یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

On What Stops Us, and How We Begin to Move Again

Near the end of a workshop, a young participant raised his hand and asked, a little impatiently, “Everyone keeps using the word empowerment. But what exactly is it? And what is it that disempowers us?” I gave him an answer, and I think it was not a bad one. I spoke about confidence, agency, and not letting others define you. But driving home, I realized I had offered him a collection of examples, not a definition. And it was not the first time someone had asked.

The next time I sat with him, as I often do when a question will not leave me alone, I put it to him directly. “People keep asking me what empowerment actually is,” I told him. “And what takes it away. I always have illustrations, but I am not sure I have ever had a clear answer.”

“What do they usually imagine it to be like?”

“Confidence, I think. Feeling strong. Having more control over their lives, more resources, and more say in what happens to them.”

“Let me give you a definition, and you can test it against everything you know,” he said. “Anything that prevents you from doing what you believe is right and required of you in this moment is disempowerment. Overcoming it is the essence of empowerment.”

“That is it?”

“That is it.”

It sounded almost too simple, and I said so. He did not argue. Instead, he offered a comparison. “Imagine a man who runs a large company. Hundreds of people report to him. By every external measure, he is powerful. He made a mistake that hurt a colleague, and now the one thing he needs to do is say, ‘I was wrong.’ He cannot, because he is afraid of looking weak. Now imagine a woman with very little: a modest income, no title, no influence beyond her own household. Her elderly father needs care through the night. What is required of her is to get up and go to him, and she does, tired, without waiting to feel ready, night after night. Which of the two is empowered?”

“By your definition, she is.”

“He has power over many things, but none over the one thing standing between him and what is required of him. She has power over almost nothing, except the one thing that matters in that moment. And notice that no one is forcing her. Every night, she could tell herself she is too tired, yet she chooses to get up. That choice is where her freedom lies.”

He let that sink in, then added, “Notice, too, that I did not say what others demand of you. I said what you recognize as right. No one can make that choice for you. Disempowerment is when fear, comfort, the past, or other people make it for you. Empowerment is taking that choice back.”

That comparison rearranged the word for me. We usually measure empowerment by what a person controls: money, position, options, influence. Yet a person can control a great deal and still be unable to do the simplest required thing, while another can control very little and still be entirely free to do it. Power over circumstances and empowerment are not the same thing. Sometimes they barely overlap. And what I had first heard as an obligation turned out to be something much closer to freedom.

“Then the real question,” I said, “is what keeps people from acting.”

“Yes. And if we are going to help anyone, we have to be honest about how many different things can stop a person. Most people name only one or two.”

I thought about the people I had sat with over the years. “Fear of the future, often. Worry that things will not go their way. What others might say. Fear of failing.”

“Those are real,” he said. “But they are only part of the map. Some of what stops us lies ahead, in a future we fear. Some of it lies around us, in what others might think. Some of it lies behind us, in what has already happened. And some of it lies within us, in nothing more dramatic than the wish to be comfortable. Each holds us still in its own way, and each requires a different way to move past it.”

“Then let’s take them one at a time.”

We began with the future. I told him about a mother I knew who was so anxious about her son’s exams, still a year away, that she spent breakfast lecturing him about his future and missed the conversation he was trying to have with her that morning. What she needed was attention. The future had taken it all.

“Fear of the future always makes the same mistake,” he said. “It tries to carry the whole road at once. The way through is to bring it back to the step right in front of you. Ask: what does this moment require? Not next year. Not the outcome. This moment. The future will have its own moments, and you will meet them when they arrive.” He paused. “And remember, the outcome was never yours to carry in the first place. A man once asked whether he should tie his camel or simply trust in God, and was told, “Tie it, and then trust.” (Tirmidhi, 2517). The tying is yours. What happens after that is not. Much paralysis comes from trying to hold both.”

There was a quiet relief in that division of labor. It did not make a person careless about results. It simply freed him to act without first demanding a guarantee no one can give. As if he had heard what I was thinking, he put it into words: “Stay loyal to the process and leave the results to God.”

Then we turned to other people. I told him about a student in one of my classes who, for an entire term, never asked a single question, though I could see on his face that he often had one. Later, he admitted he was afraid the others would think he was slow. What was required of him was a question. What stopped him was an imagined opinion held by people who were mostly thinking about themselves.

