Who Speaks When We're Gone?

Three years ago, Hamilton’s poignant lyrics about legacy struck me:

Let me tell you what I wish I’d known when I was young and dreamed of glory.

You have no control: who lives, who dies, who tells your story.

“History Has Its Eyes on You” — a song written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, sung by Christoper Jackson

To put things into context, you might want to read this 2021 post:

So who’s going to tell your story?

Documentation was my first answer. From middle school with a cherished camera to college with meticulous meeting notes. But here’s truth: the most precise documentation of our lives is already being written, moment by moment, by the angelic scribes — Raqib and Atid. Every word, every intention, captured without the distortions of human memory or selective editing.

Yet still we document. My quarterly Instagram summaries paint achievements in broad strokes, while raw struggles find refuge in cryptic verses. This digital muhasabah, this algorithmic accounting of life, reveals as much about the documentarian as the documented.

The paradox emerged slowly: in trying to control my narrative, I created a meta-narrative about someone obsessed with documentation. Like quantum observation affecting its subject, our attempts to record life inevitably alter it.

Emergence — that phenomenon where complex patterns arise from simple interactions — offers a lens here. Just as consciousness maybe* emerges from neurons firing or market trends from individual decisions, our stories emerge from countless small choices and actions. We can’t predict or control the pattern, only stay true to the underlying principles guiding each choice.

[*: whoa, that’s a loaded metaphysical assumption there, so don’t debate me, I’m just delivering a point]

My twelve bullet-pointed stories from 2021 exemplify this emergence. Not mere chronological markers, but crystallized moments where paths diverged. The trajectory appears algorithmic in hindsight: each decision a node in a complex graph, edges weighted by consequences I couldn’t have computed then. Mathematics to machine learning. Student activism to AI ethics. Non-committal study of Islamic thoughts to researching Islamic perspectives on artificial intelligence.

Knowledge Domains to Research Focus: A Personal Trajectory

The coherence wasn’t planned. It emerged from persistent questions: How do we ensure technology serves human flourishing? What does Islamic epistemology offer to questions of machine intelligence? Where do our spiritual and technical frameworks intersect?

These questions reshaped how I read my own words from 2021: “No more feeling good enough, but strive in doing enough good.” The shift was subtle. From chasing achievement to valuing small, consistent contributions. From measuring impact to understanding emergence.

The irony crystallized: while searching for who would tell my story, I was already writing it through work itself. Each project, each collaboration bridging technical and spiritual understanding — these became the real narrative. My recent chapter contribution to a book about uncertainty of science, my work building frameworks for community-first research initiatives — these weren’t plotted chapters. They emerged from staying true to the search.

So who tells your story? The angels record our deeds with divine precision. But the meaning emerges in the work itself. In the questions we keep asking. In the communities we help build. In the spaces between intention and impact, between what we plan and what emerges.

Perhaps that’s enough.