Weirdo?

I often run into weirdos on this strange campus. There must be some kind of glow coming from me that only those crazy ufos can see... so they all come - like mosquitoes to a light... only I don't roast them.

However, they do sometimes make me think about neat things.

The other day, I was sitting next to someone in the library (stay away from Clemons... go to Thornton, that's where you find all the normal ones :P) who proceeded to show me his private notebook. One page was titled "Demonic Voices". Interesting... what a character... I stopped myself from looking further.. and turned back to my computer screen. Nope, the conversation was still not over, but Alhumdulilah.

Anyways, I will spare you insignificant dribble, cause boyyy there was much of it. But, he did touch upon a very interesting point. He started talking about his closest friend, who happened to be a very mean and controlling guy. He went onto tell me that this friend - his bestfriend was the most critical of his every action and made him feel responsible for everything that went wrong in the friendship and even in their simple interactions. He was condemning of his drinking problems, his drug addictions, his sins, his crimes, his faults, his personality, his failures. Basically, my understanding was that this guy made him feel like crap and continuously victimized himself in the friendship, totally heedless of his own malicious and imperfect nature.

Why then was he bestfriends with such a person? Maybe the ufo wasn't that weird afterall... he told me that this guy, although causing him the most pain and harm, because he blatantly and aggressively pointed out his flaws, was a tool or means of him working on himself. Because of the friend's critical nature, our dear ufo was extracting an understanding of himself which was detached from his own subjective self image. Through what appeared to be an unhealthy friendship... he was becoming a healthy person. Wow, I honestly thought I was the only one who had that kind of understanding of societal interactions.

Okay, so maybe the weirdos coming to me is not one sided... maybe I go to the weirdos... the hard to deal with people... because I too am looking for a means to a higher state of development through testing my own levels of tolerance and acceptance... I want to be in a constant state of societal struggle... meeting higher challenges... always working on myself, inshAllah.

One time a man came and asked Imam Shafi'i (rahimullah) how he had become such a knowledgeable man. Imam Shafi'i responded :"I took everyone I met as a teacher: if I met someone who was better than me, I learned from him, and if I met someone who was worse than me, I learned what not to do."

Weird? Good!
Finicky? Awesome!
Mean? Better!
Hateful? Wowzers!
Hypocritical? Just Right!