You don’t get to choose

https://youtu.be/Oj37__JfVwc

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honour of the Prophets and Messengers, Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions, and peace and blessings be upon him, and upon many, many.
Brothers and Sisters, I want to talk to you about a very important thing, which is one of the major sicknesses of our modern society, and that is the illusion of choice.
The illusion of choice.
I say that because somewhere we have been given this false impression that we get to choose.
And people try to use this where they can.
I don't want to sit next to that person.
I don't want to learn from this teacher or that teacher.
I don't like my neighbour, and so on and so on. Right?
The reality of life is that in life, if you are alive, you have no choices.
You have no choices.
You do not get to choose your circumstances.
Your choices are with how you choose to deal with those circumstances.
Please understand this.
You do not get to choose your circumstances.
What you do get to choose is how to deal with the circumstances.
With the circumstances that are given to you.
You don't get to choose whether you are rich or poor.
You get to choose the kind of life you need to lead if you want to be rich or if you want to be poor.
Now you might say, who would want to be poor?
Every sensible person I know in this world wants to be poor.
Poor not as in a homeless person with a begging bowl standing on the street corner,
but poor as in a person with minimum assets, minimum impediments, minimum encumbrances,
living a very comfortable but minimalist life.
That is not a sign of stupidity.
It's a sign of amazing intelligence.
So you don't get to choose.
For example, you don't get to choose whether you will be healthy or sick.
But you get to choose the kind of life that you will need to lead if you want to be healthy.
You don't get to choose whether you will be successful or not.
You don't get to choose who your neighbors will be.
You don't get to choose who your neighbors will be.
You don't get to choose who sits next to you or on the same bus as you or on the same train as you.
You don't get to choose who are your classmates in school when you go to school.
You don't get to choose who are your teachers.
But in all of these situations, you get to choose how you will behave as a neighbor,
which will make no matter which neighbor it is, a good neighbor.
The same neighbor has two houses, one on either side of his house.
And you will get to choose whether your neighbor, even though intrinsically he might be a nasty person,
that he will be the best, sweetest person to you while he continues to be the nasty person to the neighbor on the other side of the fence.
This is the choice you have.
You don't get to choose who are your classmates in school, but you get to choose what you want to do with those classmates in school,
which makes you a better person.
You don't get to choose who are your classmates in school, which makes them the best friends that you will ever have probably in your life,
as well as very beneficial for each other's learning.
Because that's why you go to school for.
You don't go to school to hang out.
You don't go to school to learn.
And you don't go to school to learn book learning.
You go to school to learn how to deal with people.
Please get this into your head.
Don't think that you have been to university for four years.
Therefore, you have now a degree.
And therefore, you must now be made the managing director of the corporation.
No, sorry.
When I hire a graduate from university, I don't care anything about what kind of degree he has, right?
Or how well he did in that degree.
What I'm looking at is that here is a person.
The fact that you have a degree is evidence for me to show that you showed up everywhere.