Old Age: Consoling Hopes

Furthermore, His eternal mercy and unceasing care, which sustain and nourish all living beings with perfect compassion and bring forth countless adornments and beauties in the brief span of each spring, unmistakably point to the existence of the Hereafter.

Likewise, the intense, unwavering love of eternity and the enduring longing for immortality within the human being—the most perfect fruit of this universe, the most beloved creature of the Creator of the universe, and the being most intimately connected with creation—bear witness that beyond this transient world lies an eternal realm: the Hereafter, an abode of everlasting happiness.

All these truths together constitute such compelling proof that the existence of the Hereafter is as certain as the existence of this world itself.

Since one of the most important lessons the Qur’an teaches us is belief in the Hereafter, and since this belief is so powerful and affords such hope and consolation that, even if the burdens of a hundred old ages were to weigh upon a single person at once, the consolation it brings would suffice to bear them all, we who have grown old should say:

All praise belongs to Allah for the perfection of īmān.

And we should be content with our old age.

The Sixth Hope

Once, during my painful exile, when I wished to withdraw from people, I secluded myself on the summit of Çam Mountain in Barla. There, in that solitude, my soul sought a light.

One night, I was sitting in a small, open shelter built high among the branches of a pine tree on that summit. My old age brought to mind three or four kinds of loneliness all at once. As described in the Sixth Letter, the desolation and stillness of that night, together with the melancholy rustling and murmuring of the trees, deeply affected my sensitive nature, burdened as I was by old age and solitude.

My old age whispered into the ear of my heart:

“Just as the day gives way to darkness, as though entering a grave, and the world dons the black shroud of death, so too will the day of your life turn into night, the day of this world give way to the night of the barzakh, and the summer of your life become the wintry night of death.”

At this, my nafs was compelled to say:

“Just as I am far from my homeland, so too have I, over the past fifty years, been parted from loved ones who have passed away. And having remained behind to weep for them, I find this separation even more painful and sorrowful than exile from my homeland. Moreover, I am approaching a loneliness still more painful and sorrowful than the solitude I have experienced tonight upon this mountain. For old age tells me that the time of my parting from the entire world is drawing near.”