Who Are You Running For? Live Like a Traveller

Did you get a good break?

Or did your body rest while your mind kept running?

Did you have the courage to stop at all? Or was not stopping your own choice?

I am asking myself first. I wrote these questions down in January 2023, and I am still asking them.

How sure am I that the future I am running for will arrive? I treat it as guaranteed. Meanwhile, I treat today, the one day I actually have, as a waiting room.

Who am I running for?

Am I running for myself?

Am I running for people who will remember the hours, or only the results?

Is the running buying me anything I will keep?

Does it give me any tranquillity?

My daughter is almost three. She does not know what a prudential standard is, and she cannot tell a deadline from a Tuesday. What she can tell is whether her father is present when he is in the room.

What the grave keeps

In my notes I wrote a hard line. The people you are running for will forget you the moment they lower you into the grave, and the only thing they will remember is what you left for them.

The line is half right, and my own life shows which half.

I was holding a fresh bag of blood when my father took his last breath. I have written about that day before. I have not forgotten him. I have made a habit of visiting mosques and giving in his name.

The Prophet ﷺ taught that when a person dies, their deeds stop except for three: charity that keeps running, knowledge that people keep benefiting from, and a righteous child who prays for them (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 1631).

So the second half of my line holds. What you leave behind is what remains. The first half fails, because the people who received something real from you do not forget you. They keep giving in your name.

That changes the question I should be asking. What am I leaving for my family? If my daughter grows up to recite the Qurʾān and raise her hands in duʿāʾ for her parents, that will outlast every document I have drafted.

It also exposes a contradiction in my own notes. I wrote "let the future be forgotten", yet here I am planning my daughter's education years ahead. The future worth planning for is the certain one, the return. The future I keep sacrificing today for is the uncertain one.

Live like a traveller

Ibn ʿUmar narrated that the Prophet ﷺ once took hold of his shoulder and told him to live in this world as a stranger or a traveller (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6416).

I know something of being a stranger. I grew up in Bangladesh and have built my family's life in Kuala Lumpur. A stranger does not pretend the place belongs to him. A traveller does not carry his whole house on his back.

When I packed for Abuja, I packed for the trip. Nobody packs for ten years when the journey is ten days. Yet in this world I pack for decades I may never see, and leave behind what this stage of the journey needs: unhurried worship, attention for the people in front of me, and my own health.

Ibn ʿUmar used to add his own advice to that ḥadīth. If you reach the evening, do not wait for the morning. If you reach the morning, do not wait for the evening. Take from your health for your illness, and from your life for your death.

That is a traveller's plan. It is short-term about the world and long-term about the return, and it spends today well because today is what he has.

For this morning

If you are reading this at the start of your day, you are holding the part of it you can be sure of.

A traveller asks two questions. What do I have now, and what can I do with it now? Ask them before the inbox opens.

The answer may be small. Pray the next prayer without rushing it. Call your mother. Sit on the floor with your child for ten minutes with the phone in another room. Finish one task properly before you start the next.

Each of these is something you take with you when you leave.

So, did you get a good break?

If not, you still have this morning. Work hard in it, give it your full attention, and leave tomorrow's load for tomorrow. I will try to do the same.

Ya Rabbi, make us travellers in this world and residents of the next. Let us leave behind charity that keeps running, knowledge that benefits, and children who remember us in their prayers. Āmīn.

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