Recently some events have happened to
make me really reflect on life, its meaning and what it’s all supposed to be
about. Last Sunday a young woman passed away after being in a week long coma.
She had suffered from kidney problems for a while and her sister passed away
some years previously in the same way. How does this have anything to do with
me? Well, she married a family member of mine, a month ago!
So naturally this was extremely
heart-breaking- a young woman who just got married is usually thought to have
her whole life ahead of her. She probably didn’t even get to pack all her
wedding gifts away and she was probably still getting used to the idea of being
a wife. Three weeks of marriage and then she collapsed and went in to a coma. This
had a deep effect on me, at first I thought it’s because of the romantic in me
clinging on to the tragic love story (sounds very “A Walk to Remember, doesn’t
it”?). But then I realised that it’s because it reminded me!
I was reminded in such a drastic and
blatant way that everything in this life means nothing. Everything has to come
to an end and all the things of this world are trivial when you consider our
actual purpose for living.
There are millions of people who grapple
with this very thing. What is our purpose for living? People spend years trying
to figure this out. As Muslims we are fortunate, because Alhamdullillah (Praise
be to Allah) we know the answer to this question, we’ve known it since we were
little children, and although we constantly have to re-understand it, the fact
is that we still know it. OUR PURPOSE ON THIS EARTH IS TO WORSHIP THE CREATOR,
ALLAH ALMIGHTY!!!
It’s that’s simple really, our purpose is
not to work, get rich, become famous or well known, and neither is it to get
married. It’s not even to have children or do good work or whatever else we may
think is important. No, all these other things is a means to the end, nothing
more, and the end is our return to Allah, and that’s all there is to it!
Now we can become angry, we can wonder
about the reasons behind things happening, we can believe that life is rather
unfair and that bad things seem to happen to good people, and so on. But if we
use this line of thinking then we surely do not understand the TRUE PURPOSE OF
OUR LIVES.
While people mourn the loss of a young
woman, and others around the world mourn the loss of their loved ones- we need
to understand that those people have only gone through the transition that we
all have to go through one day, it may be sooner or later, but our death is the
only thing in the world that is certain. And who says that death is a bad thing
anyway- Indeed if we love this transitory world then we will fear death and
hate to leave the world. But then again, if we love this world then also we
have not understood the true purpose of life.
If we understand the true purpose of life
then we will easily understand that everything in this world means nothing. If
we do not use the means to make a good end for ourselves, that is, if we do not
direct everything in our lives towards Allah then truly everything in the world
will mean nothing.
So as sad as it is and as much as we
mourn, the lessons cannot be ignored. This young woman was given the gift of
marriage before she passed away, but this gift was not meant to last forever,
and now she has passed to a place that means everything and we just hope that
all the gifts she had being given has helped her to have achieved a good status
in the hereafter.
In the end of the day, the things we
place so much emphasis on in this world will actually mean nothing in the
hereafter. We are told that on the Day of Judgement our time on this Earth will
seem like half a day, imagine that, all the worrying, the stress, the sleepless
nights and constant obsessive thoughts about things, everything in this world
will mean so little! If we do not use this world as a means to achieve a good
end, then we will be of the losers, so instead of obsessing about anything at
all in this world, perhaps we should start obsessing about the hereafter and
what our position will be then!
May Almighty Allah guide us, grant us
understanding, forgive us and help us!
And May Allah grant this young woman the
highest stages of Paradise, Inshaa-Allah!
