It’s never about our choice but about what life deems fit to throw at us.
If a medical practitioner had told me weeks before that it’s normal to experience a headache alongside a stomach ache, I wouldn’t have agreed. The reason is not far-fetched: I consider both illnesses chronic on their own and couldn’t imagine someone experiencing both at the same time. Unknown to me, when our blessings are being counted, we must not overlook the fact that others are still expectant.
In fact, I have, countless times, debated with friends about which of the two is more manageable. They’d always choose a stomach ache, while I, unsurprisingly, would choose a headache—of course, based on the assumption that they don’t know what the twinge of a stomach ache feels like.
My experience with both illnesses some days ago exposed me to the severe strength embedded in each and reinstated in my mind the overlooked philosophy of life.
Just because I was fortunate enough not to have experienced both at once shouldn’t have made me think it impossible. Although the lesson was learned the hard way, it equipped my mind with the understanding of different possibilities that bloom on this meadow of life and cleansed my lenses of every myopic germ.
Different thoughts swarmed my mind while the battle raged:
- When my throbbing head couldn’t be raised as I wished.
- When I felt some slimy liquid coursing down my forehead.
- When I couldn’t touch my own body out of fear of burning my palms.
- When those chunks of pain leisurely tugged at my stomach in rage.
- When my mouth wrung every ounce of a balanced diet with ease.
- When my bones crackled in fiery swishes.
I couldn’t help but think of how unexpected and grandly death might strike.
It doesn’t have to be through malaria alone.
It doesn’t have to be through an inferno alone.
It doesn’t have to be through drowning alone.
It doesn’t have to be by accident alone.
It might combine every painful means ever known on earth, unperturbed by what awaits us beyond.
If these possibilities are not far from the truth, how is it that we so easily forget death?
Why do we live as if we’ve already been given a permanent license to occupy this space?
Why do we dare Allãh as if we own our breaths?
Why is intentional worship a burden in our throats?
Why do we defy Allãh’s rules and still expect a splendid night’s rest?
Why…?
Just why…?
Since it is apparent that to live is to die,
Let our actions be guided by the fact that our fate after death is as blurry as translucent rocks.
By Salmah Zakariyyah
Hmmm🤔,what a thoughtful write up