“The way through here begins with a question,” he said. “Whose approval am I working for? When you trace it honestly, you usually find you are performing for an audience that is barely watching, and whose verdict would change nothing even if they gave one. The more your actions are done for what is right and for God, rather than for the room, the less power the room has over you. Sincerity is a kind of freedom. A person who is not trying to be seen cannot be stopped by the fear of being seen in a bad light.”

Then came the fear of failure, which I had seen disguise itself more cleverly than any of the others. I told him about a woman who had wanted for six years to start a small study circle in her neighborhood. She kept preparing: another book, another course, another season of waiting until she felt ready. She was not lazy. She was afraid of standing in front of people and failing, and the fear had disguised itself as preparation so well that even she could not see it.

“Fear of failure depends on a definition of success you have not examined,” he said. “If success means everything goes well, then every attempt is a risk. But if success means doing what was required of you faithfully, then the moment she opens her door to four people in her living room, she has already succeeded, whatever may happen next. Change the definition, and the fear loses its footing.” He added, “And start smaller than your fear expects. Not the perfect circle. The first one. Fear grows strong on large, imagined versions of a task. It has much less to hold onto when the step is small and real. The small step is not the whole of what is required. It is the way in.”

“And the past?” I asked.

“The past stops people in quieter ways: through shame, regret, an old humiliation, or simply the memory of having tried once and failed.”

I told him about a man I had met who had applied twice for a teaching position he wanted badly, been turned down both times, and never applied again. Ten years later, he still spoke of it as though it had permanently defined who he was.

“The way through,” he said, “is to remember that the past is a record, not a verdict. It tells you what happened. It does not decide what happens next. Ask what has changed since then: what you have learned, what you can now do that you could not then. Then let the past teach you. Look honestly at what went wrong and why. Seek advice from people who can see what you could not or who have walked the same road. Look at those who faced something similar and got a different result and ask what they did differently. For the man you mentioned, that might mean asking someone who sat on that interview panel what was missing, or sitting with teachers who got such posts to learn how they prepared. A past that is studied becomes a teacher. A past that is only remembered remains a wound. And ask whether the person you were at that time should be allowed to make decisions for the person you are now.” He paused. “Our tradition understands this better than we often live it. The door of repentance stays open precisely because a person is not permanently defined by what lies behind him. If God does not close that door on us, we have no business closing it on ourselves.”

Then he looked at me with a slight smile. “And now, the obstacle most people leave off the list.”

I knew what he meant because I was guilty of it. “Comfort.”

“Comfort. Tiredness. The easier option that happens to be within reach. Often, what stops us is not fear at all. We simply prefer something else.”

I admitted that there were evenings when I knew exactly what was required of me, such as a call to my elderly uncle, an hour with a book I had promised myself, and a prayer offered with attention rather than in a hurry, yet I did none of it. I was not afraid. The phone was simply closer.

“That is the pull of the self toward ease,” he said. “It is not argued with. It is trained. Two things help. First, make the required task small enough to do now: not an hour of reading, but ten minutes; not a long call, but a short one. Second, make the comfortable option slightly harder to reach. Put the phone in another room. Then remind yourself why the required task matters, because comfort always wins when the reason has gone quiet.” He added, “Be honest about which obstacle you are facing. If you treat comfort as though it were fear, you will look for courage when what you need is discipline.”

I sat with the map for a moment. Ahead, around, behind, within. It was more complete than anything I had offered the young participant, and more useful because each obstacle had a door out.

But I had some objections, and I raised the first. “Everything depends on knowing what is required. What if someone is wrong about that? I have a colleague who believes she is required to make everything perfect. She stays at work past midnight. I know a man who believes he is required to keep everyone around him happy. If they push through their fear to meet those demands, are they empowered?”

“No,” he said at once. “They are more deeply trapped. This is why the definition needs a first step that people often skip. Before you ask what is stopping you, ask whether what you think is required actually is. A false requirement usually stems from fear or the need for approval, disguised as duty. A true one comes from conscience, from knowledge of what is right, and very often from the counsel of people who can see you more clearly than you see yourself.” He smiled slightly. “For your colleague, empowerment might mean leaving at six o’clock and sitting with the discomfort of an imperfect report. Sometimes the bravest requirement is to refuse a requirement that was never real.”

“And when the requirement is real yet genuinely unclear? When two duties pull in different directions?”

