All the Ingredients: A Lesson on Abundance and Scarcity From My Daughter
Once I introduced my daughter to the world of baking, she was hooked. Not a week goes by without her asking if we can bake together and it’s usually the same request: pink cupcakes with sprinkles. Sometimes I’m doubtful that we have all the ingredients needed and so I tell her that. And she always replies: “Can you check if we have the ingredients mama?”
In my adult exhaustion I assume we often don’t have what we need to make what she wants. But at least 50% of the time I’m wrong. We often have enough to make her favorite, cupcakes, or if not that then some other treat that she’s also delighted to make. So why do I assume we don’t have enough and why does she assume we do?
Her limited experience of this life is that she almost always has what she needs to get what she wants. She sees mommy and daddy as the people who make things happen for her. Either we can provide her with exactly what she wants or we can get her somewhere close. My daughter sees abundance, provision and possibility. And as her parents, we’re a major part of the reason why.
And yet as parents we don’t always see ourselves as abundant. We often see the world as full of limitations and that we’re slushing our way through life, trying to make the most out of scarcity. In some ways we’re right because as the blessed Prophet said, “This world (dunya) is a prison for believers.” We’re up against a world that distracts us from our higher purpose and from a life in alignment with the Divine. The world is a place of decay, deprivation, and denial. It is fleeting and unfulfilling.
Yet my daughter is also right and her outlook is more faithful. She sees abundance because she is not concerned with “the world,” but rather with the people (us) who make her world possible. If she looks around and doesn’t see what she wants she simply asks us to provide it for her. To her, the world as it presents itself is an illusion. Mom and dad are the masters, we hold the keys to provision. Isn’t she right?
Countless times in the Qur'an Allah tells us to ask Him for what we need and want. He is rich and we are poor. He prompts us to engage with Him directly as the possessor of all things, the one who keeps His promises. And yet we find ourselves disappointed in the world as if the world was a sentient thing that chooses to help or harm us. The world is just a collection of things that Allah has put here so far and the remnant of things He’s taken away as well. God is the master of the universe and possessor of the all things. If we were to look to Him instead of the world, we would certainly see abundance.
-Faatimah