Reflections on Priority, Transmission, and the Formation of a Healthy Personality
When we transmit messages to our children — like the phrases I shared in my last publication — it is very important to understand that these phrases are never just phrases. They carry dynamics. They set inner movements in motion. They shape personalities.
The real question, therefore, is not only: What truth am I transmitting?
But rather: What dynamic am I launching?
What seed am I planting?
What kind of personality will grow out of this statement, out of this sentence, out of this truth to which I am inviting my child?
In what frequency am I placing them?
What vibration am I activating within them?
What horizon am I opening for them?
When we speak about the last sentence one would pronounce before dying, we should not understand it as an abstract truth to be passed on, but as a foundational act — an act that will continue to operate long after our departure.
Let us take a first example.
Telling one’s child: preserve your prayers and perform your ritual prayers with intention and attention — this is a truth. And even a profound truth, especially when intention and attention are emphasized.
But this is not at all the same as saying: never abandon your ritual prayers no matter what.
This second formulation can produce a personality attached to ritual out of fear: fear of disappointing, fear of disloyalty to the memory of the parent, fear of losing symbolic approval.
In such a case, the person may maintain the ritual out of emotional loyalty or inner pressure, rather than genuine presence. The ritual becomes an identity marker rather than a living space.
Even when intention and attention are added, if this is the only sentence transmitted, the implicit message remains the same: the highest priority in life is ritual practice.
Is this really the priority we wish to transmit as the foundation of a healthy personality?
Because even in their most refined form, intention and attention remain tied to ritual. And these notions are deeply subjective.
For some, attention can turn into obsession: watching the clock, controlling, stressing.
For others, intention may be reduced to a simple mental designation of the act.
And above all, ritual by its very nature presupposes a distanced relationship with the Divine — not a physical distance, but a reverential one. It assumes symbolically separated places and times, whereas in absolute terms, the Divine inhabits all places and all moments.
To form a personality whose primary axis is rituality is therefore to risk forming either a person enclosed in observance, or a person obsessed with ritual to the detriment of everything else.
One often objects: the Prophet’s last smile was when he saw his companions aligned in the ʿIshāʾ prayer. Even if one accepts this report — which remains debated — it does not mean that ritual prayer is the absolute priority.
The last sentence reported from the Prophet when he briefly regained consciousness before his death did not concern the prayers, according to the majority of narrations.
And above all, the true prophetic wasiyya is found in the Farewell Sermon (khutbat al-wadāʿ), where we do not find ritual placed as the foundational priority, but rather a global vision — a re-exposition of the meaning of the mission itself.
A personality that masters ritual but has not learned to live the Divine within itself and to see the Divine in the other remains incomplete.
Let us now consider another alternative that is often proposed: fight injustice wherever you see it, with all your strength.
Even if this phrase aims at a universal awareness of injustice — toward human beings, nature, animals, relationships, and structures — it carries a major risk if it becomes the foundational priority.
It forms a person whose attention is constantly directed toward what is wrong. Such a person risks missing beauty, missing the good that already exists, missing simple opportunities for kindness.
And above all, it risks teaching one to criticize before appreciating, to mistrust before trusting, and most importantly, to hate before loving.
But learning to hate is a fire. And that fire can burn any future capacity to love, to appreciate, to see beauty.
This is why the priority cannot be the fight against evil before learning to love the good.
And this is where the third path appears.
Do good as long as you can, as much as you can, and do good.
The good may be a broad notion, sometimes culturally conditioned, but among all the notions mentioned, it is the most universalizable. In all civilizations, helping someone in need is recognized as good.
In its original definition, good is a transcendence of the self, an opening toward the other. Linguistically, al-iḥsān always implies a movement toward someone else.
The beauty of this sentence lies in its inner balance:
as long as you can — recognition of limits, protection from perfectionism and the savior syndrome;
as much as you can — a call to real, concrete responsibility.
This path is evolutionary. What I can do today depends on my maturity, my awareness, my means. Tomorrow, this capacity may grow. There is no fixed ideal of good.
And when we add and do good, we introduce ihsan not as a hierarchical spiritual degree, but as a quality of action: doing good with care, with beauty, with rightness.
Giving without humiliating.
Helping without imposing.
Being present without instrumentalizing.
From this perspective, even ritual becomes an expression of good, rather than an end in itself.
This is why this sentence — do good as long as you can, as much as you can, and do good — is, in my view, the one that should be transmitted as a priority. Not because the others are false, but because it does not carry the risk of forming an unhealthy personality.
And above all, this path constantly brings one back to self-knowledge:
What can I do?
What can I not do?
How available am I, really?
Unlike the other two alternatives, here the risk of losing oneself in a system without knowing oneself is not present.
And that is precisely why this third path remains, in my eyes, the most just, the safest, and the most fertile.