“What is required of you right now is to seek clarity: to think, ask, pray for guidance, and consult someone wise. That is not avoidance. Discernment is itself a required act.”

My second objection was harder. “Not everyone is stopped by fear or comfort. Some people are stopped by illness, poverty, a household they cannot leave, or doors that are closed to them no matter how brave they are. If we tell them that empowerment means overcoming whatever stops them, and they cannot, we have simply given them one more reason to blame themselves.”

He nodded slowly, and his voice softened. “That is a very important point, and the answer is already given to us. God does not burden a soul beyond its capacity (Qur’an 2:286). A person is responsible only to the extent of what he has actually been given: his time, his health, his means, his abilities, and his circumstances. When a real barrier stands in the way, the requirement does not disappear. It takes the shape of what is genuinely possible with what he has.”

“But couldn’t that verse become an excuse?” I asked. “Anyone could say this is beyond their capacity when they really mean it is beyond their comfort.”

“People do use it that way, and it is a misreading,” he said. “Look at how the same principle appears in Surah Al-Talaq, where it concerns what a man must spend to support his family. Let the one who has plenty spend from his plenty, and let the one whose provision is restricted spend from what God has given him; God does not burden a soul except with what He has given it (Qur’an 65:7). Notice what is being measured. Not what feels manageable, but what has been given. The principle lightens the obligation of the one who has little, increases the obligation of the one who has much, and excuses no one from using what he actually has.”

That changed how I heard the verse. I had always taken it as a consolation, which it is, but I had missed that it is also a standard. Capacity, in that sense, is not a feeling. It is an honest accounting of what is in my hands. If I have the time, the health, and the means, then tiredness and preference are not limits on my capacity. They are the very obstacles we had just named. And if I have been given more than others, more is asked of me, not less.

“So the question is never what feels possible,” I said. “It is what I have actually been given and whether I am using it.”

“Exactly. Be honest in both directions. Do not demand of yourself what you have not been given, and do not excuse yourself from what you have.”

“It reminds me of the prayer so many people know,” I said, “the one that asks for serenity to accept what cannot be changed, for courage to change what can, and for wisdom to know the difference.”

He smiled. “It is widely attributed to a Christian theologian of the last century, yet I can think of no one of any faith who would refuse it. Notice that serenity is not resignation. It is the calm acceptance of and contentment with what lies beyond what you have been given: the outcome you cannot guarantee, the past you cannot rewrite, the opinions you cannot control. Courage belongs to everything that lies within it. But the third request holds the other two together, and it is the one we skip. Without wisdom, serenity becomes a polite name for comfort, and courage becomes a habit of throwing oneself against walls. Most of us do not fail for lack of serenity or courage. We fail because we hand the right virtue to the wrong problem.”

“So the verse you quoted is the measure,” I said.

“It is. What has been given is yours to use, and what has not been given is yours to release.”

He told me about a woman he knew who had wanted for years to continue her studies, but she was caring for a child with severe disabilities, with little money and no help. “Empowerment for her was not pretending those barriers did not exist. Nor was it hiding behind them. It was asking what was required of her, given what she actually had. An hour a week with a borrowed book, used fully. One phone call to a relative on Saturdays to ask for help. Saying aloud to someone, “I need support,” was harder for her than anything else. Her circumstances did not stop her; they only limited her, and she made full use of the room they left her. Those are very different things.”

“So asking for help can be the required act.”

“Very often, it is. Many people believe that empowerment means doing everything alone. Sometimes the most empowering thing a person can do is admit what they cannot do and reach out to someone else.”

My third objection was simpler. “When people speak of empowerment, they often mean growth: learning a skill, gaining knowledge, or building something that lets them do more tomorrow than they can today. Your definition is entirely in this moment.”

“It does,” he said. “But growth is part of what this moment can require. If what you will need to do next year is beyond you today, then what is required of you today may be to learn, to practice, to prepare. Not endless preparation used as a hiding place, like the woman with her study circle. Real preparation, with a step at the end of it. Building capacity is not separate from empowerment. It is empowerment practiced with the future in mind.”

“And caution?” I asked. “Sometimes, waiting is wise.”

“Then ask yourself honestly: am I waiting because this moment requires it, or because acting frightens me? Prudence weighs real consequences and then acts, or deliberately chooses not to. Fear simply postpones and then disguises that postponement as sensible.”

“Does empowerment mean being free of fear, then?”

