Back in my teens I would often go to lectures when I would let my mind wander as the Moulana droned on about the dangers of the dhunia (the world). I was pretty sure I was safe from the danger of the dhunia, I had no fashion sense, I shunned boys, and beauty and money wasn’t all that important on my radar. Safe in my belief that I was not chasing after dhunia, I continued planning a career and my dedication to keeping up with current affairs and various hobbies. I had an image in my mind of the person I wanted to be when I was in my twenties and I was planning my success from the time I was a little girl. I wanted to be the best possible human being (but the thought of doing it for Allah’s pleasure never occurred to me), I wanted to be successful at everything (I used to have a typical Type A personality, thankfully I have been cured. No offense to Type A people, it’s just too stressful worrying about being perfect all the time!) and I wanted to be a powerful career woman. At first I thought I would be a journalist, then an archaeologist (Indiana Jones and a few books on archeology inspired me!), then an interior decorator (my sister was studying fashion design at the time and I got interested in design), a book publisher, a psychologist, a biomedical scientist, an astronomer, an international relations expert … There are stories behind every ambition and I am sure in between I had many more ambitions which I may have discounted by now (I currently have a few floating around in the background of my life, they are just not as noisy nowadays!). I studied towards some of my ambitions briefly or in depth, psychology, astronomy, interior decorating, and international relations and eventually I got into the book publishing field by chance. By the time I turned twenty-four, despite some obstacles, I was living the life I had imagined so many years before. I got an internship at one of the best publishing companies in the country, I was getting fast tracked to the career of my dreams without even having completed my degree and I was doing what I loved. Everything was perfectly imperfect. I realized with horror that I had in fact been chasing dhunia way back then (I can be quite *duh*). The moulana was right (and there I was insolently chewing bubblegum and daydreaming about that very dhunia he was warning me against). I worshipped an ideal of life that did not resemble the ideal of a Muslim life. This was a very humbling realization and I am so grateful to Allah (swt) that he blessed me with His Nur before I attained my ideal. I could recognize it for what it was, a functional aspect of my life. My true life became centered around my relationship with my Creator and when that floundered, I did. Which happened often, a part of me was still conditioned to chase after the image I had created as a little girl, whilst the other was longing to seek Islamic knowledge. Naturally there were plenty of fireworks. I am not saying we should not pursue our ambitions or interests, if we didn’t we would all be a bunch of boring drones running around and the world would not progress. However, the pursuit of wealth, career, adventure, entertainment or the knowledge of this world should not consume our life so that we have no time left for a relationship with our Creator and spiritual growth. It should also not be done to pursue an image we want attain to please ourselves or the world (you are placing yourself or other people above God in these instances). Ideally, you could try to merge your pursuit of spiritual growth with your interests. Just remember Allah in everything you desire and achieve! 

It is not our (halal) desires that is dhunia but the ranking we give these desires in our lives that makes it dhunia. And in the end all of it will mean nothing except the relationship we build with our Creator …  And Allah (swt) says in the Holy Qur’an:

Have you seen him who takes his whims and desires to be his god—whom Allah has misguided knowingly, sealing up his hearing and his heart and placing a blindfold over his eyes? Who then will guide him after Allah? So will you not pay heed? (al-Jathiyya, vs 23)