Attract, Not Chase.

“Attract, not chase," this is what they say with the confidence of people who were born visible. The advice spills from motivational speakers, fills Instagram captions under sunset photos, gets repeated by career coaches and relationship gurus who somehow always ended up in the right rooms at the right times. Be magnetic. Work on yourself. The right opportunities will come. The right person will notice you.

But how do you attract what doesn't even know you exist?

Not just in love or interpersonal relationships,though that's part of it. How do you attract the scholarship when you attend a university recruiters never visit? How do you attract the mentor when you're not in the professional circles where mentorship happens over linch at the cafeteria? How do you attract opportunities when you're starting from a geography so far removed from where decisions get made that you'd need a different passport just to be considered?

Here's one thing I've realized about this concept of "attract, not chase": it assumes you're already in the game. It assumes proximity. It assumes that your magnetism, your self-improvement, your carefully cultivated excellence is happening in spaces where it can actually be seen by people who matter.

But what about geographical bad luck? What about being brilliant in Bauchi instead of Lagos, exceptional in Kano instead of Abuja, outstanding in places where outstanding goes unnoticed because the people doing the noticing are looking elsewhere? What about when life starts you 1-0 down simply because of your postal code, your family's bank account, or the fact that your father is a civil servant instead of a CEO or multibillionaire topping Forbes list?

Retrospectively,as a fourth year medical student, I believe I work hard. I'm good at what I do. I've written some papers, volunteered in communities and outreaches, done everything the success manuals say to do. I've become, objectively, someone worth noticing.

Except the people who matter might not be looking in my direction.

The consultants recruiting for residency programs know the children of other consultants. The professor with research opportunities has already promised them to the student whose uncle heads the hospital board. The fellowships go to people who could afford to attend the conferences where such opportunities get discussed over dinner, people whose families paid for them to do electives abroad, people who were born into networks I'm still trying to figure out how to access.

I'm magnetic. I'm just magnetic in an empty room.

This isn't about merit. Let me be clear about that. This is about the invisible infrastructure that makes "attract, not chase" actually work for some people while others are expected to be so exceptionally magnetic that opportunities bend the laws of physics to find them across social and geographical chasms that were never designed to be crossed by personality alone.

My aunt/mentor tells me to be patient, to trust Allah's timing, that if something is meant for me, it will come. She her husband through a family arrangement where visibility was guaranteed by structure. She didn't have to wonder if she was magnetic enough. The system created proximity, and everything else followed.

But our generation is told to attract without the structures that made attraction possible. We're supposed to be individually exceptional enough that somehow, across the noise of modern life and the algorithms designed to show us only what we already know, the right person will notice us. The right opportunity will find us. The right connections will materialize.

Sometimes they do. We celebrate those stories because they confirm the narrative we want to believe. But what about the equally magnetic people who remain unseen because they're in the wrong city, the wrong tax bracket, the wrong family tree, the wrong side of the digital divide?

Let me tell you about Muhammad who could either be fictional or a true part of my story,because romantic invisibility is the easiest kind to talk about even though it's not the only kind that matters.

I noticed him the way you notice sunrise when you're not looking for it but suddenly it's there, reorienting your whole sense of direction. He was in law school while I was buried BMS lectures trying to gain momentum. We moved in adjacent circles, close enough that I could observe him from what I told myself was a socially acceptable distance, far enough that I was essentially furniture in his daily life.

He probably knew my name the way you know the names of buildings you pass regularly but never enter. Meanwhile, I had memorized the exact way he laughed at his friends' jokes, the way he tilted his head when he was thinking through an argument, the particular way he said "subhanAllah" when something moved him.

"Just be yourself," my friends said. "Let him see the real you and he'll be drawn to you naturally."

But here's what they didn't understand: you can't let someone see the real you if they're not looking in your direction in the first place. Being authentically yourself is only magnetic when you're in the frame, when you've somehow managed to enter someone's field of vision long enough for them to register that yes, you exist, and yes, you might be worth knowing.

I worked on myself with the dedication of someone training for an exam that might never come. I read more, joined study groups, volunteered at community health programs, became more interesting, more accomplished, more everything the advice said would make me attractive. I became the best version of myself.

Except the best version of myself was still invisible to someone who wasn't looking for me, who had no reason to look for me, who existed in a completely different social ecosystem where my improvements registered about as much as a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it.

The philosophy of "attract, not chase" works beautifully if you're already in the stadium. If you're already visible, then yes, being your best self is magnetic. But what if you're not even in the building? What if you're outside looking through windows at a life happening without you, building elaborate fantasies based on observations made from distances that make accuracy impossible?

Here's what I learned about attraction: it requires infrastructure.

Some people inherit this infrastructure. They're born into families with connections, with resources, with geographical luck that puts them in cities where things happen. Their parents know people who know people. Their family name opens doors before they even knock. They attend schools where alumni networks are actual networks, not just names in a dusty registry book.

They're told to attract not chase, and it works, because they're already standing in high-traffic areas where their magnetism can actually be noticed. They're magnetic in rooms full of opportunity, in algorithms that favor their demographics, in social circles where one introduction leads to five more.

