Finding Meaning through Learning

تعلمت العلم لنفسي
I learned knowledge for my own soul.
~ Mālik ibn Anas ~

When you get into university, you are not a child anymore. With it comes freedom; unless you cause trouble to others, your lecturers will not control how you live and learn.

You can immerse yourself in the assigned study materials, or skip morning classes to sleep late playing Counter-Strike 2, or run a cake business on your phone, or delve into topics that are not in your curriculum.

In riding that freedom, you are also responsible for your own learning and, by extension, its consequences.

You may end up being a PhD scholar in your field, or a professional esports player, or an entrepreneur, or a thought leader in a different field than what you studied.

You can never be sure.

What you can be sure, though, is that you can’t blame your parents or lecturers for your inadequacies. Your future employers or clients won’t have any of it.

At the end of your university education, if you are not proficient enough for the job market and the society, it’s on you.

Not an android factory

Most university programmes do not promise a job guarantee.¹ You may not get employed in your field of study after you finish university.

Yes, lecturers do their best to prepare you for the job market. But universities are not factories which install programmes called ‘degrees’ into androids called ‘students’, with the sole aim of supplying worker units for government agencies or private companies.

Even if you could narrow it that way in the past, you cannot do that anymore today.

Because of factors like the 4th Industrial Revolution,² the landscape of the job market dynamically shifts every year. The jobs that are available on your first day at university may disappear on your last day there.

You will eventually need to study specific job skills at the agency or company itself. This learning process will be based on their corporate culture, the tasks you will be responsible for, and the technology they have access to.

Then what’s the point of learning at university?

Different lecturers may give you different answers. To me, university is a fiery forge that orients you to Reality (al-Ḥaqq).³

Part of what that means is, university teaches you theories and techniques to separate what is real and what isn’t (and then formalise the training as a degree conferred to you).

Another part is, just like how a forge uses fire to shape a sword, the university uses hardships to shape you.

Your lecturers will assign you complex topics to explore on your own, which may make you feel lost. Your parents will ask you to make more crucial decisions without them, which may make you feel anxious.

You will encounter situations that mirror what you will face out in the world:

How do you deal with free-riders in your assignment group? Because out there, you will need to stand up to colleagues who don’t carry their weight.

How do you master a lesson with minimal input from lecturers? Because out there, no one will hold your hands when you need to learn difficult skills.

How do you perform brilliantly without cheating the system? Because out there, people will entice you into corruptions that accelerate your career.

Through all these, you will confront psychological stressors, which either come from your workload or other people.

You might cry because of the pressure. You might doubt your self-worth, or question why you are even here.

It is a glimpse of real, adult life that is more hurtful and harsher.

Resetting intention for learning

To meet those challenges, you must reset your learning intention.

The great scholar Mālik ibn Anas founded an entire legal school of thought, compiled one of the most revered hadith collections, and trained other geniuses, like al-Shāfiʿī (who himself became the founder of another school of thought).

In achieving such a level of mastery, Imam Mālik kept his intention sincere, ‘I learned knowledge for my own soul.’

You need that sincerity. If before this, you studied for the exams or for your parents and teachers, you can’t afford relying only on those motives anymore.

Because those outside validations only help as short bursts of motivation. Without sincerity, they cannot sustain you.

You will feel empty inside.

If that happens, studying will feel meaningless. You will bury yourself in playing another team deathmatch or streaming another episode. And then another. And then another, just to forget how empty you feel when you are studying — just to numb your pains.

That emptiness can weigh you down beyond university life. You will feel the same emptiness about work, hating it, just waiting for the weekends.

And before you know it, your life ends; you are on your deathbed, eaten away by regret.

So, you need to study for you

More specifically, you need to use studying at university to purify your self from qualities that distance you from Reality (i.e. tazkiyyah al-nafs).⁴

In practise, try these:

Protect your five daily prayers (or, for non-Muslims, obligatory observances in your faith). These prayers anchor your being to what’s Real. Whatever it takes, don’t miss them. Learn the meaning of recitations in them.

Rearrange your aims. You may aim to max out your CGPA, which is a great career strategy. But your highest aim shouldn’t be that. For instance, when an opportunity comes to cheat, you won’t do it, because your aim of getting maximum CGPA is lower than your aim to purify your self.

Revise the way you view success and its hidden costs. Learning from ‘unsuccessful’ people is key to success.⁵

Respect and honour lecturers, lab assistants, admin staff, bus drivers, janitors, and senior students. Not because they are better or older, but because of Adab.⁶ It is less about your relationship with them than it is about your relationship with their Master (Rabb).

Sense how your whole body feels when you study specific topics. Which ones do you feel gravitated towards? It signals the career paths to consider. And just because STEM or entrepreneurship are admired culturally, it doesn’t mean they are the best paths for you personally.

Develop friendships with people from different ages, who study in different programmes, who hold different belief systems. Have them close enough that they feel safe to criticise you, shining some light to your intellectual or spiritual blind spots.

During class and revision sessions, ask ‘What’s my intention here? How do I use what I’ve learned to bring me closer to Reality?’ Metacognitive questions like those, when asked regularly, keep you aligned towards sincerity.

You are rare and lucky

Remember, only 39 out of 100 people on the planet have a university degree. And there are millions of guys and girls, just like you, who live in dire poverty or a collapsed society, who don’t even get the chance to study at university.

You are so blessed and so lucky.

So take this opportunity. Take it with sincerity. Study the right things even if they’re boring. And then spend some time each day studying what elevates and inspires you.

Only then, God willing, you may find meaning in learning.

📧 Letters for Learners

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Notes:

1
The university I studied at has a centre called CofFEE, dedicated to Job Guarantee research in Australia. We lecturers are working on making this more common in this country.
2
Briefly, the First Industrial Revolution was mechanisation, the Second was mass production, the Third was automation, and the Fourth is the ‘merging’ of technologies. See What is the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
3
It is part of how I view education. My university asked all lecturers to clarify our teaching philosophy when we begin our career. All lecturers usually have one.
4
In Sufi psychology, nafs can be translated as ‘self’ or ‘soul’. So another way of thinking about tazkiyyah al-nafs is ‘cleansing the soul’. You will refuse to, for example, code for app features that worsen digital addiction, or synthesise flavours to sell junk food to children, even if you are offered money and success.
5
Consider to live your own personal story of success. See Your Life Story and the Virtue of Listening to ‘Unsuccessful’ People.
6
See Al-Attas, S. M. N. (2018). The Concept of Education in Islam: a framework for an Islamic philosophy of education. Ta’dib International (book, full text). Adab is hard to translate. The rough meaning is ‘right manners’. Adab is not about being ‘nice’. Criticising someone is not ‘nice’. It often upsets others. But it fulfils adab when done with justice and wisdom. It also recognises levels (marāṭib) beyond the apparent ones. For example, in the morning, you study Microbiology from me, so you give me due deference as your teacher. In the evening, I study Theology from you, so I return the deference to you as my teacher. This adab applies to us no matter which one of us is older, smarter, or regarded higher in society.