Sometimes it feels suffocating to simply be alive in this world. A world where grave injustices go unchecked. A world where people are shot for having an opinion. Or even worse, for simply existing. Because they are the wrong shade, the wrong religion, or within the wrong borders.

And nothing is hidden. Hypersensitive social media reports even the dead cat run over by a car in an alleyway in the farthest corner of the world. We know everything that’s going on. We know too much. Much of it fabricated, but also a lot of genuine content showing the sad state of the world.

Despite the social media vigilantes, justice is nowhere in sight. Why criminals congregate at the top of the political and entrepreneurial hierarchy baffles me. So few possess a moral conscience within that stratum that they are weeded out easily. Forced resignations, unknown causes of death, life imprisonment, gone missing!

Years ago, people felt heartache for themselves and their loved ones. That has now evolved from ache to outrage, from the self to a global scale. Yet solutions seem more elusive than ever before. The climate crisis has warmed European summers to the extent that their heat-related death toll increases every year. The winters are longer in certain places and practically non-existent in others.

With our attempts to “play” God, we have ruined this beautiful planet. Species are becoming extinct at accelerating rates; new viruses and bacteria emerge daily, against which we have no resistance. And nature, in which lies the solution to all epidemics, has become a thing of the distant past. Humans are more connected to screens than even the people they share their homes with. Taking a walk in the green grass, climbing sand dunes, and having picnics by the river are mere fairy tales.

How humanity has grown simultaneously more intelligent and more foolish is an enigma. We invent faster than ever before, yet have lost the fundamentals of life. Those that early humans had. Survival skills. Despite better healthcare, people are still diagnosed with the most horrific diseases that didn’t even exist in earlier times. It was natural causes that led to their early deaths (I’m also not fully convinced the average lifespan has improved with modern healthcare).

What we are losing is far more dangerous than intelligence. It’s wisdom. There is not only a stark difference between the two—they can also be mutually exclusive. As our younger generations rely more on technology than ancient healing, traditional food, and family values, this wisdom remains in the hands of very few. Most people are just living their daily lives on survival mode. Others have perfunctory spiritual connections. The vast majority do not understand the profundity of this connection. The few who do, who are also economically stable and maintain decent family lives, are the bearers of this great burden: the wisdom of the planet.

Unfortunately, very few of them are in positions of power. Most do not want to be. Because their wisdom gives them a glimpse into everything that is wrong with the circles of power, with the overuse of technology, with the lack of spirituality, with the destruction of the planet simultaneous to the lack of justice. They feel that suffocation to be alive at this time.

It is a tragic cycle. One that plays endlessly on repeat, at varying degrees, as time passes. What I have learned and believe is that one can only control oneself and change oneself; the rest is neither in our hands nor our duty. The Prophet was not burdened by the result of his dawah, and in fact was consoled when people did not accept the message of truth. On a microscopic level, that is what our job is too: to work on ourselves and spread his message without worrying about the outcome. Because that is never in our hands. And without this belief (sometimes with it too), it becomes increasingly difficult to breathe in this world of corruption and grave injustice.

And so I return, again and again, to what little is mine to hold: my own niyyah, my own small acts, my own breath. Some days that is enough; I remember that the outcome was never mine to carry, and the suffocation lifts, if only for a moment. Other days it is not enough, and I sit with the ache anyway, because pretending otherwise would be its own kind of dishonesty. Perhaps that is the closest thing to peace available in a world like this: not the absence of suffocation, but learning to breathe through it.