“No. The fear may still be there. Empowerment is when fear no longer has the deciding vote, and the vote returns to you. The student can be nervous and still ask his question. The woman can tremble and still open her door. A person who waits to stop feeling afraid before acting will wait a very long time.”

“Why do you keep stressing this moment?”

“Because empowerment is not a state you reach once and keep. You can be empowered at nine o’clock and disempowered at a quarter past. It is renewed or lost, moment by moment.” He smiled. “That sounds discouraging, but it is the opposite. It means you never have to become a completely different person first. You do not have to heal your whole past, conquer every fear, or rearrange your circumstances before anything can change. You only have to do the next required thing, now, in spite of whatever is trying to stop you. And then the one after that.”

Before I left, he offered me something to take back to the workshop participant. “Give him three questions. What is required of me right now? What is stopping me? And what will I choose to do anyway? If he asks them honestly and keeps asking them, he will not need a definition from you. He will know what empowerment is because he will be doing it.”

I drove home thinking about how often I had made empowerment sound like something people must wait to receive: from confidence, from circumstances, or from someone else’s permission. It is closer than that. It is not an obligation imposed from the outside. It is the freedom to choose what you already know is right, even as something pulls you the other way. It lives in the gap between knowing and doing, and that gap can be crossed today, by anyone, in some small way. The question asked. The apology made. The door opened to four people. The phone left in the other room. The help finally requested. None of these looks like power from the outside. Each of them is the essence of it.

Takeaways

• Empowerment is overcoming whatever keeps you from doing what is right and required now. Disempowerment is when fear, comfort, the past, or other people make that choice for you, and empowerment is taking that choice back.
• Power over circumstances is not the same as empowerment. A person can control a great deal and still be unable to do the one required thing, while another with very little is entirely free to do so.
• Obstacles come from four directions. Some lie ahead (fear of the future and of failure), some surround us (what others might think), some lie behind us (shame and regret), and some lie within us (comfort). Each needs its own way through.
• Faithfulness, not outcome, is the measure. Tie the camel, then trust. The effort is ours, and the result is not, so success means doing what was required, starting with a step small enough that fear has little to hold on to.
• The past is a record, not a verdict. Studying it, seeking advice, and learning from those who achieved different outcomes turn the past into a teacher, and no one has the right to close a door that God keeps open.
• Comfort is trained, not argued with. Make the required thing smaller, make the comfortable thing harder to reach, and be honest about which obstacle you face, because treating comfort as fear sends you looking for courage when you need discipline.
• Test the requirement before you push. A false requirement, born of fear or the need for approval, traps people more deeply. A true one comes from conscience and wise counsel, and discernment is itself a required act.
• Capacity is what you have actually been given. It is not what feels manageable. Real barriers reshape the requirement without erasing it. Those given much are asked for more, and asking for help may be the required act.
• Empowerment is renewed moment by moment. Fear need not disappear. It only needs to lose the deciding vote, and the next required step is always within reach.

Points for Reflection and Practice

• Test the requirement before you push. Before asking what is stopping you, ask whether what you believe is required is actually required. Does it come from conscience and what is right, or from fear and the need for approval? Sometimes empowerment begins by refusing a false demand.
• Find where the obstacle lives. Is it ahead of you (fear of the future or of failure), around you (what others might think), behind you (shame, regret, an old disappointment), or within you (comfort, tiredness, the easier option)? Each requires a different response.
• Shrink the step until fear has nothing to hold on to. Fear grows on large, imagined versions of a task. Ask what the smallest real version of the required step would be, and take that one. This is a way to begin, not a way to lower what is required; the first step is meant to lead to the next.
• Ask whose approval you are working for. When others’ opinions stop you, trace them honestly. Notice how much of your hesitation is a performance for an audience that barely watches.
• Treat the past as a record, not a verdict. Ask what has changed since then and whether the person you were should make decisions for the person you are now.
• Train comfort rather than arguing with it. Make the required thing smaller and the comfortable thing slightly harder to reach, and remind yourself why the required thing matters.
• Measure the requirement by what you have actually been given. Not by what feels manageable. When real barriers limit you, ask what is required of you with what you have in your hands, and use it fully; asking for help may be the most empowering step available to you. Where you have been given much, ask whether more is being asked of you than you are giving.
• Carry three questions into your day. What is required of me right now? What is holding me back? What will I choose to do anyway?