“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
– Joseph Campbell
IT’S Saturday morning. You sit in your car, engine off, hand resting on the door handle. You don’t open it. Instead, you scroll through your phone, finding reasons to delay. Five more minutes. Ten. Fifteen. It’s a familiar routine, one that has plagued you for three years now.
That tightness in your chest as you stare at the office building, the quiet dread you’ve come to call “professionalism”. You tell yourself it’s just work. Everyone feels this way. It pays the bills.
But you won’t say it out loud: You can’t remember the last time you felt alive walking through those doors.
This is the prison of an unmoved life – a life that has become a loop. Each day a photocopy of the last, slowly fading.
We know something is wrong. The body knows. Yet we stay – in jobs that hollow us, in relationships that no longer spark connection, in cities that leave us surrounded by people but feeling alone. We stay in patterns that have worn grooves into our souls.
Why? Because leaving feels like dying.
But what if staying is the actual death?
In 622 CE, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and his companions made a decision that defied every human instinct: they left. They left Makkah, the city of their birth, their identity, and everything they knew. They left homes they had built, businesses, family, everything that tied them to who they were. They stepped into a desert with no guarantee of arrival, no promise of safety, only a deep conviction that staying would be a slow extinction. This was not desperation. This was clarity.
The Hijrah wasn’t a retreat; it was an act of radical self-authorship. It was a moment when a community looked at their circumstances and said, “We are not what has happened to us. We are what we choose next.”
The cost was immense. Ibn Kathir tells the story of Suhaib Ar-Rumi, who was detained by the Quraysh as he tried to leave.
He said, “You came to us poor, and now you want to leave with your wealth?” He replied, “What if I give you everything? Will you let me go?” They agreed. He walked away with nothing but the clothes on his back. When he reached Madinah, the Prophet ﷺ smiled and said, “Your transaction was profitable, Suhaib.”
He lost everything, and it was called profitable.
Because the Hijrah teaches us what we’ve forgotten: You are not your accumulated things. You are your direction.
But here’s the data that haunts us: Research shows up to 70 per cent of people feel trapped in major life circumstances – careers, relationships, locations – yet fewer than 15 per cent make a significant change within five years. We are a civilisation of spiritual hostages, negotiating with our own comfort. We’re so afraid of the unknown that we choose slow suffocation over uncertain freedom.
So, what does the Hijrah ask of us now?
Centuries ago, Lao Tzu wrote, “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” The Hijrah was the embodiment of this wisdom. It wasn’t reckless abandon; it was conscious release. The Prophet ﷺ didn’t flee in panic; he planned. He chose a guide. He took provisions. He moved with Wu Wei – the principle of aligned action, where effort and ease become one. It wasn’t impulsive; it was intentional flow.
When the Quraysh surrounded his house, swords drawn, the Prophet ﷺ didn’t fight the current. He used it. He walked out through the middle of them, throwing dust in their eyes. This is Wu Wei: not forcing, not fleeing, but finding an opening in what appears closed.
Then came the cave. Three days hidden in Thawr, with spiders weaving webs across the entrance, and doves nesting at the mouth. The enemy stood so close that Abu Bakr whispered, “If they look down, they will see us.” The Prophet ﷺ replied, “What do you think of two, when God is their third?”
This is where Stoic resolve meets Islamic tawakkul (trust in God). The Stoics taught prohairesis – the power of choice. You can’t control whether the enemy finds you, but you can control your inner fortress. Marcus Aurelius would have recognised this immediately: Prepare with everything you have, then release the outcome. This isn’t passivity; it’s the highest form of agency.
The Islamic principle of tawakkul is often translated as “trust in God”. But it’s deeper. It’s “tie your camel, then trust in God”. The Prophet ﷺ didn’t just pray in that cave – he planned, he acted, he moved. But beyond human capacity, he surrendered. Not in defeat, but in recognition.
This is the synthesis we’ve lost: Prepare fully, act decisively, then release the outcome and walk.
When Suhaib walked away from everything, he didn’t just free himself. He became proof. When the Prophet ﷺ emerged from the cave and entered Madinah, he didn’t just survive – he arrived. And in arriving, he gave permission to everyone who came after him: You can leave what no longer serves you. You can walk into the unknown. You will not only survive – you will become.
In that car, in that parking lot, you’re gripping the door handle. You’ve been holding it for three years. Your Hijrah doesn’t need a desert or cave; it needs one thing: the willingness to open the door – not to an office, but to the question you’ve avoided: “If I’m not this job, this relationship, this version of myself, then who am I?”
That’s the terror. That’s the treasure.
The muscle we need to train is not courage, but the ability to sit with uncertainty without retreating to the familiar. Just as the companions secretly trained in the house of Al-Arqam before their migration, we too must prepare for our own journey.
This conditioning happens daily, in small, difficult acts: having the tough conversation, submitting the resignation without a backup plan, saying “no” to obligation, choosing discomfort over decay.
It’s not built in grand gestures, but in moments like now – when the familiar pulls you to stay, and you choose to ask, not answer.
So, today, when the familiar feels suffocating and the unknown terrifies, pause. Place your hand on your chest. Ask: “Am I staying because this nourishes me, or because I fear what leaving will reveal?”
The power is in the question, not the answer. We are not our circumstances; we are our choices. The Hijrah is an invitation. How much longer will you sit in the parking lot?
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune.
