Food for thought
Before I can give you what you need to think about, I need to share some information.
Every day, the human body and the soul within it perform more than 10,000 actions, and the precise total number of actions can never truly be counted. I decided to pick 65 actions that are done every day for my example.
There is also a hadith that narrates the story of a man who worshipped Allah for 500 years. On the Day of Judgment, he asked Allah to judge him by his actions. When Allah compared 500 years’ worth of his good deeds to just one of his eyes, the eye weighed more than the 500 years of good deeds. Allah then commanded the angels to send him to Hell, but he asked Allah to forgive him and send him to Jannah, and Allah entered him into Jannah.
So that one blessing that Allah gave him was greater than all the good deeds he had ever done.
If we compare ourselves to this man, we do not live nearly as long as him, and we cannot do as many good deeds as he did. That means we cannot expect our good deeds alone to allow us to enter Jannah.
Only Allah’s mercy can.
So if that is the case, then do our lives reflect the life of someone who is striving to earn Allah’s mercy?
P.S.: Good deeds still matter
65 Actions I chose:
- Breathing (continuous, thousands of cycles per day)
- Blinking
- Eye focusing (adjusting lens for distance)
- Eye saccades (rapid eye movements while scanning)
- Maintaining posture (micro muscle corrections)
- Shifting body position (small adjustments while sitting/standing)
- Heart beating (automatic but constant action)
- Swallowing saliva
- Digesting food (continuous internal process)
- Regulating body temperature (sweating/shivering internally)
- Hormone release and regulation
- Neural firing (brain signaling)
- Subconscious pattern recognition
- Filtering sensory input (ignoring irrelevant stimuli)
- Hearing background sounds
- Visual processing of environment
- Internal self-talk (thinking in words)
- Emotional micro-reactions (small shifts in feeling)
- Decision making (even tiny ones like where to look)
- Habit execution (automatic routines)
- Memory recall (small references throughout the day)
- Predicting immediate future (what happens next)
- Hand/finger micro-movements
- Adjusting grip strength
- Walking steps (if active during the day)
- Balancing body while moving
- Coordinating limbs
- Facial micro-expressions
- Reading (if applicable, scanning words constantly)
- Listening and interpreting speech
- Speaking (forming words, adjusting tone)
- Pausing during speech
- Typing or tapping (phone/computer use)
- Scrolling (phone behavior—very high repetition today)
- Checking environment for safety
- Social awareness (reading others’ reactions)
- Micro-stress responses (tiny spikes of tension)
- Relaxation responses (small releases of tension)
- Urge suppression (not acting on impulses)
- Attention shifting (changing focus constantly)
- Task switching
- Planning next action (even unconsciously)
- Evaluating outcomes (“was that good or bad”)
- Reinforcing habits (repeating behaviors automatically)
- Learning through repetition (small adjustments)
- Energy regulation (feeling tired/alert shifts)
- Hunger signaling
- Thirst signaling
- Scratching or touching body
- Adjusting clothing
- Checking time or progress
- Reacting to notifications
- Micro-rewards seeking (dopamine-driven behaviors)
- Comparing current state to expectations
- Correcting errors (small fixes in actions)
- Orienting body toward stimuli (turning head, eyes)
- Internal visualization (imagining scenarios)
- Language processing (understanding meaning)
- Self-monitoring (“what am I doing right now?”)
- Habitual phone checking
- Repositioning hands/arms
- Breathing pattern shifts (faster/slower subconsciously)
- Muscle tension adjustments
- Eye blinking rate changes based on focus
- Subconscious memory encoding (storing experiences)