picture in my mind

I've been having a second round of Shaykh Hamza's Refinement of the Heart, and he quoted Robert Frost:

The Fear of God

If you should rise from Nowhere up to Somewhere, 
From being No one up to being Someone, 
Be sure to keep repeating to yourself 
You owe it to an arbitrary god 
Whose mercy to you rather than to others 
Won’t bear to critical examination. 
Stay unassuming. If for lack of license 
To wear the uniform of who you are, 
You should be tempted to make up for it 
In a subordinating look or toe, 
Beware of coming too much to the surface 
And using for apparel what was meant 
To be the curtain of the inmost soul.


It's a lovely reminder. Often, when we've been privileged with something -- like brains or good looks or having succeeded in a profession or attained a certain coveted status, we tend to self-congratulate, as though such an achievement is a validation of the wonders of our own abilities and inherent genius. We forget that whatever gifts we possess could have easily been bestowed on someone else, and in truth, you had virtually no hand in the fortunate circumstances of your life. This reminds one to be constantly humble and grateful; one's fortunes, and in fact one's entire life, is a gift and loan from a seemingly arbitrary God. The lowest level of gratitude one can demonstrate is not to be haughty about it, I guess. 

This also made me recall something from Cassandra Claire's Draco Sinister, heheh. :)

...but think how much worse it would be if life was fair, and all the awful things that happened to us happened because we actually deserve them. I, for one, take great comfort in the completely impersonal hostility of the universe.

Really, it would be horrible if we deserve every little thing that happens to us in this world. It means little African kids deserve to die of AIDS, for instance. I think complete justice comes later, eh; not in this world.

And I shall add a little extra here of Draco's angsty, amusing rant:

"Why should you get a choice?" he almost shouted. "I don't! I don't get a choice about my family or my life or my destiny, if I've even really got one. And I don't get a choice about loving you, even though I personally think you were put here on this earth to give me pain. I mean, I know I'm not a nice person, but what the fuck did I do in my past life to deserve this? I must have run down a cartload of nuns while driving a stolen carriage on my way to sell drugs to school children."