“Oh my Lord, remove the infatuation of this world from my heart!”
– Imam Sajjad, an excerpt from his prayer titled, “The supplication of Abu Hamza Thumali.”
A man was walking through the jungle one day when he heard a disturbance in the trees behind him. Looking back, he saw to his utter horror that a massive lion was on the verge of chasing him down.
Like any reasonable person would do, the man started running like he had never run before. Crashing madly through the trees with the lion hot on his heels, he saw a well with a rope coming from it a little way in front him.
A final mad dash got him to the well, and with a second to spare, he made it into the well, clutching onto the rope for dear life while the lion roared angrily from atop the well.
Catching his breath, the man took a moment to survey the surroundings of the well he found himself in.
Wrong move.
One glance below revealed that a massive snake was at the bottom of the well, hissing vehemently at him, its mouth wide open, ready if the man were to slip.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, a couple of mice — one black and the other white — had taken to nibbling away at the rope that was keeping him above the snake, and below the lion.
And then the man saw something golden and sticky dripping lightly on the sides of the well. Curious, he reached out and touched it. To his surprise, it smelt sweet, like honey.
Unable to resist, he tried it and, to his delight, found that it was as good a honey as he had ever had.
“What a taste!” he said to himself, helping himself to some more.
He continued eating, and after few mouthfuls found that his situation seemed perfectly OK.
“So what if there a cat on top trying to eat me for dinner? And I’m probably imagining that snake below me,” he thought to himself.
He found himself becoming steadily intoxicated by the sweet liquid. His eyes began drooping and his thoughts started drifting.
As his conscience slowly began slipping away into oblivion, the man awoke, laced in cold sweat inside his bed.
The next day, troubled by this most vivid and puzzling dream, the man visited the local sheikh (religious scholar) hoping that perhaps the scholar could help him make sense of his dream.
After narrating the dream to the sheikh, the sheikh smiled knowingly and said, “Let me tell you what your dream was all about. The lion that was chasing you represents death — death is always in pursuit of us, coming closer every day.”
“That rope that you were hanging onto in the well was your life,” the sheikh continued. “We are clinging onto our lives. That snake that was at the bottom of the well stands for our graves — our graves are waiting for us to be buried inside them. And those two mice that were chewing on your rope, they represent night and day, constantly nibbling away at our lives until we are no more.”
“But the honey, what does the honey symbolize?” the man asked desperately. “When I had it, it felt like nothing else was important!”
“Ah, the honey,” the sheikh said with a wise nod. “The honey stands for our love of worldly desires. That ‘oh so sweet’ yet stubborn attachment to all things material. That barrier which so often stands before us and God.”
Pretty crazy story, eh? Unfortunately, it’s probably not based on a true event. But still, who says lessons can’t be learned from fiction.
So what does this story have to do with Islam? Does it mean that Islam says we should dump all our worldly pursuits altogether and sit on the prayer mat all day? Does it mean we should ignore all our natural urges and shove them under the carpet?
No way! Even the Holy Prophet earned a living. He got married and had children.
Famous Greek philosopher Aristotle proposed the golden mean, a balance between two extremes. In a nutshell, that’s what Islam is all about — balance and moderation.
Islam recognizes that we are creatures with carnal, biological needs that need to be fulfilled.
Suppression is not the right way to go about them, and nor is all-out expression at any cost.
Islam seeks to stop us from surrendering ourselves to desires like lust, for example. When we surrender, it affects us like that honey that intoxicated the man in the well. He lost sight of the bigger picture. He lost sight of reality.
But the flip-side isn’t pretty either.
The problem occurs when we tilt too much to one extreme — either shunning away those needs and labelling them as dirty and bad, or acting without shame and pursuing every means possible to feed the beast that roars inside us.
Islam says don’t drink alcohol. Islam says don’t fornicate. Does that mean that the Islamic way of life is restrictive? Far from it. Those “restrictions” are blessings in disguise. They are boundaries by which, if we abide, we will live fulfilling, complete lives.
Imagine a town with no road rules. No traffic lights, no signs, no nothing. There would be utter chaos. People would go wherever they felt like going. There would be no order.
Satisfying our innate desires is not the main objective of our lives. We have another element to us along with our physical sides. Our spiritual sides need to be catered to as well, and those boundaries help us remember to tend to both during our time on earth.
But just like that lion chasing the man in jungle, death is inevitable. It’s always after us.
How long do we have to live in this world? Seventy years? Eighty years? One-hundred years, if we’re lucky. Where is your certificate that says you have “x” number of years to live? Heck, I have no guarantee that I’m going to walk out of this room alive.
So live your life, enjoy, and have fun, but stay within the boundaries. Remember, this world is temporary. The afterlife is eternal.
