YOLT

Ayah 10 in Sourate el-Mounaafeqoune. (The Hippocritts)

وَأَنفِقُواْ مِن مَّا رَزَقۡنَـٰكُم مِّن قَبۡلِ أَن يَأۡتِىَ أَحَدَكُمُ ٱلۡمَوۡتُ فَيَقُولَ رَبِّ لَوۡلَآ أَخَّرۡتَنِىٓ إِلَىٰٓ أَجَلٍ۬ قَرِيبٍ۬ فَأَصَّدَّقَ وَأَكُن مِّنَ ٱلصَّـٰلِحِينَ (١٠)

(Credit: Quran Explorer)

10. And spend out of what We have 

given you before death comes 

to one of you, so that he 

should say: My Lord! why didst 

Thou not respite me to a 

near term, so thought I 

should have given alms and 

been the doers of good deeds?

This ayah shows you how short life really is. As they all say...

"Life is too short to frown,"

and "YOLO." (You Only Live Once)

Well, yeah. But YOLO isn't true. The truth is You Only Live Twice. And the second life is eternal.

Life is very long. Our life, no matter how long we live, be it even 200 years, is just a tiny dot on the lifeline, as Mom put it. Like how a little scar on your arm is nothing as long as the rest of your body is healthy. Or to be simpler, a little dot on the number line. Numbers go on forever. The alphabet just has 26 letters. But numbers can go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and.....etc. Like life, until Allah chooses to end it.

We never know when Allah chooses to end our lives, so we have to make sure we put effort in every one of our actions. Say you were randomly invited to a party of non-Muslims, and the time for 'Asr came in. You tell the party host that you need to pray. The host goes all like,

"No way, boy. You can do that later when you leave, man. Forget that and enjoy the fun, dude! YOLO, y'know!"

And so you listen. You miss Maghrib. You miss Isha. Then, as you carpool with your drunk friends on the way home, you get in a car crash on the way home and you are one not among the survivors, unfortunately. 

So you die. And the last prayer you did, Dhuhr, was not even performed correctly. It was rushed, with no khushu'. 

Scary, isn't it? You've got to make every deed of yours perfect, because you may die any second, and be mindful of what you say. If you talk too much you might be talking before you die and the last word you say may not be very beneficial to you. You want a full good deed book on the DoJ, do you not? You know that feeling of regret when you've done something wrong and you know it? It's not a good feeling.

Now that I hope and think you've got my point, I will entertain you with a story. You all love my stories, don't you?

THE STORY

(original title, right?)

It was a breezy Thursday in March, and N was at the computer, nervously typing her last answer in for the virtual biology quiz. Then she clicked Submit. 

Ughhhh, thought N. Lind's probably gonna scream and give me a bad grade and stuff. And that was my last attempt.

 N waved off the thought and closed the virtual class site tab. The class site only allowed two attempts on the quizzes. Huh. Only two chances is a little risky.

Two days later, on Saturday, N went again to the class site. Results were shown on Saturdays, and N was quite concerned about her reulsts. That quiz was thirty questions plus, and N hadn't really studied.

N clicked on the quiz and braced herself for the results.

She stared.

Yikes.

18.25 out of 35.00.

N screamed, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" (in her head, of course. because someone upstairs was sleeping.)

That grade was terrible, although her first attempt grade was even worse. It was 9.00 out of 35.00.

But still! N had already used up both of her attempts and she had no more. 

I should have studied, I should have studied. And I should have done it thoroughly, N thought over and over.

The poor damsel in distress was overcome by regret, and she could do nothing about it. 

SHE HAD NO MORE CHANCES.

THE END

So, studying for a quiz is like you living your life and doing good deeds, praying, being nice to your siblings (koff), etc. The quiz is life itself. Submitting your results is you dying and Allah is looking over all the deeds you did whilst living. Looking at your grade is looking at your book on the DoJ. 

Most importantly, YOU HAVE NO MORE CHANCES. No going back. Life goes on, people grow up, die, and new ones come into the world. Some are forgotten, some remembered depending on what they did while living. There is no goign back. We learn this every day. You can't redo or undo something you did. Like, if you move your arm, you can move it back, but moving your arm already happened. You can't erase that movement from your list of actions with that arm you moved.

That's all I've got for today, humans.

 

-ReflectorN-