Try These Shoes on for Size

My mum watched this Indian film last night and was telling me about it. I hate most Indian films, but must say that this one sounded pretty interesting. (Ignoring all the songs and melodramatic love stories aspect of it )

So, it was about a guy who was approached by the "God of Death," (for my sake I'm just going to say Death.) The guy was told that he had just days to live and that he should choose where he wanted to die. When Death returned and saw the man sitting in the hallway of a hospital he questioned him as to why he had chosen that particular spot to die. In response to this the man lost his temper and argued with death for his ignorance about life and all that it brings: love, relationships, emotions etc etc.

As a challenge the man said to Death just to experience what life was like. And so to do this Death possessed the man's body and lived as him, in his life for four days. To Death's own surprise he started to find himself growing more and more attached to life, experiencing feelings such as love, pain blah blah blah. When the time came that he had to leave the man's body, he told him everything that he had began to feel. The man of course felt that he had won. But then Death replied: He said that it didn't matter how much longer he gave the man to live, that the man would never be satisfied. His work in this world would never end, and he would never want to leave it.

Interesting. Firstly the man had valued and was grateful enough for his life to have even wished for Death to have experienced it. Yet at the same time, as Death was to teach him, he had lived life in too much of a permanent sense. He had attached himself to a world that in its very nature is temporary, and had forgotten that Death was running up behind him. He had been short-sighted.

Many world religions don't see death as a full-stop in life, but rather a comma in our journey. Especially for Muslims it's more an experience we'll just have to go through, and therefore are constantly preparing ourselves for throughout our lives. We prepare ourselves for the life after death.

This is where the man was going wrong in his life. While Death learnt the value and appeal of life, the man had to learn the value of Death. His life was temporary, and as far as he, or any of us know, what comes after this life is pretty much permanent...

"Wherever ye are, death will find you out, even if ye are in towers built up strong and high!" If some good befalls them, they say, "This is from Allah"; but if evil, they say, "This is from thee" (O Prophet). Say: "All things are from Allah." But what hath come to these people, that they fail to understand a single fact? Whatever good, (O man!) happens to thee, is from Allah; but whatever evil happens to thee, is from thy (own) soul. And We have sent thee (Muhammad) as a messenger to (instruct) mankind. And enough is Allah for a witness." (The Qur'an, Surah 4 Ayat 78-79.)

(For those of you who are curious as to why the man had chosen the hospital to die in, it was because he had built it in his mother's memory.)