us. If we try to satisfy that need entirely through other flawed humans, we end up feeling homeless. Allah pulls us back from the crowd through moments of rejection or sudden emptiness. He's clearing away expectations that were never meant to hold us. He wants us to stop chasing approval from faces that are as tired and lost as we are.

This isolation is a necessary stage for the heart to grow. I remember Ustadha describing how faith starts out like a small flame. When a fire is new and fragile, you have to shield it from the wind. You cup your hands around it, maybe even take it to a quiet corner, because a strong gust will kill it. That's what solitude sometimes is. Allah shielding a heart that's still too easy to put out. You're not supposed to hide forever. Once the fire gets big enough, the wind won't kill it anymore. It'll only make the fire grow. But you need that first bit of shelter.

And then, you go back.

You go back to people, but you carry a different kind of presence. You don't do good things because you're scared they'll leave, or because you're chasing a thank you. You do it like a mother who gets up early to make steamed bread for her kid. She's not even hungry for that food herself. She just knows her kid loves it. She might not have slept well, but she prepares it with care because the love she has for the child simply flows through her hands. That's how relationships change when the heart is full of Allah. You don't show up to take because you're already filled.

So when the people around you start feeling distant and nothing really lands the way it used to, it might not be something you have to fight. Let the silence hang there. Just sit for a moment instead of reaching for something to cover it up. That feeling of isolation isn't an empty hole you need to cram something into. It's more like a door that's been waiting for you to open it. And afterwards, you walk back into the world without needing to knock on every door, begging to be let in.