14. IN THE COMPANY OF IDLE PEOPLE (AHLUL-FIRAQ)
I seek Allah’s refuge from the company of the idle people (subba al-bitalin).
I have seen a sizable number of people, dragging me on abundant visits people have become accustomed to. They call this visit a service (khidma), in which they request to sit and where they gossip about the people. They indulge the things that do not concern them. What happens within it is pure backbiting (ghibah).
This is something that many people are doing in our era. Perhaps this is what the person being visited has requested and inclined towards due to bewilderment by his own loneliness. This specially happens on the days of celebrations and festivities.
You see some of them going to meet others, where they do not restrict themselves to congratulations and salutations only. But rather they mix with them those things that I mentioned earlier amounting to wasting valuable time.
Since observing that time is a noble entity where one should remain alert in performing good things, I dislike wasting any of it. I remained stuck with them between two issues:
1. If I criticise them, this will bring about bewilderment by cutting off a familiar behaviour.
2. If I accepted their request to pay visits then that would lead to the wastage of time. I started to repel the meetings with all effort, and if I was overpowered, I would then shorten the conversation to hasten departure.
I began to prepare some tasks that prevent me from conversing during the meetings with them. I kept the following tasks ready during their meeting: cutting paper (for writing), sharpening the pens and binding the notebooks. These things are important tasks and they do not require the faculty of thinking or concentration. I kept them ready for the hours of their visits, so none of my time goes to waste.
We ask Allah, the Almighty and Majestic, that He grants us the realisation of the value of time in this life, and grants us the ability to take advantage of it.
I have seen a good number of people who do not know the meaning of life.
Among them are those whom Allah has enriched from their earning due to the abundance in wealth, so he sits in the marketplace most of the day looking at people. How much calamity and evil goes past him!
Among them are those who free themselves to play chess. Among them are also those who spend time engrossed in news from the rulers, high cost of living and bargains and so on.
I thus recognised that Allah the Almighty did not reveal the virtue of lifetime and the value of the time of well-being to anyone apart from for those whom He has granted the ability of realisation and inspired them with its worth.
“And none is granted it except one having a great portion [of good].” [al-Fussilat (41):35]
(Source: al-Hafiz Abu’l-Faraj ibn al-jawzl [d. 597AH] “CAPTURED THOUGHTS being” a translation of his masterpiece ‘Sayd al-K hatir)
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