"None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." {Bukhari & Muslim}

This hadith has been running through my mind for the past month and a half. And even more so this past week. I feel like we aren't nice enough to each other. We don't really treat one another in a way the Prophet Muhammad {peace and blessings be upon him} used to. We're not perfect and perfection isn't accomplished by making big, drastic changes. If you make sudden changes, chances are you'll suddenly revert back to old habits. Baby steps, people. We can make ourselves closer to perfection by slowly making little changes. So I thought I'd start writing on little things we could do to make ourselves better as human beings; hopefully that'll rub off onto each other and make the world a better place {yes, I do have high hopes}. And I started off with this one particularly because I feel that this ties in with most, if not everything, related to good character.

I got the idea to write about this first because my friend did something that totally shocked me. Last week I told her I liked her phone charm {I don't know where they sell these but they're really cute}. She simply removed it from her phone and hooked it on my phone. "There..it's yours." My jaw dropped. Do people really do that? I never knew people like that existed.

Another example: I was at my cousins house and she is an Ah-maaazing cook, mashaAllah. So my aunt asked her the recipe to some chicken and then she jokingly added, "..or are you one of those people who hides the recipes or gives the wrong one out?" My cousin just mentioned the above quote and pretty much said she lives by it.

The above hadith means a LOT of different things. It can mean materialistic things or can refer to the way we treat each other. Or little things like trading recipes, or telling people where you got those hawt shoes from. I try to live by this..especially in terms of how we treat one another. I'm not a saint and do have my moments of selfishness, but thanks to this being stuck in my head I'm getting better. The hard part is that there are a LOT of people out there who want to do the opposite. They want to tear you down and don't really care wether they hurt you or not. And that's where you need the strength to continue doing unto other as you would want done to you or however that goes. That's the hard part.

There are a lot of people in this world and most of them just don't care. A lot of them {myself included} have probably wronged other people. Maybe if we started treating each other a little better things would slowly start to change. Maybe if we started treating each other the way we would want to be treated there would be more niceness around us. Maybe. And maybe not. But at least you'll have the satisfaction of being the better person.