Hand in The Assignment

This morning, a moth appeared.

Not a small one.

A Polyphemus moth, enormous and soft-looking, with wings marked by great eye-shaped circles. I had never seen one in real life before. It was nearly the size of my hand.

So, naturally, I looked up the name.

Polyphemus.

The Cyclops.

The one-eyed giant.

And there it was again: seeing.

Not predicting.

Not knowing everything.

Seeing.

Over the past few months, I have been studying the Qur’an slowly, sometimes a verse at a time, sometimes a story at a time. Much of what I have been learning keeps returning me to the same ideas: patience, trust, responsibility, surrender, attention.

Yesterday, I spent part of the day noticing elephants in the clouds.

Not because I thought they were instructions.

They were simply there, one after another, strange enough that I noticed them.

And this morning I found myself thinking about Surah Al-Fil, the Chapter of the Elephant.

Something clicked.

Not because the clouds had predicted anything.

Because I recognized the reference.

A few months ago, I would not have.

The world had not necessarily changed.

I had learned enough to see something in it that I could not see before.

Then the moth arrived.

A creature named for an eye.

That was enough to make me smile.

Inner Knowing Does Not Mean Knowing Everything

I have always paid attention to patterns.

Sometimes they arrive through dreams.

Sometimes through nature.

Sometimes through repetition.

Sometimes through the quiet realization that I have already done everything I know how to do.

I am becoming less interested in deciding exactly what every one of those moments means.

A dream can remain a dream.

A moth can remain a moth.

An elephant-shaped cloud can remain a cloud.

Wonder does not require certainty.

And meaning does not require proof.

Recently, I dreamed that the work I have spent so much time building was simply alive.

Nothing dramatic was happening.

People were talking. There was laughter and movement. I was somewhere unfamiliar, surrounded by the ordinary noise of life.

What stayed with me was not an instruction.

It was a feeling.

The work was no longer struggling to become real.

It simply existed.

I woke up remembering the atmosphere more than the details.

And perhaps that is useful in its own way.

Not every form of knowing arrives as a set of directions.

Sometimes it arrives as recognition.

There Comes a Time to Stop Working on the Assignment

This is the lesson that keeps finding me.

There is a time to research.

There is a time to make the call.

There is a time to correct the page, submit the application, learn the material, ask the question, make another attempt.

I believe deeply in effort.

But there is a strange point where effort can quietly become an attempt to control what happens next.

And I am learning to recognize that point.

There comes a moment when you have answered the questions.

You have checked your work.

You have written your name at the top.

You have done what you knew how to do.

Now you have to hand in the assignment.

You cannot keep following it down the hallway.

You cannot stand over the desk while it is being graded.

You cannot retrieve it every five minutes because you suddenly thought of another sentence.

Eventually, continuing to work is no longer diligence.

Sometimes it is fear refusing to release the pencil.

What Surrender Looks Like to Me

Trusting the Most High God does not mean doing nothing.

For me, it means doing what is mine to do completely.

And then recognizing what is not mine.

I can prepare.

I can learn.

I can build.

I can apologize.

I can repair.

I can knock on doors.

I can make decisions with the information I have.

But I cannot manufacture every outcome.

I cannot make every door open.

I cannot know every consequence before I move.

And I do not think I was ever meant to.

There is a profound difference between responsibility and control.

Responsibility asks:

Have I done what was mine to do?

Control asks:

How can I make sure everything happens the way I want it to?

Those are not the same question.

The first one has an answer.

The second one can consume an entire life.

The Eye on the Wing

So this morning there was Polyphemus.

This giant moth resting quietly with eyes painted across its wings.

I don't need to decide that it was sent to tell me something.

That would almost make the encounter smaller.

What matters to me is that I was able to meet it with everything I have been learning.

The Qur’an.

The elephants.

The dreams.

The months of work.

The growing understanding that guidance does not always arrive as an answer.

Sometimes guidance changes the way you look.

Sometimes you study long enough that an old story suddenly becomes visible in a cloud.

Sometimes you work long enough that you recognize the precise moment when more effort would no longer improve the work.

Sometimes inner knowing is simply the quiet ability to say:

Enough.

I have done my part.

Hand It In

There is something beautifully difficult about putting the pencil down.

I studied.

I prepared.

I worked.

I corrected what I could correct.

I paid attention.

I acted where action was mine to take.

And now I release what happens next.

That may be one of the forms trust takes.

Not certainty.

Not passivity.

Not pretending I know the ending.

Just the willingness to stop trying to write every page myself.

This morning, a creature with enormous eyes resting on its wings reminded me of how much I have learned about seeing.

And perhaps that is enough.

Pay attention.

Do the work.

Learn what is yours to learn.

Act when it is yours to act.

And when you know you have done enough, put the pencil down.

Hand in the assignment.

The rest belongs to the Most High.