Life advice for all us from Prophet Muhammad (saw)
One of the things that always amazes me is that the teachings of our Prophet are not just belief in Allah but are also life lessons that everyone can benefit from.
The advice
”Take advantage of five matters before five other matters:
your youth before you become old;
your health before you fall sick;
your wealth before you become poor;
your free time before you become busy;
your life before your death.”
- Prophet Muhammad
(source: Narrated by ibn Abbas [from Musnad Imam Ahmad])
The lesson in it
We all know that everything we have is temporary; our wealth, our health; our life. It’s very easy to forget this on a daily basis since we get so caught up in Dunia (the worldly matters); every morning we wake up so we take it for granted not realisizing that there will be a morning where we won’t wake up.
I’m going to extract the lesson I personally learnt from each part of this hadith.
“Your youth before you become old…”
The energy and the capacity to learn when we are young gets less as we age. Our youth is the time where we can increase our knowledge, get out there and make a difference. Any habits we form in our youth will carry with us when we are old; so it’s important we spend our youth in always trying to be a better person and increasing our knowledge and our imaan.
“Your health before you fall sick…”
Everytime I get sick, even down with a cold, it’s amazing how the most simple things become difficult.I recently got back from Umrah and came down with a very bad cold and fever that lasted a week. At one point I couldn’t even complete sentences because my head was hurting so much I couldn’t get my thoughts straight.
When we go back to being healthy, we think it’s so easy to do everything and all seems right; but if our health isn’t okay then nothing appeals to us, not even our money or possessions that we trivially pursue when we are healthy.
“Your wealth before you become poor…”
It’s so easy to take for granted all the blessings Allah has given us. As the recession of 2008 showed the world, we are never secure or safe from losing our money, and anything can happen.
It’s important while we have our money that we spend it in the right way or just save it, rather than going out and buying things just for the sake of shopping. (I definitely need to learn this lesson!)
“Your free time before you become busy…”
The phrase “I’m just killing time” is very interesting. As Hamza Yusuf said, “TIme is the most precious things we have and it’s the easiest thing to lose.”
Alot of people believe in ‘killing time’ which if you think about it, is the worst thing you can do with your life. This time is never going to come back and we need to spend every moment of it pursuing something to make ourselves a better person. If you have a half hour lunch break, instead of sitting at your desk mindlessly surfing the web, you can look up some hadith, read up on something meaningful, or even go take a walk and get some air. This “free time” we get is a gift, not something to kill until we get back to being busy.
“Your life before your death.”
The perfect ending to this beautiful hadith. It sums up everything mentioned above and much more. As muslims, we are supposed to live keeping in mind that we can die at any moment. This is not a thought to depress but actually to liberate you. A person thinking about death will not care about the trite things so many people get caught up about of this world; having big fancy cars, worrying about money all the time, taking family and loved ones for granted, and forgetting all their blessings in pursuit of material gains.
A person mindful of death will live each moment to the full; and this is common advice not just in Islam but all the Western self-help books and life advice websites; “live each moment as thought it’s your last” etc.
A full interpretation
This is just my personal interpretation of this hadith and how I could relate it to my own life.
For a full understanding, please click on this link to Khutbah.com
