Put Your Heart on the Right Path

It was a humid mid-August night in Kuantan. It was cloudy. There were no stars in sight. I just got back from another road trip delivering a one-day seminar in Building Effective Performance Management Systems Using KPIs to the management team of Ladang Rakyat Trengganu Sdn. Bhd. We emphasized on the main virtues of honesty, integrity and most of all truthfulness in ensuring effectiveness and efficiencies of work process implementation. Once again, on my way home while Light FM was playing a favourite 80s tune “What Does Love Got to Do With it” by Tina Turner, the word truth comes to my mind. The truth is, the word truth is such a relative word. The word truth means differently to different people. How do we know that we have been truthful? What is truthful to me could be dishonesty to another. What is truthful to me could mean betrayal to another. What is truthful to me could mean disloyalty to another.

The fact is that sometimes “truth” is not well-defined. Truth is a lot of times start in the gray area. With the right interpretations, the gray area could turn to white and everything becomes crystal clear. But with the wrong interpretations the gray area could turn to black and everything got lost in translation. Interpretations require wisdom and wisdom requires knowledge and experience. In the end, we can’t see the truth with our naked eyes but we need to see the truth with our heart. When the heart believes, the mind will conceive. When the heart starts to see, then the heart could penetrate all barriers of sight.

But the heart could only see the truth when we could start to put the heart on the right path. Actually, this is easier said than done. Most of us used logical thinking to navigate our way through in order for us to see the truth. Logical thinking only see things from a binary standpoint. It’s either yes or no, right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable, white or black and nothing in between. But when the heart feels strongly about something, there’s virtually nothing could stop it from continuing to believe and starts building hope around it. When the martyrs of Badar fought against the disbelievers, logical thinking may suggest that it was sheer suicide. How could 313 men fought against 1,000? But the 313 men could see the Promise of Allah SWT with their heart. The 313 men of Badar could see the sheer ecstasy of becoming eternal dwellers of Heaven. The 313 men of Badar searched for the truth with their hearts. The 313 men of Badar put their hearts on the right path.

Sometimes the truth hurts. That maybe true. But the most important thing is, if we could see the truth with our heart on the right path, we will always be at ease with ourselves, at peace with our mind, and will feel a sense of calmness and serenity with every beat of the heart. If the “truth” do not bring peace to the mind, contentment to the heart and always feel that we could have done things differently, then chances are we probably did not put our heart on the right path when we set out to search for the truth. Think about it …

In the end, the essence of life and living is always about searching for the truth. But we can only find the truth if we could put our heart on the right path. And the right path will always lead us to the path of Allah SWT, the Almighty, the Sustainer, the Merciful and the Creator of the entire Universe.