By Haroon Moghul

After High School ended last year, summer vacation, the lure of senior year, then college and a different life lay before me. Not everyone’s dream though made it through the summer. A young man who graduated from my high school only a few years ago, perished in a horrible accident. Our town of Somers turned solemn for days, as silence set over the streets; the entire community mourned his passing. There wasn’t anyone who didn’t feel touched by a young man with such promise losing his life.

It made me think about what it is to be young. We’re the ones who have our entire lives in front of us. Or so we think. At this stage in our lives, the future lies under a liquid sky, dripping with the promise of an awesome job, a nice house, a family, cars and everything else we want. We like to believe that we have all the time in the world. And we live and acct as if everything we do won’t have consequences, because there will be y ears and years to ask forgiveness and repent. Everyone wants to think that the only thing that matter right now is this life. We all focus on the next twenty or thirty years; we make our plans to get ahead and stay ahead.

But how many of us make plans to be ready to die? How many of us wouldn’t mind leaving this life right now? Most youth, caught up in a foolish believe of invincibility, don’t give it a second thought. I know too often I don’t. I concentrate on getting to college, and getting a good job. But what happens if I don’t make it that far? I don’t know if I’m going to see college. I don’t even know where I’ll be next week, so how can I go on living as if I have all the time in the world?

It gets to be that we think we can fix it all. We figure we can be young, stupid, greedy, and un-Islamic now, but just repent by the time we’re older. We’re following paths that we know we don’t want to be on when the angel of death comes, but getting off isn’t as easy as it was to step on in the first place.

We don’t realize how blessed we are to have something, until we lost it. Sometimes I wish I had learned something when I was younger, when it would be easier to learn – but that time is gone. It’s amazing how much we realize we have after we lost it. None of us recognizes the fact that most of us have good meals every day, but the point is driven home during Ramadan, when we forget our petty desires and gradually understand how bountiful Allah is. Youth is just like that, except we can’t turn it off and see what it’s like to be old and not be able to do everything we planned to. Once time is gone, it’s gone. You can never slow it down. You can never turn it around.

I’m heading for college soon, and a part of my short life is over. Just like that, a big piece of life went away in the blink of an eye, and I barely remember it. Am I going to chase after the future, only to realize I can’t hold onto what I’ve caught? I’m sure none of us wants to die unprepared.

We must wake up now. We have to realize that time is short. Very short. A year passes like a second. Can any of us even remember five years ago? And does anyone regret not doing something years ago? Life flies by and, by the time we know it, we may have pushed ourselves far off the straight path. I don’t want to be pleading with God to let me live again. I don’t want to ask for a second chance. I’m always afraid I’ll end up like that young man who died on a hot summer night in July.

They buried that boy from Somers; they buried his dreams, his future, and everything he was looking forward to. And everyone cried, too – cried because he couldn’t be all he wanted to. But will I be all I should? Will we all be what we should be? Around that poor boy’s casket was life, but inside there was just death. There was no more time for him. He was all of nineteen, and faded early. We could very well pass sooner than we think. The mourners left as quickly as they had arrived, and as quickly as that young man had come to the earth, he was taken away, and all that was left were the roses they dropped on his grave.