Between Arrival and Return

A Journey of Purpose, Wisdom and Eternal Meaning

By Prof. Cherno Omar Barry

We arrive without consent and depart without negotiation.

Between these two mysteries lies the small territory we call life.

No one remembers choosing to be born. We did not choose the century into which we came, the land on which we first opened our eyes, the language spoken over our cradle, the colour of our skin, the family that received us or the circumstances into which we were delivered. Before we could desire anything, much had already been decided for us.

The Qur’an describes that beginning with a striking tenderness:

‘And Allah brought you out of the wombs of your mothers knowing nothing, and gave you hearing, sight and hearts, that you might be grateful.’ — Qur’an 16:78

We arrive knowing nothing. The instruments of knowing are given afterwards, and the verse names their purpose before we have used them: gratitude.

And when the final hour comes, however powerful we may have become, we will discover the limits of our sovereignty again. Death does not consult our diaries.

Yet between an arrival we did not arrange and a departure we cannot indefinitely postpone, we have been entrusted with something extraordinary: choice.

The Qur’an speaks of this entrustment in one of its most arresting images:

‘We offered the Trust to the heavens, the earth and the mountains, and they declined to bear it and were afraid of it; but the human being bore it.’ — Qur’an 33:72

The mountains, which do not move, refused what we carry every morning without a second thought. Whatever else the human being is, he is the creature that accepted the weight of choosing.

Perhaps this is where the serious question of existence begins.

The question is not merely ‘Why am I alive?’ A person may spend seventy years alive without ever seriously confronting life. The more demanding question is: ‘What am I expected to do with the consciousness, freedom, time and ability placed temporarily in my hands?‘

The Qur’an answers the question of ultimate purpose with striking economy:

‘I did not create jinn and humans except to worship Me.’ — Qur’an 51:56

But ʿibādah is diminished when it is translated simply as ritual worship. Prayer is worship, certainly. Fasting is worship. Prostration is worship. But the life lived between one prayer and the next also belongs to God.

How does a person earn his wealth? What does he do when entrusted with authority? How does he behave when nobody is watching? What does knowledge make of him? What does he do when anger gives him the opportunity to wound? How does he treat the weak when there is nothing to gain from them? What does he do with desire when desire contradicts what he knows to be right?

These too are questions of worship.

The Prophet, peace be upon him, gave the principle that joins them in a single sentence: ‘Actions are only by intentions, and every person shall have only what he intended’ (Sahih al-Bukhari 1; Sahih Muslim 1907). The same meal may be appetite or gratitude; the same day’s work may be greed or provision for a family. What converts an ordinary act into worship is not its outward form but the direction in which it faces.

This is why existence cannot be understood merely by counting its years. A long life and a meaningful life are not necessarily the same thing. One measures duration; the other measures what you did with it.

The Qur’an makes the distinction itself:

‘He who created death and life to test you, as to which of you is best in deed.’ — Qur’an 67:2

Best in deed — not most. The measure is quality, not quantity; not how much a life contained, but how well it was lived.

And here wisdom enters.

Wisdom is not the accumulation of information. A person may know many things and still misunderstand his own life. He may speak brilliantly about justice while treating people unjustly. He may understand the psychology of anger yet remain enslaved by his temper. He may lecture about mortality and live as though death were an appointment reserved for others.

Knowledge tells us many things about the world. Wisdom asks what those things should make of us. It is telling that the Prophet, peace be upon him, sought refuge in God ‘from knowledge that does not benefit’ (Sahih Muslim 2722). Knowledge that leaves its owner unchanged was, for him, something to be feared rather than admired.

The Qur’an therefore speaks of wisdom as an immense gift:

‘Whoever is granted wisdom has certainly been granted abundant good.’ — Qur’an 2:269

Wisdom may begin when a human being learns the difference between what attracts him and what deserves him; between what he can do and what he ought to do; between what the world applauds and what will survive the judgement of his conscience before God.

Life constantly confuses these categories.

We mistake possession for success, visibility for importance, intelligence for wisdom, pleasure for happiness, position for honour and longevity for a life well lived. We spend years acquiring what death will remove in minutes, while neglecting what death cannot take from us.

A title ends.

An office changes hands.

A house acquires another occupant.

Money finds another owner.

Even the body upon which we spend so much anxiety eventually returns to the earth.

What, then, remains?

Long before us, this question occupied prophets, philosophers, poets, and ordinary men and women standing beside graves. Islam gives it a severe clarity: what accompanies the human being beyond death is not what he possessed but what he became and what he did.

The Prophet, peace be upon him, drew the scene at the graveside with unforgettable precision: ‘Three things follow the dead: his family, his wealth and his deeds. Two return, and one remains. His family and his wealth return, and his deeds remain’ (Sahih al-Bukhari 6514; Sahih Muslim 2960). The mourners walk home. The inheritance is divided. Only the record walks on.

And even then the record need not close. ‘When the human being dies, his work comes to an end except for three: a charity that continues, knowledge from which benefit is drawn, or a righteous child who prays for him’ (Sahih Muslim 1631). What we give away, what we teach and whom we raise may go on speaking for us after we have fallen silent.

That changes the meaning of purpose.

