 happy hour is like a place where either at work or at a bar or somewhere outside, on a Friday or Thursday. Generally, it's very normal in the corporate world for people to get together, to drink, I guess their definition of unwind. And some people feel like, and usually there's a lot of music, there's decent amount of drinking going on, and usually it kind of gets to the point where people definitely become not inebriated, but they're not their normal self at some point. They do drink a few drinks to the point where they start to be tipsy, and it's not a healthy environment to be in. Now, what do you do? I've actually seen a lot, and I remember when I first started, I was doing consulting at a management consulting firm, and it was very normal for there to be regular happy hours with the senior leadership, sometimes with the clients. Like, what do you do? Do you go? I mean, most of us are going to hopefully try to not drink, we're not going to do that, but do you engage in that? What do you do? Most of the time people are worried, if I don't go, I can't network, and I can't build relationships. How am I going to get promoted? That's like the most common worry. It's an okay, it's a normal worry to have. This is where kind of a metaphor is helpful, right? Again, goes back to recognize who the real boss is. If you were, let's say you're at work, and your boss told you, like, don't do this. I don't want you to do it. It's really going to mess up your career path here. But your colleague, your friend at work, or someone even, let's say, below you in rank, right? Somebody who just started was like, no, no, you should totally do it. It's no big deal, whatever it is. And then you go ahead and you engage in that activity, right? Excuse me. And then someone engaged in that activity, upset their boss for the sake of pleasing that colleague. Right, and now their boss, like, the next week in their meeting is like, dude, I told you not to do that thing. You did it. You upset me. You upset, like, half of the rest of the leadership. And now you're in trouble. And now I'm gonna, this is gonna show up in your review. Or potentially, if you do this X number of more times, and I don't think I'm gonna be able to have you work here anymore. The order of priority was shifted. So this is really important to keep in mind when any situation comes up at work, where you risk upsetting God for the sake of making people happy. And so if we're engaging in something that Allah wouldn't want us to, Allah would not want us to be in an environment where there's loud music, drinking, and people getting tipsy going, and that's just not an environment he would want us to be in. But if we're willingly going in that environment with the idea that, oh, if I don't go here, I won't be able to get promoted, I won't be able to succeed in my career, our orientation of who's in charge is incorrect. And again, I know people, and like, I'm talking about very, very competitive jobs, very competitive top firms, top most difficult firms to get into in the entire world, who never stepped foot in any of these places. And again, regularly get promoted, regularly get promoted. I know someone who hasn't gone to Happy Hour for like five years and has gone and raised like $12,000 every single year, not because of any, they're just trying to not do what it is that they shouldn't. They're trying to obey Allah and they're not putting their trust in networking at a happy hour in order to succeed. So that's an idea that we just have to remember, right? And I do remember one time where I was at a networking event and I was just recruiting for a job. And I'm like speaking with these partners at this firm, like the senior people, and it was difficult, like the prayer time came in, I don't know, next thing you know, it's almost the next prayer time, right? And you're still at this event and you don't wanna leave because you don't know how it's gonna look optically. I mean, it's hard to know how to balance these type of things. So the best way to do it is okay, know what your morals are, know what you stand for. And then again, remember, you don't live to work, we work to live, right? So we work our jobs so that we can live our life and our life should not revolve around trying to make other people happy or trying to seek promotion in someone else. And so I actually really, really, after now thinking about this for a while, speaking to people in various degrees of their career, there's zero impact on your career if you don't go, I mean, zero impact because your career is in God's hands and he's going to control that. So it's just, it's not fathomable that Allah would reward you for doing something that displeased him, that just, it's not how it works. Equation is wrong, it's imbalanced equation. He will reward you for doing something, he will reward us for doing something that will please him, right? So generally, what do we do? First is we just, someone asks, can you go back on, I'm busy, I gotta be somewhere. That's the best thing to do. The second is in order to actually network, right? You actually show up at work with a smiling face and trying to actually use the time when you're in the office wisely so that people actually feel like you are, you're getting that same level of networking that you would get outside, like at a happy hour, but you're doing that in the workplace. And then third, you come up with other creative ideas, like get lunch with people, do things that don't involve loud music, drinking and an environment that's generally not pleasing towards God, right? But again, this depends on how much taqwa someone is trying to have. Just entering into that place in and of itself is not necessarily considered to be haram, right? But if someone is trying to guard their heart, they will try not to enter. But if somebody is like not at that point yet, just know wherever you are at in your spiritual path, right? If someone's not at that point, okay, it's all good, go there, do what it is that you have to do, talk to people and then step out. But it's, if somebody is like not praying at all, the most important thing is get prayers right. Don't worry about some of these other things, right? You may engage in that until you get the prayers right. That might be someone's mindset. But if someone is again at the point where they're trying to work on themselves, they're trying to pray, they're trying to guard their heart, they're trying to prevent doing anything that displeases Allah, then you're gonna be more careful. So all of this again is in context of wherever someone is at in their path.