Late Night Thoughts #?: Crowded Koi and Curtains

 “Khuda ke liye chor do ap ye parda” - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

I was standing in a beachside resort just off the coast of the Bay of Bengal overcome with grief at what I was witnessing: scores of lovely Koi fish packed tightly in a decorative fountain. 

The overcrowding of fish in any aquatic space breaks my heart, but this particular fountain was not only stuffed but also incredibly shallow. 

The Koi fish however (as Koi do) did not seem distressed. Instead they paced gracefully from one end of the enclosure to the other, not aware that even half an inch less of water would seal their fates forever.

In Islam we believe there are seventy-thousand veils between us and God, but there is only one between us and death. I’ve often thought about how easily the veil of death can slip and cause us to tumble forward into our enternal realities. The veil looms over us but we cannot physically see it, and, like the koi we swim unaware of the half inch that separates is from this life and the next. 

It’s at the brink of death they say that our life flashes before our eyes. Reality and time collapse in on itself and we begin to account for every moment of our lives as if it’s one big amalgamation of who we were and who we are. If that’s the case are we not on the brink of death at every moment? If so, why are we not able to truly feel the radiating pulse of life that courses through us at every moment the same way as when our time is actually decreed? 

These are questions I do not have the answer to. But I do however think if we talked about death more, because it is our ever present neighbour, maybe we could live a little more.

Or as the lovely Tim Allen from recession era American Idol so eloquently put:

“Yeah, we gotta start
Looking at the hands of the time we've been given
If this is all we got, then we gotta start thinking
If every second counts on a clock that's ticking
Gotta live like we're dying” 

Thank you Tim! 🫶🏽