i think i’m dying

Reading time: 4 - 6 minutes

bismillahir rahmaanir raheem

jus gona tap now. usualy its a case of your heart feels it, your mind conjures it and then your hands articulate it. now its gonna be heart to hand, no middle men.

so, i think im dying. pretty melodramatic huh? well not really actually. we’re all dying i s’pose, every minute of every hour of every day you’re making treks to your grave. but i aint talkin about that kinda death; the transition from one state to the next. i aint talkin about that.

i’m talkin about the death of the heart. my hearts dying. i’ve bin latching onto it for so long, but i dunno, i dnt think it’s workin. it’s like you eva seen that episode of tom and jerry where jerry leads tom into the park full of dogs, and tom being the idiot wears the dog mask thinking it’s enough. and then his mask comes off and he’s amidst the dogs and then he runs and clambers up to the top of the pole. and then he’s snatching at it and he’s real scared and the dogs are still barking at the bottom of the pole…and he holds on so tight, holds on for dear life.

me. suddenly i feel like im tom. shaytaan was leading me astray, and like an idiot i followed and threw myself into countless sins. those sins, like those dogs, keep haunting you. and you’re clambering. holding on for dear life onto the little deen you have. holding onto the mercy of Allah and tryna accumulate your good deeds. but then you don’t stop sinning. you carry on, doing one silly thing and then another. and at the end of every day you have two little jars. one jar of good deeds and one jar of bad deeds. so you wake up the next day and you work harder to put more in the good deed jar and less in the bad one. and alhamdulillah, it helps. and the next day you do the same, and then the same, and then the same.

so you’re getting stronger now. the bad deeds look distant, long gone almost. then you slip up. you slip up and its like shoot…that slip coulda jus squandered allllllllllllllllll those heavy jars of good deeds. what then? you start again. and again. and the cycle continues and you jus keep doing what you’re doing, ploughin on tryna reach the top of the mountain, tryna hit the mark. tryna be someone who worships allah wholly and solely, with heart and soul. you’ve read that ayah where Allah has mentioned His Friend Ibraheem [as], and He says that Ibraheem came to Him “qalbin saleem.” Ibraheem [as] went to Allah with a pure heart. and you want it. you want it so bad, to be like ibraheem alayhis salaam. to go to Allah qalbin saleem.

so you say hey, lets focus on your heart. but then, when you try and find it, it’s not there. it’s hidden somewhere. like the precious ornament that sits on the mahogany mantle in a room long forgotten. and then years later when someone returns to it, yes it’s beautiful, but everything’s covered in dust. and the most precious piece in that room, the most precious item is the ornament on the mantle. and because it’s not been looked after for so long, not been taken care of, it’s got cobwebs all over it. it’s the same with your heart. you’ve neglected it for so long, not giving it it’s due, not polishing it with the polish of worship and not lighting it with the light of emaan. so now it’s lost amidst the mess that is you. its lost amidst the mess of your sins and negligence.

then you finally find it. but it’s all ugly. it’s got the rust of sins and the dirt of ignorance all over it. but underneath the rust and the dirt you can still make out that there’s something precious there. there’s still a heartbeat. faint, weak, wavering, but there’s still a tiny heartbeat. not like your normal timely physiological heartbeat. something else. a beat that beats when allah and his messenger are mentioned. it jolts suddenly like somehow it’s just been given a bit of life. something to feed it. so you find the key to its salvation and you start feeding it. you feed it with islaam, you wash it with every wudhu and you dress it with every good word spent in the remembrance of allah. everyday now the rust seems to be diminishing slowly. everyday the heart seems to beat a little bit faster, a little bit harder, a little bit stronger.

so maybe you’re not dying after all. maybe if you carry on like this, trying to do the best you can, asking allah for help, guidance, reliance, steadfastness, sincerity, hope and fear in Him, maybe one day you’ll get there. maybe one day you’ll go to allah, “qalbin saleem”.

suddenly i’m not tom. i’m better than tom. tom clambered onto the pole and he kept looking down at the dogs still barking, and he got more and more scared. if tom had stopped looking down and had looked up, he’d have seen that above him is a vast, beautiful sky. i look back and i see the depths of my ignorance, and like tom, i’m scared. but unlike tom, i know to look forward. to look forward to the vast mercy of Allah.

softly, so softly, the words echo within you, pushing past the dirt, penetrating the rust and igniting life in your heart again. “Wallahu Ghafoor ur Raheem.”

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