19. THE WISE CONSIDERS CONSEQUENCES
Caution (alhidhr) is necessary and should be assumed with every eventuality; one should not say, “Things mostly turn out alright.”
We have seen ships that became unbalanced on choppy water and sank along with those onboard, even though most of them turned out alright.
This is also how one should prudency manage his spending, even if he is in a good financial position, because it may not last. Needs need to be fulfilled and if wealth depleted and was replaced by poverty one cannot guarantee not to be in trouble and to be forced to seek help from people.
Similarly, the healthy should prepare for sickness (marad), and the young and strong should prepare for old age. Thus, in general, considering and weighing consequences and possibilities is a habit of a wise person.
Focusing on the here and now is a habit of the ignorant fools—exemplified by their consideration of seeing themselves to be healthy and forgetting sickness, or seeing themselves with wealth and forgetting poverty (faqr) they see short-term pleasure and ignoring its consequences.
The purpose of the intellect is to consider consequences, and to guide a person towards the right direction.
(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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