I can not help but feel an grinding and uncomfortable tension between acceptance and ambition. I have only recently learned to be accepting, though it’s never been my way nor has it ever really made sense to me, which is a posturing that so quickly sets you up to get battered by what’s ahead.

It’s sort of exhausting as you get older to stay in the ring battling against your understanding of yourself and your ceilings because the answer is so obviously that there is only really so far you can go and eventually you will have to slow down so the only way to win is to decide when you have won. Many times my answer has been and it continues to be “not yet”.

As a way to get away with my self-imposed Faustian bargain I have maintained a practice of keeping track of things that I am losing, or perhaps not keeping particularly well. It’s normal to lose things over time as you grow in different directions and you lose contact with people, lose interest in some activities and favor others and so on. I have shed parts of myself I do not like but I have not yet defeated them all. My gamble is that I can get away with it all and be intact.

How will these battles intensify as I continue to age?

The tension transforms. I recognize the futility of the battle but I am terrified of giving it up. Will I have done enough when it is time?

It has also occurred to me how heavily I rely on this allusion to battling or fighting and it’s also not uncommon to describe overcoming any sort of challenge by distilling that concept to either beating up or getting beat up by an opponent. This is fundamentally a Western framework - Nietzschean in how the Will to Power would have us overcome the suffering we endure through vigorous action and Hegellian in that we are constantly evolving by coming into contact with that which we deem adversarial. These frameworks have certainly left an impression on me but I feel that in the context of what I am experiencing or navigating, they no longer serve me.

Other frameworks handle this differently. The one most pertinent to my experience is Islam. Indeed a large concept in Islam is جهاد النفس jihad al nafs (the war of the self) so this martial imagery continues but it is redirected to oneself instead of a disembodied “other self”. Even more resonant is the emphasis on توكل tawakkul, which is the belief in the heart that الله will support in bringing favor while repelling harm, as a sort of enhancement or an armor* that you would wear in order to move forward with intention and security.

Even here my reliance on this martial imagery betrays my wish to dismantle it, but what I am understanding of this idea is that challenge and difficulty is not an opponent, it’s a condition that you exist in with dignity*. *توكل *tawakkul *is like water that you bathe in to coat your skin in dignity that can’t be eroded.

I tried to research other frameworks for this struggle in other cultures and in Eastern and African philosophical traditions they do exist. Islam, save for more obscure schools of thought that are largely irrelevant in common practice, seems to be more of a reframing of the same framework. The concept of توحيد *tawhid *in mainstream Islamic belief is that الله is one indivisible thing, as distinct from His creations that are unto themselves divided into several categories. This creates the possibility of conflict to exist [the antagonism between one and another], though the framework of conflict being necessary to navigate the world may not necessarily be emphasized in this tradition.

Ibn Arabi takes this a step further by extrapolating the concept of وحدة الوجود wihdat alwujud from the fundamental توحيد tawhid. Whereas the original concept suggests that الله is one indivisible thing, وحدة الوجود then posits that الله is everything.

The Sufi belief is that there is a single Truth to reality and that Truth is الله. We experience what may be considered خيال khayyal, a projection or dream of the Truth. Through cleansing of our spirit we are able to attune to divine manifestations of this Truth, known as تجلي tajalli.

This is to say, the Sufi orders dedicate their practice of Islam to an inward focus of dismantling the self to be able to commune with the divine. If the self doesn’t exist then there is not barrier between you and Truth.

I did not grow up in this tradition. Maybe I can learn it but I am hesitant to manufacture a relationship to a spiritual framework just to escape my existential angst. There is much to fight against though I am wondering if I can have an easier go of it if I simply do not see these things as a fight.

The tension of ambition pulling against acceptance is replaced with the tension of self-awareness stubbornly refusing to dissolve to be one with all things.

In moments I forget, when there is a wistful feeling of contentment it blankets this turbulence in a committed yet gentle layer. I do not want for anything more.