FROM MAULANA’S DESK
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, born in 1925, in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, is an Islamic spiritual scholar who is well-versed in both classical Islamic learning and modern disciplines. The mission of his life has been the establishment of worldwide peace. He has received the Padma Bhushan, the Demiurgus Peace International Award and Sayyidina Imam Al Hassan Peace award for promoting peace in Muslim societies. He has been called ’Islam’s spiritual ambassador to the world’ and is recognized as one of its most influential Muslims
His books have been translated into sixteen languages and are part of university curricula in six countries. He is the founder of the Centre for Peace and Spirituality based in New Delhi.
IN SINGAPORE, THE ENRAGED GO TO THE FRAGMENT ROOM
A RECENT news report talked of how some people in Singapore’s offices are trying to relieve their stress. One such report is summarized here: Bad day at the office? A ‘rage room’ in offices lets stressed-out people take a baseball bat to items ranging from glass bottles to televisions. The ‘Fragment Room’ consists of a bare, cell-like space with concrete walls, where customers pay to indulge in an unusual form of destructive stress relief.
After being given overalls, helmets, gloves and shoes, people proceed to smash up items ranging from plates to printers. “Everyone in Singapore, no matter where you come from, what your background is, whatever you do, whatever age you are, everyone is stressed out,” says Royce Tan, the founder of ‘Fragment Room’.
The set-up, one of several such rage rooms in cities around the world, has two main offerings: half-hour slots with a limited amount of items to smash or the higher priced ‘annihilation pack’ that lets customers smash as much as they can in half an hour.
This practice lacks seriousness in treating this problem and it is not a remedy for the problem. In a photograph that shows someone wielding a bat, smashing things, the person is apparently hitting external items but in reality, he is hitting his own self. And he is making the mistake of not availing of a great opportunity.
Psychological research shows that anger is not an evil. Anger is the release of a great amount of energy from within the mind. You need to give a positive direction to this energy and utilize it for your intellectual development. All you need to do when you get angry is to keep mum. Your total silence will automatically initiate a natural process within you and the released ‘anger energy’ will be diverted to a positive target. Anger energy is the greatest energy to be released from the human mind in times of crisis.
A simple experiment will demonstrate this point. Whenever you get angry, you should fall completely silent and continue doing whatever work you had been doing. You will see that, even in the state of anger, you will be able to perform better. If you are doing something in which thinking is involved, your inner mechanism will make you more creative.
De-stressing does not require you to physically go some place. When you feel stressed out, you should direct yourself to doing some positive work. If thinking is involved in your work, then intensify your thinking. You will observe that your thinking energy has increased and that you have become more creative. You will be able to take double advantage of this process, because not only will your anger soon get dissipated, but your intellectual energy will also be enhanced.
I have personally experienced this technique in a practical way. There have been two phases in my life. In the first phase, I used to get very angry, while in the present phase, I have successfully dealt with my anger after my discovery. I am a writer. If I compare my previous writings with my current writings, I find that in the latter, my creativity has definitely increased.
All my writings have been published. Anyone may compare both these sets of writings and discover this difference. Anger is not to be frittered away in destructive activity. The reality is that anger is not an unwanted problem—rather, it is a great natural gift that needs to be used wisely.
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
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