It was the 28th of January when I lost my brand-new, latest-edition AirPods at a family function a birthday gift from my aunt and uncle, worth 25,000 rupees.
I had brought them along even though there was no real reason to. I gave them to my mom to keep in her purse, but she left the purse in a dressing room at the function hall, and when we went back, the AirPods were gone.
No one knew who took them. It was midnight, and I was livid. I blamed myself for bringing them in the first place, and I blamed my mom for leaving her purse unattended. I was drowning in a septic tank of guilt and shame. The thought looping in my mind was, “I couldn’t even afford them; they were a gift, and yet I lost them. How irresponsible.”
I was fixated on the wrong things instead of focusing on “What now?” My agitation was palpable as I stood in the middle of the road outside the function hall, with my mom by my side, trying to calm me down. My Naana (maternal grandfather) approached and asked me to look at him. Reluctantly, I complied, and he simply said, “You lost your AirPods? Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.”
It clicked.
Nothing belonged to me literally nothing. Not even the clothes I was wearing. And, oh my God, not even my own body. I will leave it behind one day too.
Everything belongs to Allah, and everything will return to Him.
This realization didn’t mean I didn’t learn my lesson or that I stopped feeling responsible for what happened. Yes, I was careless, and that choice was irresponsible, but that doesn’t define me as irresponsible. I wasn’t careful in that moment, and as a result, my AirPods were gone.
But the words my Naana uttered made me feel a profound sense of detachment from the material world while simultaneously reminding me of my responsibility towards the things I have, no matter how temporary they may be.
This realization applied to all my attachments nothing and no one truly belongs to me. I will leave this world one day without taking anyone or anything with me.
Allah loves us so much that He doesn’t want us to become attached to anything or anyone but Him. After all, why would you desire something temporary when you could have something eternal?
Just then, my four uncles gathered around me. One of them said, “Everything and everyone has to go. Your AirPods just happened to go now, maybe because you got too attached to them.”
My mind flashed back to a memory of asking Allah not to let me get attached to anyone or anything except Him. The rush of shock, happiness, and gratitude that followed left me breathless.
Another uncle added, “Don’t worry too much about it. It happened, it happened. We’ve lost far worse, and look at how we are now.” He said this with a wholehearted smile, as if none of it had affected him deeply.
Uncle number three said, “This is just a lesson from the University of Life.”
And the fourth uncle chimed in, “Chill, I’ll buy you another one,” to which I laughed out loud.
Standing there, long past midnight in the middle of the road with my Naana, my uncles, and my mom, she said, “You might have lost your AirPods, but you just gained something far greater.”
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