I once heard Mufti Ismail Menk say, 'Young people always say YOLO. You Only Live Once. How wrong they are because the truth is You Only Die Once...YODO.' I can't say what he said doesn't resonate with me because lately, I have been receiving news of friends passing away or friends separating from their partners, friends moving away for good etc. etc. etc. And I look at my life and ask myself, when will MY time come? When will I face the ONE test that will completely change the way I look at life and once and for all devote myself to working hard to gain the pleasure of my Lord so that when I lay on my death bed, I will be eager to leave this world behind and return to where I truly belong? Truth is, I don't know. None of us do. And as long as we don't, we take life for granted, we take God for granted and we forget, we ALWAYS forget the promises and covenants we so readily make to God when we cry to Him only in times of need. Then when the tough times are over, we are back to giving our hearts to this world.
A learned man told me, 'Give your everything to this world but save your heart for the hereafter.' Deep and wise. It really is a take it or leave it advice.
I spend three quarters of my life planning for a perfect life here. I spend my days working so hard to earn my keep. I spend my days stressed and deceiving myself into thinking that if I do well at work, I will be happy and the satisfaction is sufficient. I spend my days planning for the best for my child, my family. I spend my days wondering what to wear today and what to wear tomorrow. I spend my days thinking and planning for a lot of things that I know, deep down, if I do without, it is okay. Yet, I put myself through this and forget the one purpose of life...and that is to live for the next life.
I fear for the future of my son. I wish 'stairway to heaven' was literally true. I would pack my bags and climb those steps and take him there in a heartbeat. But that's not the way the world works right? As I mature in years, I become more deep in thought as I cringe and gag at news of men raping babies, mothers throwing away their newborns, children humiliating and abusing their parents, human beings becoming worst than animals as they excrete in public or beat one another up on the roads, people dying from freak accidents and genocides.
We have become so inhumane that God has to literally show us the ugliness of this world behind that smoke screen we hide, to remind us that we are but travellers only of this planet and time. WE ask for it. From the time Hawa took that bite of the forbidden fruit, we were doomed all lifetimes on this earth. Be angry at God all you want. Run and hide to the farthest end of this world. You have to wake up someday and realise, you have been angry for all the wrong reasons and you can run but you cannot hide. Death is a step away from every single soul and it will come. And when it comes, it will be too late to realise how stupidly and ignorant and wasteful you have lived your life.
Every day, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that this world was beautiful to begin with but we made it sad. It is deteriorating before our very eyes. People are embarrassing themselves more in public and living like animals. While we delude ourselves into thinking that this world is beautiful with beautiful people...the clock is ticking. I smell the flowers. I really do. But beneath it all, the earth is waiting for our return.
It's a sad world after all.
Photograph by Mokhsin Moehtar
Email: moski77@hotmail.com