The rest of us have to build infrastructure from nothing. We have to create proximity where none exists. We have to manufacture visibility. And then we're told we're chasing, that we're trying too hard, that we're not trusting the process.

But here's my question: what if trusting the process includes using every tool Allah gave you to create opportunities instead of waiting for opportunities to miraculously cross impossible distances to find you?

I'm not talking about desperation. I'm talking about the difference between passive hope and active faith. Passive hope says: I'll be magnetic and the right things will come. Active faith says: I'll be magnetic and I'll also show up in spaces where my magnetism can actually be perceived by people who matter.

This looks different depending on what you're trying to attract.

For career opportunities, it means applying for things you're not sure you're qualified for because qualification is often code for connection. It means sending emails to professors whose research you admire even though you know they get a hundred such emails. It means showing up to professional events even when you feel out of place, even when everyone else seems to already know each other, even when you're the only one who took public transport to get there while everyone else drove their father's car.

It means using social media strategically, not just to document your life but to document your competence in ways that create digital proximity when physical proximity is impossible because you can't afford the conferences where connections happen.

For relationships, it means being visible in appropriate ways within Islamic boundaries. It means letting trusted people know you're serious about marriage so they can facilitate introductions. It means participating in community activities where the kind of person you'd want to marry might actually be present. It means, sometimes, creating opportunities for halal interaction instead of waiting for fate to manufacture meet-cutes that respect both your religious values and your parents' expectations.

For both, it means accepting that attraction without visibility is just wishful thinking. You can be the most magnetic person in your city, but if you're in a city where no one who matters is looking, your magnetism is irrelevant.

I eventually made myself visible to Ahmad. Not through chasing, not through manufactured coincidences, but through a mutual friend who understood what I was too proud to say out loud: that I was interested, that I wanted introduction, that I was willing to risk rejection for the possibility of connection.

We had lunch. At a mall, with my cousin present because that's how these things work when you're trying to do them properly. He was different from what I'd imagined, which is what happens when you actually interact with people instead of constructing fantasies from a distance. Better in some ways, disappointing in others, human in the way reality always is when fantasy finally meets fact.

It didn't work out. He's married now to someone whose father works with his father, someone who was never invisible because she existed in his actual world, in his social class, in the networks his family had been part of for generations.

I felt the particular pain that comes with closure you didn't choose. But I also felt relief. The relief of knowing I tried, of having made myself visible, of no longer carrying the exhausting weight of what-if

.

Here's what I wish someone had told me: attraction is not democratic. It doesn't work the same way for everyone. Some people attract opportunities because they're standing in opportunity's path. Others have to travel miles to even get near the path, and by the time they arrive, the opportunity has already been claimed by someone who was born closer.

Some people attract romantic interests because they exist in social circles where introduction is organic, where families already know each other, where compatibility can be assessed within structures that make assessment possible. Others are trying to attract across social classes, across professional divides, across geographical distances that require more than magnetism to bridge.

I think about my colleagues whose parents are doctors, whose families can fund their conference attendance, whose surnames carry weight in medical circles. They're told to attract not chase too. But their attraction has infrastructure. They're magnetic in rooms I have to fight to enter, in networks I'm still trying to understand exist.

And I'm here, equally magnetic, in rooms with far fewer opportunities, expected to attract across distances that require more than self-improvement, more than positive thinking, more than trust in divine timing.

So what's the answer?

There isn't one clean answer. It's both/and instead of either/or. Be magnetic and create visibility. Trust Allah's plan and take action. Maintain dignity and risk rejection. Honor the infrastructure you have while building what you lack.

Maybe it's being honest about the role of geography, family connections, and inherited social capital in making "attract, not chase" actually work. Maybe it's stopping the pretense that everyone who succeeds did so through pure magnetism and everyone who struggles just isn't magnetic enough.

I'm still figuring this out. I'm still learning when to wait patiently and when to create opportunity, when to trust timing and when to acknowledge that timing needs help, when to be content with invisibility and when to demand to be seen.

What I know for certain: invisibility is not a virtue. Remaining unknown while hoping to be discovered is not faith, it's fear dressed in spiritual jargons . And attraction without visibility is just potential that never becomes kinetic, magnetism that never attracts anything because no one is close enough to feel its pull.

The advice should be: attract when you can, and when you can't attract because you're starting 1-0 down due to geography or family or the lottery of birth, then be strategic about creating visibility.

Show up. Build infrastructure. Take risks. Make yourself known in ways that honor your dignity but refuse the comfortable lie that remaining invisible is somehow more noble than fighting to be seen.

Because the opportunity meant for you, the person meant for you, won't require you to remain hidden while waiting to be accidentally discovered across impossible distances. They'll be in rooms you're brave enough to enter, spaces you're strategic enough to access, networks you're humble enough to ask to join.

And if they're not? If after all your efforts you remain invisible to what you were trying to attract? Then the real win is knowing you tried, that you refused to accept invisibility as your fate, that you understood the difference between chasing and simply refusing to remain unseen.

Knowing you fought against the 1-0 disadvantage life gave you is its own form of victory, even when the final score doesn't actually change.

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Ahmad is fictional by the way.