Hawzah News Agency- In a reflection titled “If someone does not correct himself in his youth, it is very difficult to compensate for it in his old age,” the scholar explained:
“If a person is naive enough to believe he will rectify his sins in old age, woe to him. First, he has postponed the correction of his faults to an uncertain future. Second, the ‘fifth bandit’—the obstacles and temptations that accompany aging—will close the path of reform before him. Does mischief spare the elderly? Has this sworn enemy not prepared traps specifically for old age? Has not the banditry of takāthur—the rivalry in wealth and children—been made a test for the elderly? One who fails to reform himself in youth will find it extremely difficult to do so in old age, for he must endure both the deceptions of youth and the dangers of aging.”
Ayatollah Javadi Amoli then cited an encounter between Jabir ibn Abdullah and Imam Ali (PBUH). When Jabir sighed deeply in the presence of the Commander of the Faithful, the Imam asked whether this sigh of regret was for worldly matters. When Jabir confirmed, Imam Ali responded:
“I shall describe the world to you so that you may know it is not worthy of regret. The finest pleasures of this world are limited to food, clothing, and instinctive desires. The best food is pure honey—yet it is nothing more than the product of an insect. The finest garment is silk, which comes from a worm. So woe to the one who sighs over such things—lamenting why he does not possess a silk carpet or why he has not obtained refined honey, as if deprived of what a worm or a bee produces.”
Ayatollah Javadi Amoli concluded that worldly pleasures do not merit sorrow, and that social rank and worldly status are mere illusions. “God does not love the deceitful,” he said, urging believers to value spiritual reform over material attachments.
Source: Bihar al-Anwar, vol. 75, p. 11
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