I’m 36 and I Have Nothing to Show For It

The power and beauty of our unseen blessings.

(Before we get into today’s posts, just a quick one to let you know I released a spiritually-inspired 2025 peace calendar featuring my hand-drawn artwork and meaningful quotes for reflection and meditation. 50% of profits are going to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. If you are able to support the cause, get yours here. Thank you!😊)

Photo by Jordan Steranka on Unsplash

Dear friend,

How are you? And how is your beautiful heart?

On the 24th of December 2024, I turned 36 years old. It all passed by in a blur of high fevers, vomiting children and constant vigilance of medicines being taken and amounts of fluids being drank. I had so many ideas of posts I wanted to write reflecting on life so far, but when you’re just trying to get through to the other side when sickness has taken over your entire family, sadly, writing gets relegated to the back shelf.

Now that the dust is settling and everyone is well on the road to recovery, I’ve had a couple of moments where I’ve breathed out and had the sudden realisation that I am now 36. Thirty-SIX. Somehow it weirdly feels way older than 35, yet at the same time, it all feels like such a massive part of the illusion that I am watching unfold somewhere from the sidelines with curious amusement and sheer fascination.

I’m 36. And quite honestly, in the eyes of the social order, I have pretty much nothing to show for it.

I don’t own a house. I don’t even own my own car yet. I have achieved nothing close to what I thought I would have achieved by this stage in my life. I am nowhere near fulfilling the dreams that I had when I was a hope-filled 21-year-old. Sometimes I can just about brush my hair and slap on some mascara, and honestly, one of the biggest things that I have struggled to face is that I don’t even have a consistent, stable income right now. Yep, I just admitted that on the internet. 36 and no stable income. Wowza.

As the Grade A student who came top in every subject, won all the competitions, and had teachers telling my family they were sure they would see my name in lights one day; as the student who was chosen to attend retreats at Oxford and Cambridge University, and who ended up studying law at one of the top universities in the world, everything and everybody in my life was riding on me to become a huge ‘success’ story one day. And despite how far I have come on the long journey within myself, sometimes when I do look at my life on the surface level, I have found myself wondering what the hell went wrong. Why don’t I have that external ‘stuff’ yet? How did the life I once imagined I would have in my thirties not have even made it within my grasp yet, let alone have slipped through my fingers?

Some would say it’s madness. How someone with so much potential is so far behind in life in their mid-thirties. However, these thoughts are the real moments of madness because really, what does all of that stuff matter anyway?

---

Taking it back to being a newly spiritually-awakened 22-year-old, day after day and night after night, riding the waves of spiritual ecstasy, I would raise my hands to the sky and whisper over and over again to God,

“I want to know you. Please, let me know you.”

And I know my prayer was answered then and continues to be answered every single moment of my life today.

God answered my prayer by slowly stripping away everything I once thought to be true.

He answered my prayer by taking every dream I had for my life and flipping it on its head. I didn’t even have a wedding despite this being one of the things I thought about and imagined very often, especially having been raised in the Pakistani culture that I was.

God heard me then, and continues to hear the whisperings and longings of my heart now.

He guided me towards a Spiritual Master and placed me on a path of peace, non-violence and service to humanity. God stripped away all of the external, and over the years, my attachment to it - and placed me brand new on the long and winding road into myself. And He told me that in order to know Him, I had to know myself.

Gone was the illusion of the perfect fat Pakistani wedding. Gone was the illusion of the graduation celebrations I had imagined, surrounded by family and friends celebrating my achievement. (Instead, I ended up at Nandos with my new husband, 8 months pregnant with barely anyone in my family on speaking terms with me - that’s a story for another time). Gone was the illusion of the big-shot career woman I thought I would become. Gone was the illusion of the perfect 2.4 family, living in a beautiful home, money no issue, twice-a-year holidays and special occasions celebrated with grandiosity and a house full of people. It was all gone. That perfect life that is chased by all, and celebrated and applauded when you get there, was no longer for me. The illusion was shattered in its entirety.

But God does not just take. When He takes, He gives back even more. And what He has given me is far more than what any societally constructed ideal of success could ever give me.

---

In Islam, there is the concept of Barakah - something I have been thinking about deeply over the last few days while reading the book The Barakah Effect by Mohammed Faris.

Barakah is a powerful, potent energy that is granted by God in certain areas of your life - it’s like the Divine blessings of God magnified, where you just know and feel that there is a positive power beyond you at play.

For many, Barakah is experienced in the visible blessings: family, a home, bountiful food, wealth, an abundance of worldly provisions, success and so on. It must be said, however, that you can have all of those external things but still not have Barakah within them. What many of us tend to overlook, however, is the unseen Barakah in our lives.

Despite it not being socially recognised and celebrated, if we choose to look closely enough at our lives with a shift in perspective, there is a whole load of Barakah that has been carrying us even when we didn’t know it.

The unseen blessings of our lives can include the peace and contentment in our hearts; it can be the love and safety we feel in our relationships with others; it can be in the strength of a healthy, working, capable body; it can be in the sharing of the very gifts and talents God has blessed us with and it can be the sheer determination to keep rising again every time we fall.

For those on a spiritual path and on the journey of Being and becoming… are you even aware of how much Barakah you have just in this path alone?

How many billions of human beings have reached the end of their lives not really knowing themselves, with no answers, no ‘purpose’ for which they have lived, no pursuit of the things they loved, no relationship with God and filled with voids and regrets?

Perhaps the biggest Barakah and blessing of all is being given the opportunity to open your heart to yourself, to God and to the whole of humanity. Perhaps the biggest blessing of all is knowing God now, in this lifetime, in this present moment, before returning to God upon death. And to know yourself is to know God… so perhaps the journey of self-discovery is the ultimate blessing laden with Barakah along every step of the way, even if nobody else can see it.

So yeah. I’m 36 now. And in some eyes, I have nothing to show for it. But when I look into my heart, I have everything that I prayed for day after day and night after night as a 22-year-old.

“I want to know you, God. Please, let me know you.”

I am so fucking blessed. And now I finally know it.

With Light, Love & Peace,

Sabah x

---

🇵🇸 Donate to Palestine 🇵🇸

☮️ Get the Spiritual 2025 Peace Calendar ☮️

🖋Subscribe to my other publication, Creative Meditation🖋

☕️Buy me a coffee if you like ☕️

📹Watch my art meditation videos 📹

✨Catch up on previous Love Letters✨

👀Read more on Medium 👀

🎨Check out my Art Store🎨

💛Join me on Instagram💛