Imam Khalid Latif

Imam Khalid Latif is blogging his reflections during the month of Ramadan, featured daily on HuffPost Religion. For a complete record of his previous posts, click over to the Islamic Center at New York University or visit his author page, and to follow along with the rest of his reflections, sign up for an author e-mail alert above, visit his Facebook page or follow him on Twitter.

This morning started in somewhat of a daze. Last night, our Islamic Center at NYU hosted a special all-night service for the 27th night of the month of Ramadan. By the time everyone left and I had cleaned up and gotten to bed, it was around 6 a.m. A few hours later I woke up suddenly, realizing I had not written this article yet, that I probably would be late for every meeting of the day, and the anxiety started to deepen when I reached out to my nightstand to grab my cell phone and it wasn't there. I rolled out of bed and started to think of where it could be. I checked the pockets of my jeans, threw everything off of my bed, under my bathroom sink and in the tub, but couldn't find it.

My sister, Aliya, had stayed over last night, so I asked her and my wife, Priya, if they could help me find it and they asked if I had looked in the clothes I wore the night before and started to look around with me. I then put on my shoes and went to the space where we had our service the night before to see if it was there. I came back to my apartment and started to flip over the sofa cushions, look in the kitchen cabinets, and in a lot of different places. I could sense anxiety creeping its way in and I couldn't understand why Aliya and Priya had stopped looking. I went back into my bedroom and picked up the jeans I had worn the night before and put my hands again in the pockets, but this time more deeply. And I found my phone.

What is it that kept me from reaching into my pocket fully the first time? I had full ability to do so, it would definitely have saved me a lot of wasted time, and the anxiety and stress from not knowing where my phone was wouldn't have come to be. But I didn't do that and then ended up running around foolishly for half an hour.

A lot of times we end up causing detriment to ourselves because we don't take the time to do things as best as we can. Sometimes our emotions get in the way. At other times, our focus is on getting things done, as opposed to doing things well. We get content with doing very little and our "trying" isn't actually trying at all, it's just scratching the surface of our potential. We also can really easily get away with it because the expectation isn't there that we would do more or try harder.