Epigraph: “And seek,
through what Allah has given you, the Home of the Hereafter.” Qur’an 28:77
Source
Note: This is a direct English rendering of a recorded
discussion between Mr. Rizwanullah (Scholar, Al Mawrid, Lahore) and young participants. The
content has been translated faithfully into English with grammatical
refinement, without interpretive additions.
The Analogy of Travelling
Upon reflection, travel offers many valuable lessons. One kind of journey is where you simply depart, remain
completely unconcerned about what is happening around you, fall asleep, and
arrive at your destination. However, if you travel with full awareness and attentiveness, you gain ever-new observations, and your experience increases significantly.
When a journey begins, and you take
your seat, initially, there is a feeling of reassurance and comfort. Your
attention is focused on somehow settling into your place and adjusting
yourself. The most important thing at that moment seems to be securing a seat.
Once you get your place, you attain a little peace and comfort. But as you continue moving forward, and
as different stations and destinations pass by, changes also begin to occur in
your temperament and state of mind.
Let me give you a simple example.
When we were children and used to travel, at the beginning, there would simply
be the usual struggle of settling down in the train and making space for
ourselves. Five or ten minutes would pass in that. After that came the stage
where we would sit by the window and observe the outside scenery: the trees
seeming to move backward, rivers appearing, canals flowing, and flowers passing by. Then, as we neared our destination,
before our station arrived, our mother would especially tell us: “Get up and
prepare yourselves — the station is about to come.”
In the light of this, if you
reflect carefully, life too is very much like a journey. It also has its stages
and stopping points along the way, and then there is a final destination to
which everyone must inevitably go, whether they wish to or not. The first stage is childhood and
adolescence. Then youth turns into adulthood. After that begins the phase of
middle age, then old age, and finally death.
Childhood
If you observe a child, you will
notice that the child lives a completely carefree and contented life. There is
neither concern nor thought about the unseen future. The child simply lives in
his own world, making decisions according to his own understanding. Whatever is
directly before his eyes becomes his focus and center of attention.
Youth
Then comes the next stage in the
journey of life: youth. In youth, passion is stronger, enthusiasm is greater,
activity and movement are more intense, and a person becomes involved in
countless engagements and pursuits. It is as though he is constantly running
forward with excitement overpowering him. In that stage too, true awareness is
often absent.
Middle Age
But when one enters middle age, it
feels as though that earlier intensity and passion begin to soften. Emotions
become more balanced. The passions and ambitions that once burned strongly
begin to settle, while maturity and awareness increase. The Qur’an too refers
to this stage of intellectual and emotional maturity: “Until he reaches full maturity and reaches forty years of
age…”
Onset of Old Age
Around forty years is generally
the stage where, if you imagine life as climbing a mountain, you have reached
the peak in many respects. After that, the downward slope begins. Then the signs of old age start
appearing. Your hair begins turning white. Your joints begin wearing down. Your
eyesight weakens. Earlier, you could see clearly from afar, but now doctors tell
you that you need glasses. These changes begin appearing one after another.
Tell-Tale Signs
What are all these things actually
telling you? They are telling you
that your final station is approaching. So
what should one do? As I mentioned earlier, our mother would say, “Gather your
bags and belongings together — the station is near.” In the same way, at this
stage of life, your task should no longer be scattering and expanding endlessly
into worldly pursuits; rather, it should be gathering yourself together and
preparing.
Yet even at this age, some people
remain entirely occupied with plans related only to this world. You may have
seen people who, even with one foot almost in the grave, continue making
worldly plans — striving for further success, advancement, and accumulation. Whereas what should really happen is
that the direction toward which you are inevitably heading should now become
your focus, and preparation for that destination should begin.
You may dye your white hair and
hide its color. One meaning of doing so could simply be appearance and
grooming. But another possibility is this: Allah had shown you a sign — as
though warning bells had begun ringing that your station is approaching — yet
instead of taking heed, you try to hide the reminder itself. It is as though a person says, “I still
do not want to think of myself as old. I do not want to feel any such concern.
I still wish to remain absorbed in the pleasures and distractions of this world.”
