I described my current self in some words that pop up on my mind.

I’ve been on earth for 8093 days — or 22 years, 1 month, and 26 days — or 265 months and 26 days.
Well, there are infinite ways to describe how long I’ve been living, but they all amount to the same thing in the end: a mere measure of how close I am to the end — to death.

While writing this, I’m listening to music (“Hello”). It’s been about 3 days since the last time I prayed.
Today, I watched porn and masturbated.
Today, I didn’t work.
Today, I spent the whole day lying down.
Today is another terrible day, where the version of me I hate the most takes over.

This isn’t clear to the people around me.
Maybe I look almost the same every day from the outside, but deep inside, I know the truth — and God knows it even better than I do: I’m doing worse than ever before.
This addiction to watching that filth…
This relationship that is Haram…
This wasted time I spend watching random movies…

I don’t know what kind of “me” I am creating for the long term.
I don’t see the big picture — in fact, I don’t see any picture at all.
Maybe, in the long term, this suffering is making me into the best version I could ever be — or is it?

Does being the best version of myself necessarily mean I must always do the uncomfortable, unwanted things, moment after moment, simply to be alive?
Maybe that’s what it should always be: to choose, at every moment, not the easy and comfy path, but the hard one.
Why?
Because life is short — very short — unexplainably short.
Like the blink of an eye, years pass.

And looking back, the question arises:
Was it the best way I could’ve spent those years?

I believe in God.
I believe in the afterlife.
And it’s the most uncomfortable thing I can think about right now, because it’s exactly what I’m running against — running from Allah, instead of running to Him.

Isn’t this our life?
A run toward the inevitable — toward certainty — toward death — toward Allah?
But this life is, indeed, the biggest proof of whether we deserve the right kind of eternity or not:
Either an eternity of pleasure, of learning, of growing, of getting closer and closer to Allah — an eternity of gaining knowledge, infinite knowledge…

When I now think about it, all of this life seems minuscule.
It makes me question every single thing I do:
Why not just leave everything behind — escape to a faraway land — and pray to Allah until death?

At the very first moment of eternity, all this life will be forgotten.
I have already forgotten most of the life I have lived.
Only some moments remain in my mind — and those moments were captured not just by me, but by others, by things, by beings.

But Allah sent us the Prophet (peace be upon him) to teach us that this is not the way He intended for us to live.
Allah wants us to live together, to make the earth a better place, to wonder at what He has created, to marvel at the complexity, to try to understand it, even to try to mimic it — only to realize that we are, indeed, created.
To see each other.
To accept how different — and yet how similar — we are.
We are, indeed, surviving.