https://x.com/PseudoMonious/status/1788381671177519546
There's a tweet going around about sharing your silly little interests with your parents and I'm still thinking about it, about how my mom treats my silly little fandoms and my attachments with fictional characters, fiction in general.
I say my mom has "deep-seated issues with things she considers 'childish'", and that she'd probably make fun of my interests if she didn't raise someone who would stand her ground and clap back, as I am. I don't want to delve too far into what her issues specifically are, but I do want to explore why she and people like her feel that way. Fair warning, I talk a lot about religion here.
Part of it is of course getting older and facing your own mortality. My family is religious muslims (myself included) so we do think a lot about what comes after, how our actions today reflect on what might happen later. And like, it makes some sense to think these little interests are "beneath" us. That we shouldn't have placed our attention on them when we should be working on our faith more. Sure.
Sure, but I reject the notion that to work on our faith means abandoning worldly desires, worldly curiosity. Of course our interests are insignificant in the grander scheme of things but is not everything insignificant? Something is only as significant as the attention you put into it, and we as human beings are capable of so much attention. We can care about a lot of things at once, even contradictory ones. You can love something while hating it, as you would love your parents for raising you even when you blame them for all the things that they fuck up.
When wondering about our place in the universe, I keep thinking back of that one line from our book (Quran 2:30 if you want to look), how humans are created as khalifah of the world. Someone with authority, a leader, a viceroy, a steward of the world. And how can you be its steward, if you close your eyes to what it is? How can you take care of something if you don't love it? And the world is vast.
This line is usually referred to in discussion about environmentalism, how we gotta take care of the planet even as we take partake in its fruits. But we as human beings don't only live in the natural world, we expand it. The civilization we create is also part of the world, all our architecture and technology and culture. And, yes, stories. Our shared fictions. Our languages. Our art and music. Our hobbies. These too are part of the world.
To reject them in favour of some nebulous concept of faith, for some nebulous vision of the afterlife, is I think to miss half the point of the faith itself. There is nothing wrong to partake in the fruits of the world; there is, in fact, wisdom in it, in understanding how the fruits are made. How the seeds are sown and nurtured, how they grow and bear the fruits we so enjoy, and how we can be better at taking care of them, at exercising the authority we are given.
So even from a religious standpoint there is nothing "cringe" about enjoying things, all the little things in life that might seem insignificant. It's only cringe if you only focus on one thing that you abandon all the other things. You don't abandon a person in need because you're watching your favorite show or whatever. You don't waste your money on buying candles when your family is starving, but you can be an avid candle collector if it's not otherwise detrimental to you. Go ahead and analyse all the scents a candle can make, keep track of all the candlemakers in your area. Doing so, to love a part of the world, is to love the world itself, and to love the world is to appreciate all of God's creations as well.
https://x.com/PseudoMonious/status/1788381673002037668
