Perhaps because I’m approaching a round age, sometimes reflection glimpses of my earlier years come to mind; and it becomes true the often-repeated sentence that with time we get to comprehend things that seemed blurred at the moment.
One of those reflections is that I’m a trust fund kid. Perhaps not the kind that would come to mind when saying it, but still one who’s been given a wealth that can’t justify. This is true of the place I was born at, the family I was born into, the people I grew up with, the community around which my life revolves, and, of course, the Deen that I was given. But I want to be more precise by what I mean by a trust fund kid.
My parents are not wealthy, and money has never been in surplus around us. I do not have a trust fund bank account that accumulates interests and pays me a dividend at the end of the month (although I would not mind one). But when I was a kid, at 11, I was sent to a traditional Quranic school (perhaps the most traditional thing was the learning method, whereas the living situation was more akin to an alternative-boarding-farm). I spent all my teenage years there, from 11 to 19, with the sole purpose of memorising Quran. Now, ten years later, I feel like I’m still living off that.
It is obvious that when we are children we do not know much about what we want to do in the future or what we would like to achieve, it is our parents that set us on a path, which, more often than not, tends to mark our entire lives.
My parents did an effort, both personal and financial, so that I could be in such a place. A similar effort that other parents could have done to set up a trust fund bank account, but in this case, with a much wiser purpose and long-term plan.
Everything that we do leaves a mark, in ourselves and our surroundings, sometimes seen and sometimes unseen, but nevertheless there. Now I feel like when I left the Quranic School Muhammad Wazzani, in Mallorca, I left with a huge capital to start my life.
As it also happens with trust fund kids, using that capital well, not wasting it and making it grow is a challenge, and perhaps a bigger one than commonly perceived.
The one who has nothing, has nothing to lose. He can only go forward and has to strive hard to achieve even a little. But for the one who has a comfortable situation that allows him to just keep going, leaving that situation and getting into the unknown, where you might lose everything, is scary and dangerous.
No one can leave off a trust fund forever and reach new destinations. Nevertheless, having that capital to start with might help you get places faster.
Now that I’m reaching a round age, I’m also thinking about what kind of capital would I like to give to my (future) children and what kind of inheritance -but that demands a separate post on its own-.
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