What if..

You know the hadeeth:

من حسن اسلام المرء تركه ما لا يعنيه
حديث حسن رواه الترمذي

Well, my father claims that it is ranked as one of the most important hadeeths recorded for our prophet (Peace Be Upon Him). Well, I was thinking today what if people took the hadeeth seriously. And when I say "people" I mean EVERYONE. What if people stopped nosing into other people's business? What if people did not waste all of thier effort on stuff that didn't matter to them? But for one thing, I admit I consider myself "curious" to some extent about what happens in other people's life. But I also think that almost everyone I know has problems with curiosity to one extent or another.

Back to my question, the first thing that came into my mind is the amount of people who "earn their living" from intruding others privacy. I mean if people decided to take this hadeeth into effect, there would be no papparazi,many magazines would have nothing to write about, no news feed on facebook, no gossips, no shows like the view and Tyra, and possibly half of the shows on Oprah, many personal blogging posts would not be interesting any more because it is other people's businsess that no one should care about. I am not sure if people would actually blog.

Then suddenly my thoughts concentrated on "facebook", and how contaminating it is if viewed from the hadeeth point of view.I mean 99.99% of any facebooker time is checking other people's news. Whether it is photos, groups joined, status updates, who-wrote-on-who's wall, who-commented-on-who's photo, who became a fan of ninja turtles. I mean the social network idea is so powerful, i gradually started to believe that it is so misued Everybody knows in their heart that facebook is a waste of time. "But it's "fun" to see what people chose to share about their lives. People share only what they want to share",they think to themselves.

Still again my thoughts went back to the hadeeth..and the term "من حسن اسلام" specifically. The phrase I believe is "iniviting" if you must say for a Muslim to embrace such an attribute. It is like when someone tells you something is "preferable" in contrast to it being "obligatory".
Maybe I will try to be less curious about other people's business. At least it would make me more focused on the important stuff in my life, like you know, checking my mail.

P.S: I am not considering re-de-activating my facebook account, at least not after I get my "happy birthday" on the wall :P. But it is an idea worth pondering.