My Personal ‘9/11’

The famous tennis-player Martina Navratilova once consulted a doctor for medical advice. The doctor examined her and informed her that she had breast cancer. The cancer was in an advanced stage. Ms. Navratilova was shaken by the news. “It was such a shock for me. It was my 9/11”, she said.

Ms. Navratilova said this because she had seen that death had come very close to her. But the phase of life that comes after death is much more serious than even that. Death cuts off all ties. After death, an individual is suddenly taken to another world, which is totally different, in every respect, from this present world.

After death, all of a sudden two serious realities open up to us. Firstly, that it is now impossible to go back to the pre-death phase of life, where we had made a world of our own. And secondly, that in the phase of life after death we are not able to make a world of our own.

In this world, if you lose one chance, you can get a second one. Using your second chance, you can recover your losses and succeed. But in the Hereafter, this is not possible. There, no one can get a second chance. If you have failed in proving yourself deserving of heaven in the Hereafter, you will not be able to come back to the present world for a second time in order to make amends.