Over the Autumn

Oh dying flowers in the savanna

How beautiful in your last minutes to nirvana

Stand strong, stiff, deathly grace

Tall thin, dried, embrace the golden scale

The vibrance of the desert sand

Reminds me of the life's fragile strand

Beauty before being taken away

For nothing ever stays golden, they say

Here I am, over the autumn (or actually the autumn is over). My heart was captivated by this season and the moment of beauty it contains. The brightness, the contrast, the vibrance, the colours, ohh the beauty. If there is something that my heart does not contain, it's the millions of colours I witness this autumn. Maa syaa Allah.

كُلُّ نَفْسٍ ذَآئِقَةُ الْمَوْتِ وَإِنَّمَا تُوَفَّوْنَ أُجُورَكُمْ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ فَمَن زُحْزِحَ عَنِ النَّارِ وَأُدْخِلَ الْجَنَّةَ فَقَدْ فَازَ وَماالْحَيَاةُ الدُّنْيَا إِلاَّ مَتَاعُ الْغُرُورِ

"Every soul will taste death, and you will only be given your [full] compensation on the Day of Resurrection. So he who is drawn away from the Fire and admitted to Paradise has attained [his desire]. And what is the life of this world except the enjoyment of delusion." (QS. Ali Imran:185)

There is something about the autumn that grows solemnity inside my heart. Not only the blazing colours of the burning autumn but the fact that the things are dying. If spring is the season of birthing, this is the season where everything is dying. Every second of autumn, as the leaves fall down, Allah reminds us repeatedly that this world is indeed temporary. Everything will eventually return to Him. It reminds me that death is beyond us. It is close yet so far. It is close as we will never know when it comes, even closer than our love, our achievements, our family, our deadlines probably, but it seems that we are far eluded from it.

I have heard many news this season about deaths, relatives, friends, and strangers. Nothing seems good enough to be heard. Indeed, death is an unpleasant thing, neither to be heard, said nor to be experienced. But you know what? the thing is certain. Isn't it ironic that we live as if we ignore the certain thing? We bother achieving many things in our life, money, titles, family, love, etc. eluding ourselves from the truth.

Quoting from Imam Hasan Al-Basari, he once said:

مَا رَأَيْتُ يَقِينًا أَشْبَهَ بِالشَّكِّ مِنْ يَقينِ النّاسِ بِالْمَوْتِ ثُمَّ لَا يَسْتَعِدُّونَ لَهُ

"I have not seen certainty resembling doubt more than people's certainty about death, yet they do not prepare for it"

إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّآ إِلَيْهِ رَٰجِعُونَ

"We belong to Allah, and to Him we return"

Let's be more mindful of death and be a better person.