Building ihsaan

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For the men who went back to Imam Husain - Juwayn bin Malik, Harith bin Amri al Qays, Hulas bin Umro, Zahir bin Saleem, Abdullah bin Bashir, Abd ar Rahman bin Masud, Umar bin Dhabi'a, Qasim bin Habib al Azdi, Nu'man bin Umro, Sa'd bin Harith, Abu al Hatuf bin Harith, Yazid bin al Kindi, Bakr bin Hai, Hur bin Yazid al Riyahi and many more of the hundreds of men forgotten in Karbala.

Ihsaan - to strive for perfection/beauty/excellence. I had thought that striving meant going forward - improving ourselves through the passing of time, but it doesn't have to be limited by the laws of this dimension. I wish we could go back in time to when striving towards perfection literally took form when Hur strived towards Aba Abdillah, as he pulled his legs from one side of the battlefield to the other.
And we can.
We can strive backwards through time not physically, but intellectually and emotionally as our minds are not bound by time (we can travel through memories) and our hearts are not bound by space (we can travel by love).

And so, let's break the container which holds time, collect the fallen sand, and rebuild Tuf. This Muharram, when our minds travel back by love, let's be conscious of the strides Hur took and follow him to Imam Husain.

To build ihsaan is to build a fortress of excellence within us. And as humans with minds and hearts, we can build this fortress by striving back in time to the moment Hur took his first free step.

Weirdest sources of inspiration. Credit is due to the artist of Braid (the video game)