Purpose is no longer simply the pursuit of happiness. Happiness comes and goes. Nor can purpose be reduced to achievement, because one may achieve greatly in the eyes of people and fail terribly in the measure that ultimately matters.

Purpose becomes orientation.

Where is this life facing?

Towards the self, endlessly feeding its appetites? Towards society, anxiously seeking its applause? Towards wealth, accumulating what must eventually be abandoned? Or towards God, allowing everything else to assume its proper proportion?

This does not require withdrawal from the world. On the contrary, the spiritual life is tested precisely through our encounter with the world. The marketplace tests honesty. Marriage tests character. Parenthood tests sacrifice. Authority tests justice. Poverty tests patience. Wealth tests restraint. Knowledge tests humility. Injury tests forgiveness. Loneliness tests faith. Success tests whether we remember who we were before people began praising us.

The world, then, is not merely where we live.

It is where we are revealed to ourselves.

A person sometimes does not know the arrogance hidden within him until he receives authority. He may not know the depth of his faith until something beloved is taken away. He may not know whether he loves truth until truth demands that he admit he was wrong.

Trials do not always create what is inside us. Sometimes they expose it.

This may be why a life without accountability would ultimately be incomprehensible. If the oppressor and the oppressed ended in exactly the same nothingness; if the murderer and his victim disappeared into identical oblivion; if hidden goodness and hidden cruelty ultimately meant nothing, then morality itself would stand before a disturbing emptiness.

The Islamic conception of destiny refuses that emptiness. The Qur’an puts the refusal as a question that answers itself:

‘Did you think that We created you without purpose, and that to Us you would not be returned?’ — Qur’an 23:115

We are travelling towards an accounting. The Prophet, peace be upon him, even named its questions in advance: the feet of a servant will not move on that Day until he is asked about his life and how he spent it, his knowledge and what he did with it, his wealth and how he earned and spent it, and his body and how he wore it out (Jami’ at-Tirmidhi 2417, graded hasan sahih). Life, knowledge, wealth and body: the four trusts this essay has been circling from the beginning. The examination is not secret. We have been handed the questions; what remains uncertain is only our answers.

The Qur’an says:

‘Indeed, to your Lord is the return.’ — Qur’an 96:8

Notice the word: return.

Not disappearance.

Not extinction.

Return.

The journey therefore bends back towards its Origin.

We came possessing nothing. We spend our lives saying my house, my position, my money, my children, my achievements, my body, my time. Then, one by one, life teaches us the temporary nature of the possessive pronoun my.

Nothing was entirely ours.

It was entrusted.

And an entrusted thing eventually returns to its Owner.

This is why the believer, struck by loss, is taught to say: Innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn — ‘We belong to God, and to Him we are returning’ (Qur’an 2:156). It is often heard as a formula of resignation. It is in fact a statement of ownership. Whatever was taken was never ours to keep, and we ourselves are on the same road as what we have lost.

There is something both frightening and liberating in this understanding. Frightening, because our choices matter more than we sometimes wish them to. Liberating, because many things over which we torment ourselves matter far less than we imagine.

If the destination is God, then losing the applause of people is survivable.

If the destination is God, then refusing dishonest wealth is not failure.

If the destination is God, then an unnoticed act of mercy may weigh more heavily than a celebrated achievement.

If the destination is God, then repentance means that even a badly travelled road need not determine where the traveller finally arrives.

The Prophet, peace be upon him, gave the traveller his instructions: ‘Be in this world as though you were a stranger or a wayfarer’ (Sahih al-Bukhari 6416). The wayfarer does not despise the inn; he eats, rests and gives thanks for its shelter. But he does not mistake it for home, and he does not unpack everything he owns.

And so the deepest wisdom is not in knowing everything.

It is knowing what deserves to govern everything else we know.

To know that life is temporary without despising life.

To enjoy the world without becoming its prisoner.

To possess without being possessed.

To love deeply while remembering that every human love is mortal.

To acquire knowledge without allowing knowledge to manufacture arrogance.

To exercise authority while remembering the grave.

To suffer without concluding that existence has lost its meaning.

To succeed without imagining that success proves superiority.

And when one fails, as every human being will, to know the road back — and to trust that it is open:

‘Say: O My servants who have transgressed against themselves, do not despair of the mercy of God. Indeed, God forgives all sins.’ — Qur’an 39:53

Between arrival and return, then, lies responsibility.

We did not choose to enter this world.

We cannot choose to remain in it forever.

But between those two boundaries, we choose repeatedly: truth or convenience, justice or interest, restraint or appetite, gratitude or entitlement, forgiveness or vengeance, humility or pride, remembrance or heedlessness.

Slowly, almost invisibly, those choices become character.

Character becomes a life.

And a life eventually becomes the answer we carry with us when the questions of this world have ended.

The purpose of existence may, then, be expressed simply.

We come from God without choosing to come. We are given a brief interval in which choice becomes ours. Wisdom teaches us what is worth choosing. Purpose tells us whom those choices should ultimately serve. Death closes the season of choosing. And destiny is the return to the One who gave us life, time, knowledge and freedom in the first place.

Between arrival and return, we are writing our answer.

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