Missed opportunities
Al-Risala (English), September-October 1995, p. 6
By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan is named as the default author of the periodical; a piece that carries another writer’s byline is credited to that writer.
Missed opportunities
1995 9-10 September-October 6-7 Missed opportunities (354) I once chanced to meet someone who was not particularly old in years, but whose gauntness of face and body suggested that he had become old before time. As he talked, it emerged that his grandfather had been a man of high position and very well-connected. He told me that if he had made use of his grandfather’s influence he could really have made something of his life. But, having neglected to do so, he had been a miserable failure. Now his grandfather had departed from this world, and all he could think of was the opportunities he had missed.
This tale of missed opportunities made me think of what was going to happen to people in the life hereafter. It would be the same story, only on a much larger scale. There are opportunities for the people of this world today, which if exploited, would enable them to build a bright future in the world to come. These opportunities keep presenting themselves right throughout the human lifespan till the very moment of demise, But, how tragic it is that, today, everyone is so engrossed in material things instead of in spiritual matters, that they lose the most precious of opportunities to secure the divine riches God intended for them in the life to come.
It is only when man reaches the world of the Hereafter that he realizes what it means to be bereft of everything. It is only then that he appreciates what opportunities he has missed, what makes it all the more grave is that these opportunities recur only during a man’s lifetime, and not in the hereafter. Then it is too late for him to go in search of his “missed opportunities.”
This is a matter which should be given serious consideration, because a loss in the context of this world is only temporary, while a loss in the Hereafter will be eternal.
Opportunities for action are here today, gone tomorrow, Tomorrow one will reap as one has sown. This is undoubtedly the most serious of life’s realities. But it is this very reality of which man is most oblivious.
