The Usual Scenario of Life

 The Usual Scenario of Life

A group of children go to the beach. Each of them finds a suitable spot and settles down with his/her beach toys. The white sand is scattered everywhere. Each one starts gathering the sand in the bucket and starts making a sandcastle. Some are successful at their first trial, yet others struggle as their sand castles collapse. Some even try to build bridges while others try to dig wells, but the water they put in always seems to disappear.

At this moment, if any child is disturbed or someone pokes a finger in his castle he would really get angry. He would even cry and shout, becoming offensive since for him this is everything. Finally some beautiful sand castles are made, and the children are so proud of their achievements, trying to “show off” to everyone.

But either of the two happenings stated below scatter all their dreams.

The tide has been rising, and none of them realizes what will happen the next second.

 A giant wave comes and sweeps away their great efforts, flattening everything as if the castle never existed. The child cries and cries, and maybe if time and situations allow, he even tries building another castle.

However, no sooner does he build another castle, or even before that, the second happening strikes. It’s the father calling out for the child that it’s time to go home. The child begs and cries for more time at the beach, but the father is persistent and drags the child to the car. The child keeps on turning his face, looking at the castle which he has built with such great effort, tears trickling down his cheek but it’s time to go….

We are all at the beach. Everything material on this earth originates from sand. Some of this sand is lying down and scattered all over, while the other is gathered in the form of skyscrapers, bungalows, industrial buildings, shops, huts, various forms of transports, etc. Every one of us is trying to gather as much of this scattered sand as he can. In his effort if someone were to interfere or disrupt, he would really get upset and angry just like the child gets.

But unfortunately, just like the child, we don’t even realize, or rather we tend to forget about the two happenings that are bound to befall us at any time.

“Time and tide wait for no man”. Times change just like the rising tide. A wave of sicknesses, bankruptcy, robbery, accidents, pandemics and calamities change everything in a spur of a moment. Our sandcastle is flattened.

Some of us struggle to bounce back once again, unaware the second happening is just around the corner.

Just like the father announces, “Time’s up! Let’s go home…”, Malkul Maut (the Angel of Death) announces “Your worldly life is over! It’s time to go to your ‘home’ (Qabr/Akhirah)!

We beg and cry for some more time, but not even a fraction of a second is granted to us.

We were born to die, yet all our efforts are for preparation of this short life, and we forget to prepare for our death, and for the never ending life after death.

We will not even take a grain of sand, yet all our resources i.e. our time, our effort, our money and our intelligence is used to gather the scattered sand to build the huge castles, and in a spur of a second, we leave everything as we breathe our last.

Let us all wake up from this deep slumber, understand our actual objective and goal of this short life, and prepare for our death and never ending life of the hereafter.

Let us try our best during our short life in this world to prepare for the life of the hereafter. It should be our fervent wish that our final abode in the hereafter life should be Jannah.