Crunchy leaves. Changing breeze. And barren trees… What comes to mind when you read these phrases together? You guessed it! The Fall season.
It’s almost here!
Fall has its own beauty, no? Despite the trees losing all their leaves, flowers giving up most of their beauty, and nature, in general, packing its bags to settle in for the oncoming winters, Fall still remains mesmerizing, almost magical with the wind starting to carry subtle signs of the cold that’s about to unfold, days getting shorter and nights longer and calmer.
But as we take our blankets out and unroll them outside in the sun for a few days, let’s not forget to take a moment and reflect on falling leaves and changing seasons.
What do these simple changes hold that are so important for us to reflect on?
Allah SWT says in the Quran:
He brings forth the living from the dead, and He is the One who brings forth the dead from the living. That is Allah! (Quran 6:95)
As the tree leaves go from green to brown and prepare to fall to the ground at the slightest shake of the branch, we see a real-life manifestation of how Allah brings forth the dead from the living.
The leaf that was once fresh and new, glistened in sunlight as spring turned into summer is ready to drop down to the ground. From there it would either be buried in the ground or turned into dust, only to be carried far away from its home.
If we ponder a bit more, we may find another reality, closely related to human life, reflected in the fall of the leaves. Life and death.
No matter how fresh and new the leaf is, it has to wither and die. The same is true for all humans, with just one difference – humans have another life to live after they pass on, unlike the withered leaf.
And what do we want from the next life? Success.
So, let this Fall remind us to prepare for a time when we, too, will leave the place we spent all our lives, and with that reminder, let us prepare for a successful next phase.