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43
“Whoever saves one life, it is as if he
has saved all of humanity.”
Prophet Muhammad ٵƫ ⊑ ⾻ٱij ₆
Ibrahim Usman Ajmal
M2G2
When I was a child, my parents always quoted the Holy Prophet to teach me about
the importance of life. To my six-year-old self, this meant only one thing: I was going to be
humanity’s savior. I was studying hard and winning hearts. It would only get better, or so I thought.
Fast forward to today, and I am an angst teenager, grappling with middle school and
carrying the backbreaking weight of an elite education and society’s expectations. Don’t get
me wrong, life is good, but as I sit to ponder upon the meaning of life, I am greeted by every
teenager’s nemesis—Existential Crisis. Why? Why am I doing this? Whose life am I living?
In fact, what is life worth anyway? We are one accident away from being just a name on an
epitaph, one war away from losing everything we hold of value, and one pandemic away
from turning into a mere statistic. What is life then, but, as in the words of satirist John Gray:
“Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; and now I know it."
As I type, slouched on my couch, I hear my mother, tenderly and with undeniable honesty,
say to my feverish baby sister, “You are my life, you are my world!” I suddenly feel
embarrassed; while children like myself trivialize their lives, mothers equate them with the
world. Mothers do it too, you know, undervaluing their own worth, forgetting how
indispensable they are to their children.
Perhaps then the true worth of life is in our symbiotic relationships with everyone around
us! An idea that makes even a beggar worth his weight in gold. Doctors and patients,
soldiers and nations, farmers and consumers, the giver and the taker—all lives so intricately
intertwined, the value of one is inextricable from the other’s, given the fact that for one to
play its part and realize its worth, the other needs to merely exist. The value of life, then, is
less a matter of perspective and more of an objective truth. Just as every piece is crucial to a
completed jigsaw puzzle, every life is essential to the existence of humanity.
Suddenly, I recall the Prophet’s
words, “Save a life, save humanity,” and realize the
profound wisdom deeply entrenched in these words, the simple answer to this complex question
rattling my teenage brain. What is my life worth, or any life, for that matter? An equivalent to all
humanity.
ٵƫ ⊑ ⾻ٱij ₆
ٵƫ ⊑ ⾻ٱij ₆