What I am saying is that in the
journey of life, when the signs of old age begin, it is as though the signs of
death have also begun. At that point, a person should begin preparing. Preparing for what? For the station where he must
eventually disembark — inevitably and without escape. As the Qur’an says: “Indeed,
you are laboring steadily toward your Lord, and you will surely meet Him.” — Qur’an 84:6
Whether willingly or unwillingly,
you are moving toward that meeting. No matter how much a person struggles, he
cannot refuse to arrive at that destination.
Moment of Reflection
Now, the reality I have placed
before you is something people often fail to keep in mind. There are several
reasons for this, some of which are mentioned in the Qur’an and also discussed
in the sayings of Muhammad.
For example, especially in youth,
a person feels that life ahead is still very long. Youth carries its own
excitement, ambitions, and romantic idealism. A young person thinks: “I am
still young. Old age and death are far away. There is still plenty of time
before I need to prepare.” But
this is actually a deception. Ordinarily,
yes, people move through all these stages one after another. But it is not
Allah’s fixed rule that every individual must necessarily reach old age before
death.
A person who assumes in youth that
“my destination is still far away, so preparation can wait,” should remember
that sudden death also exists. Many people are healthy, young, and apparently
fine in every way — yet they suddenly depart from this world.
Some people think differently.
They say, “Even if we die, Judgment Day will not come immediately. You yourself
tell us that there is the عالمِ برزخ (the intermediate
realm). That period may last thousands of years. Then the Day of Judgment will
occur, then a new world will be created, and only after that will we stand
before Allah’s court.”
But here too, a person is falling
into another form of deception. He becomes spiritually lazy, thinking that there
is still a very long time ahead. The
Prophet Muhammad ﷺ explained this
beautifully in a Hadith. He said: “Whoever dies, his Qiyamah has already begun.” Meaning: even if thousands of years
remain before the Final Day arrives, for the person who has died, his
opportunity is already over.
It is like a student sitting in an
examination hall with three hours allotted for the exam. But after only one
hour, his answer sheet is taken away. Even if two more hours remain officially,
what benefit are they to him now? He can no longer write anything. In this sense, the Prophet ﷺ said: “Whoever
dies, his Judgment has already commenced.”
Conclusion
We were discussing how, as these
earthly stages of life keep passing by, sometimes the awareness slips out of a
person’s mind that the moment of accountability is drawing near. Therefore, God
repeatedly reminds us of this in the Qur’an, keeps bringing it before us again
and again. Like that famous verse: “The people’s
time of reckoning has drawn very near, yet they remain in heedlessness, turning
away.”
Now, what does heedlessness
(ghaflah) mean here? Keep the earlier example in your mind — suppose you are
traveling and you fall asleep. What does sleeping mean in that situation? It
means that before reaching your stop, the preparations you were supposed to
make are now left undone because you fell asleep. So the Qur’an explains that one of the greatest obstacles, one
of the greatest barriers that prevents a person from keeping God’s
accountability before him, is this heedlessness. We fall asleep spiritually.
If a person remains awake to the
fact that the moment of accountability is approaching, then naturally he will
prepare for it. These two things are inseparable — understand this carefully. For example, when educational
institutions announce, “The examinations are near,” what does that actually
mean? Does it mean: “Go to sleep”? No. The very purpose of announcing that
examinations are near is to say: “Wake up, become alert, prepare yourselves,
come out of negligence — very little time remains.”
The Qur’anic expression is: “Iqtaraba
linnāsi hisābuhum” : “The
people’s reckoning has come very close.”
So in the end, we simply pray to
Allah that He creates within us this awareness and consciousness: that while we
continue living our worldly lives, we never forget that in the Hereafter we
will have to give an account of our affairs, and that moment is not very far
away at all. It is as though it is right upon our heads.
________________________________________________________________________________
“And
seek, through what Allah has given you, the Home of the Hereafter.” — Qur’an 28:77
Source: Mr.
Rizwanullah, Scholar Al Mawrid, Lahore
________________________________________________________________________________
Arranged by:
Aamir I. Yazdani
MPhil Islamic Thought & Civilization (PAKISTAN)
MSc Irrigation Engineering (UK)
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