Forget the complaint bureau

Bismillah.

OMG, a dear sister sent a reminder which made me recount how many times I confided my woes to friends and families - my complaint bureau. And how I had conveniently confided in a band of trusted people, when the truth is, I was back-biting my subjects. 

This is of course a reminder to myself because we are in the business of self-polishing. 

When we confide in others, it always begin with 'so and so did me wrong' implying we are on the right side. Worse still, when we confide in others about our nearest/dearest, we are in reality back-biting these people who are probably our pillar of strength, people who feed us, people who provide us shelter, people whose blessing might even win us a ticket to heaven. Consider yourself a lil lucky if you don't have a spouse or a mother-in-law, who I reckon are on the top five of any Complaint Bureau.  

The reminder is a verse from Surah Yusuf:86
"I do not complain of my anguish and sorrow to anyone but Allah..."

I think it makes perfect sense. If we are not happy about someone and we use our time and energy confiding in people about them, we would only collect bad points for ourselves and eventually we will have to give away our good points, our tahhajud scores etc. to that fortunate person. Our confiding about our 'problematic' subjects really is back-biting. It's neither going to help us nor them and not even the complaint bureau.

But if we were to confide in Allah, we spare ourselves from back-biting and there is a good chance the 'problematic' person will change for the better by the help of Allah through our prayers and beseeching Him. Per chance Allah will also correct the 'holier righteous me' who thinks I am right and he/she is wrong. We are all narcissistic, if we care to admit.

We should add this to our daily affirmations and disband our complaint bureau. I should, because I am a guilty complainant. It's not easy, but let's get into psyching ourself, and ask Allah to help.  

Credit: Dr. P