padding

…with the present
rather than the past or future.

What is the point in slapping your cheeks or rending your garment in sorrow over something you missed or some calamity that befell you? What is the point of focusing your thoughts and feelings on some incident that has passed so as to increase your pain and make you fall apart?

If it were possible to reach into the past and change it’s events which we did not like, and alter them the way we like, then going back to the past would be essential. We would all rush to go back and erase the things we regretted doing and increase our share of good fortune. But that is impossible, so it is better for us to focus our efforts on what will help us get on with our lives, for that is our only means of compensation.

This is what the Qur’aan drew attention to after Uhud (a battle named after a mountain in Madeenah), when Allaah said to those who were weeping for the slain and regretting going out to the battlefield:

“Say: “Even if you had remained in your homes,
those for whom death was decreed would certainly
have gone forth to the place of their death,”“
{Surah alee-Imraan: 154}

“Be certain that happiness is
like a planted flower that has
not yet blossomed, but it is
certain to appear.”

[You can be the happiest woman in the world]

During his final illness, Ibn al-Munkadir began to cry. “Why are you crying?” he was asked. “By Allaah,” he said, “I am not crying for the sins I know I perpetrated, but instead because I fear that I did something I considered to be minor, when with Allaah (i.e. in His Judgment) it is a huge sin.”
[Min Qasas as-Saaliheen]