We are living in an age of immense connectivity & digital entertainment – multiple streaming shows, countless social media platforms, 24/7 newsfeeds, all instantly available at your fingertips.

The technological advancement that enabled social connectivity & ease of access to information came with a huge prize: mental distress. How does access to information and social connectivity cause mental derangement in the human psyche?

Distractibility, or a fleeting attention span! The seventeenth-century Catholic philosopher Blaise Pascal once said, “All of man’s problems arise from an inability to sit quietly in a room.”

But from what are we absolutely distracted? “Verily in the remembrance of God do hearts find rest! “ Chapter 13:28. It is indeed this state of distractibility from God, that is the root cause of most of the mental health issues that we are facing.

God Himself revealed in His Book that the peace of mind that we are longing for lies in our remembrance of Him. He also says in another verse:

“And whoever turns away from My remembrance – indeed, he will have a depressed [i.e., difficult] life, and We will gather [i.e., raise] him on the Day of Resurrection blind.”  Chapter 20:124

We usually tend to blame our distractibility on social media & streaming channels — but these are all just proximate causes of distraction. We blame them, while the root causes stay hidden as explained by Nir Eyal in his book Indistractable.

For the past ten to fifteen years, there has been a huge increase in the degree to which that human vulnerability has been exploited for profit. Huge enterprises, and entire economic sectors, are dedicated to preying on our attention and focus.

They have merged the sciences of Psychology, algorithms & information technologies to create habit-forming products that hook us onto their infinite pool of content.

They don’t call it “surfing the web for nothing”. In reality, this is what’s happening. Nothingness! Just think about the idea of a Web! What do you do with a web? A spider knows what it does with a web. He captures flies, liquidates their innards, then suck the life out of them, and then there’s just a shell lying there on the web.

This is exactly what surfing the web does to you. Also, the interesting thing about the sport of surfing is that you’re just trying to stay on the wave. The wave has you. You’re not controlling the wave, the wave is controlling you. You’re just trying to stay afloat.

The first step in combating this is to be conscious of the fact that our desire for comfort may easily bleed into general apathy and the potential to be manipulated leading to our attention being bought and sold in destructive ways.

Hence it is important to be mindful of our attention.

The best way to be mindful is to delve into the origins of the words.

Let’s get into the Etymology of some of these words.

Advertisement: The word “advert” means to turn towards, so an advertisement means to divert your attention to something the ad campaign (a military term) wants you to be mindful of.

Distraction: What exactly do you mean by “distraction”? One of the definitions we find in the dictionary is “mental distress or derangement”. Isn’t it interesting that we also live in one of the most mentally deranged periods in human history, with people unsure of what the ultimate purpose of life is?

Another meaning in the dictionary for distraction is “that which divides attention”. The word “ Decide” in English comes from a word “decidere” which means to cutoff. Why would “decide” mean “to cut off”? because what you decide cuts off everything else. Once you’ve made your decision you’re actually cutting off other things. So make conscious decisions on where you spend your time.

The Arabic word for distraction is ‘ilha‘, which means to pull someone into entertainment. Therefore, whatever receives our attention influences the reality we experience.

Entertainment, according to the dictionary, means “agreeable occupation of the mind, diversion, amusement.”

Who or what is occupying your mind? Our Prophet ﷺ occupied his own mind with the remembrance of God. He said, “Whoever makes his concerns (what he or she is mindful of) one concern (God), God will take care of all his other concerns.”

One of the Arabic words for mindfulness is “muhtamm“, which means “what one is concerned with.”

The Arabic word for attention is ‘tiba‘, which means to be awake and aware. It also means to devote. So We should try to be mindful and present in order to direct our attention & devotion to God.
Source: The Mindful Messenger ﷺ, Hamza Yusuf, Zaytuna College

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💬Quote of the Week

🧭Weekly Compass

🎙 Podcast Episode:  How to Train Your Thoughts & Tame the Hidden Dragons With Dr. Daniel Amen & Kwik Brain with Jim Kwik.

🖊 Blog:  Devil’s Tricks. An excellent take on “Distraction” from a Psycho Spiritual perspective on how human’s are lured to distraction by the devil.

🧠Food for Thought

Or were they created without there being anything, or are they themselves the creators?
―Quran 52:35

📖Read & Rise

📚 Book Summary: Dopamine Detox by Thibaut Mueriss. This book explains the role of the Neurotransmitter “Dopamine” in our behavior & how its functioning has been hijacked in modern world.

📝 Article: Pavlov’s Experiment: The Reason Why You Are Distracted. In this article Omer Mohammed revisits the Pavlov’s Experiment & explains how environments trigger our behaviors.

📺Video:  I Left Social Media For 14 Days : Afterbreaking his phone accidentally, Omer was forced to undergo a social detox. In this video he shares his experience on dopamine detox after quitting social media.

💉Weekly dose of Inspiration

Book Lady of Dubai: This article tells the story of a voracious reader and book enthusiast who went on to become a successful entrepreneur in Dubai.

🛠️ Tools for Thought

Readwise: Do you want to remember everything you read ? Then check out this app named Readwise  to grow wiser and retain books better.

Readwise helps you get the most out of what you read by making it fun & easy to revisit your highlights from all your favorite reading platforms in one place

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