Alphabet Inverted

Two amazing talks by an amazing shaykh masha Allah to take your Ramadan to the next level.

When we think of the past, what comes to mind? I’m sure many of us think of how simple life was. At least I do. Back then, people found easy ways to entertain themselves. Their days were set out for them, full of hard work during the day and family time during the evenings. Many of them had little money to spend, most of it being used on things that mattered, with little to spare on spoiling themselves. Despite all of this, they were happy.

Of course this is a great generalization, so I ask you to bear with me for the purpose of this post. Today, we seem to have lost this simplicity. While the introduction of such things as televisions and the internet have brought many benefits to society, it has not come without its consequences. In the hustle and bustle of everyday, we find that we have no time for anything and we watch as our lives quickly pass by us. Days turn into years, and before we know it, we’re on our deathbeds wondering where the time has gone.

We seem to have lost the barakah in our time that our forefathers had. They were able to accomplish so much and more in less than half the time it takes us. The secret to their success was their excellent time management skills, planning out what they did carefully and taking advantage of the best times to get their work done. They were able to take care of both their dunya and akhira and excel at both.

What many of us don’t realize is that we can gain the simplicity of the past back. Simplicity doesn’t mean having little money; it is when we don’t get too caught up in the things that don’t matter at the detriment of the things that do. As much as we might not like to admit it, our akhira many times gets pushed to the side because of things we deem more urgent. In many cases, if we were just to manage our time better, we could get everything that we want done plus more. How many times have you wished that you hadn’t wasted that half hour or that you had just one more day to finish whatever you needed finished?

I say let’s rewind to how it was in the past and start to live more simply. Let’s slow our fast-paced lives down a bit, breathe a little, and take it one day at a time. We can get everything done and more insha Allah, if we learn to better manage our time. That is key. After all, time is all we have, as the tabi’ee Hasan al-Basri, rahimuhullah, said,

Son of Adam, you are nothing but days, and whenever a day passes away, a part of you passes away.

So, here’s something practical we can do (as there’s no use in gaining knowledge if we aren’t going to put it into action): write down what’s wasting our time and make a commitment to stop doing it. Write down what we’ll do instead during that time. Another thing we can do is every night write down a plan or schedule of what we want to get done the next day. Let’s take advantage of blessed times, such as after fajr, instead of sleeping. And most of all, let’s ask Allah to place barakah in our time and to help us accomplish everything that we want, making us better than best. When we obey Allah and live life according to His guidelines, we will reach success both in this life and the next insha Allah.