Remembering Death is Good for Health
A study has revealed that remembering death can be a good thing. According to a report in The Times of India (New Delhi, April 21, 2012):
Thinking about death can actually be a good thing as awareness of mortality can improve physical health and help in prioritizing one’s goals and values, a new study has revealed. According to a new analysis of recent scientific studies, even non-conscious thinking about death like walking by a cemetery could prompt positive changes and promote helping others.
Generally, it is thought that thinking about death often dampens people’s enthusiasm to be active and engenders negative thinking. But this is mere speculation. When the issue was studied in depth it was found that the reality is just the opposite. The fact is that remembering death is a good habit. It nurtures good qualities in a person.
The Quran (3:185) says: “Every human being is bound to taste death.” In this regard, there is a hadith: “Remember death much because it demolishes all desires.” (Sunan at-Tirmidhi 2307)
Remembering death is remembering the reality of life. Remembering death reminds us that we don’t have unlimited time here. At any moment, death can come and take us away.
Remembrance of death helps promote a sense of urgency. It is an incentive to do what we need to do soon because we have no idea when we might die, after which we cannot do anything. In this way, remembrance of death encourages us to engage in planned action for the things we have to do in life.
Remembrance of death also helps promote intellectual awakening. It brings out our hidden intellectual abilities. It is a means for our intellectual development.
According to the Islamic concept of life, a person’s life doesn’t stop at death. After death, there is another life, which will remain forever. After we die, depending on the actions we have performed before our death we will be judged to have succeeded or failed. If we realize this fact, it can create in us a powerful consciousness of the need to lead a life of true purpose. We will be stirred to lead our lives in a truly meaningful way.
According to the general understanding, thinking about death is thinking about it as an event that supposedly causes the end of life. But according to the Islamic understanding of life, remembrance of death means that reflecting on death, a person should prepare for the period of life that comes after death. He should consider the life of this world as an opportunity to engage in actions that can be of benefit to him in the eternal life that follows death. This conception of death reminds a person that one gets life just once and that it depends on each of us to make our life a success or a failure, in terms of how we will fare in the Hereafter.
