Do what good you can, as soon as you can [23:61]

Today’s reflection is from Chapter 23, Sura Muminum where the Holy Quran says:

"It is they who hasten to every good work and these who are foremost in them." [23:61]

In this verse and a couple of verses preceding it, Allah [swt] points out a few qualities of the believers. One of their qualities that they “hasten to do good deeds”. This desire is borne out of a desire to please Allah [swt] and drives them to take quick action towards worthy causes and goals.

The word the Quran uses is yusāri‘ūna which signifies “racing” towards good actions. It is interesting that while hurry or haste is not considered a virtue, when the haste is in racing towards goodness and virtuous action, it becomes an act of virtue.

Why is haste recommended in doing good works? Imam Bāqir (as) explains: “When you think of doing something good, rush to do it immediately for verily you do not know what could happen later [to prevent you from doing it]” (The Scale of Wisdom, H. 4002).

In other words, as we have experienced many a time, despite our good intentions, life will get in the way. Things will come up and other things will vie for our time and attention. What is important but not urgent [in a worldly sense] will be put on the back burner. When we rush towards actions, we are taking action before this happens.

Taking action quickly is also an indication of enthusiasm for performing the good deed. Once again, we have all experienced times when we have an initial burst of enthusiasm for doing good, for giving charity, for helping someone, for volunteering for a good cause. When we hear about distress of other humans, our natural empathy and humanness is activated and wants to act to relieve that distress.

AND then, our mind begins to second guess ourselves and we have doubts about our initial intention. The doubts can be about our own ability, credibility of the cause, or any number of things. Imam Jaffar Sadiq [as] explains this as a normal human experience. “When one of you intends to do good or join relations then on his right and on his left are shaytāns, so he should hurry so they do not stop him from it” (al-Kāfī, v. 2, p. 143). In other words, we need to remind ourselves it is just Shaytan or our own minds doing their thing and we need to hurry up and take action.

The Quran uses the word sābiqūna to denote the ones who are foremost or the leaders in the race towards goodness.

Once again, it is interesting how the Quran picks a quality of humans which is generally not liked, that of competitiveness and turns it into a positive quality when it is used in the right way.

So while being competitive in worthy causes is recommended, we do need to be careful of a few things:

i) The desire to compete towards goodness must be driven with the intention to please God and not to look good.

ii) The mindset is to hurry to the pleasure of God and amongst His closest and chosen people and not to put others down. In fact, helping others along the way is one of the ways we can be in the group of the Sabiqun!

So let us think of a time when we have had an intention to do something good (give charity, help someone, reach out to someone going through a tough time, visit a loved one) and thought you would do it later but then never got around to it?

[By the way, ever heard the phrase: the path to hell is paved with good intentions – that never materialized? OUCH!!]

Procrastination is a major human tendency. Our mind leads us to believe that “next week” things will magically work out and we will have the time to do things which are important but not urgent. Research now confirms that the more you delay something, the less likely it is that you will actually do it.

Piers Steele, who won the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in psychology for his work on motivation says that "As the deadline for any task gets pushed further into the future, Delay increases and our motivation to tackle the tasks decreases."

This means that if you have a goal to do something good in the future, no matter how excited we are in the present, it will be hard to sustain this motivation when the goal is in the future. Plus, life, as they say, will certainly get in the way. In other words, the sooner you take action on something, the higher the levels of motivation and the more likely that you will actually do it.

So how about hastening towards good and taking action on those good intentions? Like . . .now!

Let us end with the wisdom of Imam Ali [as] from Nahjul Balagha:

May Allah have mercy on you. You should hasten towards (the preparation of) houses which you have been commanded to populate, and towards which you have been called and invited. Seek the completion of Allah’s favors on you by exercising endurance in His obedience and abstention from His disobedience, because tomorrow is close to today. How fast are the hours of the day, how fast are the days in the month, how fast are the months in the years and how fast the years in a life (Nahjul Balāgha, Sermon 188)