There are different kinds of love in life. Some are wrong and some are of the right kind. We have been told all our lives that blood bonds are the closest, most sincere forms of love you will ever find. However, I believe that is not correct, growing up and through my share of experience of life, I believe love is something unique, something so beautiful that it transcends bonds. Pure love is rare, it does not demand touch but rather care, respect and compassion. Love is the purest feeling ever, a connection between two souls, whether five miles apart or a millions. Distance never matters, what matters is commitment and your worth in the eyes of others. Love is a phenomena so beautiful and intricate, one should not search it in humans, as it is meant for Allah (The Almighty), when we love Allah, the love for His creation comes to us naturally.

Hazrat Ibrahim (A.S.) was asked to sacrifice his beloved son Hazrat Ismael (A.S.) for Allah’s sake. As Hazrat Ismael (A.S) was his son, how dear is a son to his father? However, Hazrat Ibrahim (A.S.) knew that the love of Allah transcends all the love of the bonds in this world. He was ready and was about to sacrifice his son, but Allah knew his pain. He is more close to us than the juggler vein, anything we do, He knows before us, He knows of our intentions and He knows of the pain each soul goes through. Allah knew of the huge sacrifice Hazrat Ibrahim (A.S.) was going to make and Allah, the Most Generous, replaced Hazrat Ismael (A.S.) with a lamb. Centuries have been passed yet from that day till the present Muslims commemorate and honor this act of obedience of Hazrat Ibrahim (A.S.) on Eidul-Azha .This is what happens when you hold onto to Allah and leave the love of this word behind you, Allah will bless you with what is best for you, for surely, He is the best of the planners and our minds cannot possibly comprehend His magnificent reason and timing.

As humans, when we come into this world we tend to associate ourselves with certain ideologies and people. According to a famous quote of Lev S. Vygotsky: “Through others we become ourselves” in our lives we often tend to imitate others around us and we desire to pla(y)giarize their lifestyle. Professor Thomas Cousineau in his lecture “Plagiarism Unbound: Borrowing Desire in The Great Gatsby” talks of playgerism as something which inculcates the idea of copying someone you admire and being publically open about it. Humans, then tend to borrow desires from whom they admire. The desire is not ones own yet they are formed by those we idealize. In this corrupt materialistic world, sadly it is petrifying to see how the Muslim ummah has made wrong ideals. Humanity has fallen into the deep shallows of the sea. In the absence of spirituality and presence of social evils the world has become a Wasteland. When we make humans and their way of living our ideals of lifestyle, we borrow their desires. We become passive dreamers who desire according to the lust of the eyes, through things that attract our "Nafs". 

According to Rene Girard, Human desire objects that are suggested to them by models around them. Now according to professor Coussineau two types of models are present: Competitive models and non-competitive models. The ideologies and people we idealize become our models. For example, if we say we want to be like a certain famous person, some artist etc, that would be non-competitive model. However, the competitive models are what are prevalent in our society. We see our neighbor wearing a dress of a certain brand and we would desire not only to have that  same brand but the one even better than that. Similarly, when we see the luxurious lifestyles of people around us we are lost in the amalgam of this hypocritical world. We tend to desire things which are not needed by our soul but what attracts the "Qalb" and its lower desires. This make humans go astray. We forget the love of Allah, we diverge from the right path, making this "Dunya" as our final home, we indulge ourselves in a journey to attain desires which are borrowed, which ideologies prevalent in the society have conditioned our minds to subconsciously desire. When we desire such things, expectations are given birth and expectations are the root cause of all the pain in the world. Humans will never reach your expectations, that is why one should love all but in the limitations set by Allah and expect nothing in return, for the most beautiful reward will be given by Allah, our Creator, the Master. Do not get lost in this world as its desires would only cause you pain.

                   . 

According to T.S. Eliot, the objective correlative is a way of expression of an emotion in art, through a set of objects, a situation or a chain of events which shall be the formula of that emotion. Therefore, in my view, in the present state when man feels depressed and confused, when the realms of heart have been isolated and have become cold, when all seems lost, one should not despair in the mercy of Allah. In these depressing times our objective correlative should be Namaz (Salah), it should be the Quran. We have developed primordial lacks in our lives (never-ending desires) as one desire gets full filled another originates. Dwell into the realms of Islam, see the gems of simplicity, and borrow the desires of the prophets and their companions. The heart of darkness will shine with luminous light, the kind that is rare to find. These devastating times demand us to be simple, let us reflect onto where we stand in our relation with the Almighty. Let us love the Almighty above all, let us be practical in our love for Him. When we will  do this, we will be the best version of ourselves and we will attain the respect of all those around us. We will attain the purest form of love which will be the love of Allah.