The day is waning, and,

“By the passage of Time,

Surely mankind is in great loss.

Except those who have Īman (trust/faith in Allah), do good works,

And urge each other towards Truth, and urge each other towards Sabr (patience/steadfastness)”

— Surah ‘Asr, Holy Qur’an

Neither you nor I are going to live forever. Time, it is chasing after us, so hot on our heels. And, perhaps we are going to live to live through another few decades. Or, maybe one of us is going to die in the coming year. But this is undeniable truth: that we are each on this Earth with a given amount of time. Time is our ultimate form of wealth. And we spend this time in different ways. And, towards what are most of our efforts directed: the short-lived, or the everlasting?

The past: it will always be a part of you. But the active moment is this one: the present. Delicately (dynamically) wedged between ‘past’ and ‘future’. And all roads — every single one of them — have led you right to this Now. Life is about every little decision that one makes.

Where are we going?

Perhaps we shall live to see these faces of ours become plastered with wrinkles; our hair, all silver and snow-like. Or maybe, we will simply not.

A weird thought indeed: that one day, these material envelopes of ours will be cold. Washed by strangers at the mosque, Insha Allah. Prayed for, and cried over, and gone. 

In this Dunya, we get one life: this one. And no ‘superfood’, no exercise regime, nothing can prevent the ways in which Time moves, and, indeed, how we have been designed to move along with it.

And a recurring thought that never fails to strike me: that… a year, or two years, or eighty years. What are these, when compared with eternity? Less than a drop of water in all of the Earth’s oceans. What a loss this would be: sacrificing the lives of our eternities, for but a drop…

Sadia Ahmed J., 2020