Page 45 - Why Do You Deceive Yourself ?

What Lies Do People Deceive Themselves with? 43
Of course, the concept of thinking means different things to dif-
ferent people. What some people regard as thinking is thinking about
the future. For them, making plans for the future and investing in it is
what thinking is all about. Others see thinking as an accounting for the
past. They spend all their time considering what they have gained and
lost in the past. Others believe that it is useful to think only about
today and not at all about tomorrow. This is their view of life. They live
from day to day and have no definite purpose or path to follow. When
they get up in the morning they think about what to have for breakfast

and when they are going to work they think about how to get there.
They think about who to go out for lunch with, what to cook for their
guests in the evening and which shares it will be profitable to buy. The
next day they wonder whether they will be able to find tickets for the
football match or not, or who they should take to the office party. In
short, the minds of most people are continually filled with ordinary,
superficial, everyday thoughts.
Millions of people on the face of the Earth live out their lives with
these and similar thoughts. For them, what they see is what is real and
they are not really interested in thinking about deeper matters and
going beyond the mundane. However, what we mean by "thinking"
here is deep reflection about the purpose of human life, the proofs of
the creation around us, the creative perfection of Allah that is apparent
in the universe, about death, the Hereafter and the Day of Judgment.

This is where most people are lacking.
Consider this: People are educated for years and become biolo-
gists, engineers or doctors, even professors, but they never once think
about how they came to be created out of nothing or that they might
exist for a definite purpose. They write theses, achieve doctorates, be-
come faculty members or doctors who bring people back to health or