We live in an age where hustle culture is normalised.
Being productive becomes an identity, while rest comes with an intense sense of guilt.
We put aside our personal priorities for other people and matters, chasing endless opportunities and deadlines.
The wealth and recognition we achieve at the end of the road? We use them to justify our lack of self-care and sacrifices.
These normalised compromises make boundary-setting feel impossible, until even the akhirah, our final home, fades from view.
Did you then think that We had created you without purpose,
Surah Al-Mu’minun 23:115
and that you would never be returned to Us?
It’s not that Islam rejects ambition. Even our Prophet (s.a.w.) engaged in trade to support himself and his family.
What set him apart from the ignorant Arabs wasn’t that he hustled less, but what he centred his affairs on; the principle laid out by Allah (s.w.t.) rather than accumulation for its own sake.
In Surah Al-Takathur, He reprimanded those consumed by takathur (rivalry in accumulation) by chasing more, comparing, competing, until it displaces time for self and for deen.
And Surah Al-’Asr, revealed right after it, He pointed us back to how time should be spent: strengthening imaan, doing good, and counselling each other toward truth and patience.
So how do we actually treat our time? We can’t simply let go of the hustle and our commitments.
This is where tahajjud comes in.
It isn’t time carved out for ourselves. Rather, it is time centred on Allah (s.w.t.), before the day claims us.
And it’s precisely because it’s centred on Him, not on our own agenda, that it ends up restoring us. At this moment of the night, we’re given a quiet space to be present, first with your Lord, and in that presence, with yourself too.
You’re rewarded and at the same time, come back to yourself.
Our Lord descends to the nearest heaven every night during the last third of the night, and says:
Sahih al-Bukhari 1145
Who is calling upon Me that I may answer him?
Who is asking of Me that I may give him?
Who is seeking My forgiveness that I may forgive him?’
The key to using our time well isn’t abandoning ambition for rest, or vice versa. Ambition itself was never the problem.
It’s what, or who, we centre it on.
The Prophet (s.a.w.) showed us that a life of striving and a life of surrender to the Lord aren’t opposites. Tahajjud is proof that returning to Him first is what makes room for us to return to ourselves.
When we stop chasing takathur and instead anchor our hours in faith, good, and patience, ambition and rest finally stop competing for the same 24 hours.
We pray Allah (s.w.t.) makes sufficient our rizq, a reminder to shift our focus on the Provider instead of what is provided in the first place.