The Journey

We've all been on a busy public transport service at some point. The seats are full, the corridors packed, and the weather outside frightening. And yet, sometimes, we've been there before it got packed. Secured a seat while everyone else was standing. For the duration of that bus or train ride, our seat was useful to us. It was something worth defending if asked to move for no good reason. But then our stop arrives. And the second that the bus stops, the seat is useless to us. We get up, sift through the crowds, and step off the bus. It doesn't matter to us who took the seat, or if the traffic's eased up, we are now where we wanted to be. It is no longer of importance to us.

Life is no different. One day we will arrive at our destination, step off, and our proverbial seat in this world will no longer be of any importance to us. Who is to drive our cars once we are in the grave, or live in our houses, or do our jobs? Someone else will fill all of those roles, and we will be indifferent. Just as we were indifferent to our seat being taken once we’d gotten off. But unlike that seat on the bus, from which no value can be derived once you disembark, there is a value we can derive from all that we are on Earth: this is spiritual value.

The Prophet SAW said in a famous hadith:

"Take advantage of five before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your illness, your riches before your poverty, your free time before your work, and your life before your death." 

We have all heard this hadith at some point, but how is it to be implemented? How can we take the capital of our youth, our health, our riches, our free time, and our life and invest in a manner that brings us everlasting reward? How do we avoid being the ungrateful heir, who wastes his capital in a way that is of no benefit to anyone?

In order to do the former and avoid the latter, we must understand the work with which we may acquire from this capital we have been blessed with.

The Prophet SAW said:

'Strange are the ways of a believer for there is good in every affair of his... for if he has an occasion to feel delight, he thanks (God), thus there is a good for him in it, and if he gets into trouble and shows resignation (and endures it patiently), there is a good for him in it.' 

The work, my dear brothers and sisters, is the spiritual awareness of the tests and blessings of this world.

When we have developed a ‘spiritual consciousness’, much like after developing ‘political consciousness’, the world is no longer as it seemed before. In everything there is a spiritual lesson, either a blessing to be grateful for or a test to be patient in. How long will we move through this world on autopilot? From project to exam to hobby to gym to promotion- life has increasingly become a series of steps we simply run through, bewildered and anxious. We must learn to see everything as more than what it is, learn to see our life as more than just the people we meet and the things we accumulate. We must understand that we’re on a one-way express service to the aakhirah, and we have no way of knowing when we’ll arrive. 

May Allah make it easy for those who’ve read this article, and all of us as a whole, to use this life in a way that pleases Him, and will not disappoint us on the Day where it matters.