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The Regrets You Can Still Avoid | Khutbah by Dr. Omar Suleiman
Most of us look back on our lives. In this khutbah, Dr. Omar Suleiman asks us to look forward too. Allah tells us that on the Day of Judgment our words and deeds will be replayed to us. He also tells us the exact words people will use to express their regret.
Since Allah has told us those regrets in advance, we can plan around them. Think about the regrets you don’t want to have, with your prayer, your parents, your marriage and your friendships. Then work backwards and change things while you still can.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
00:00Dear brothers and sisters, I want you to imagine yourself on the last day of your life in this dunya, on your deathbed, looking back at your life and what you would say about your regrets.
00:14If you could pinpoint from now a time that would be the exact final day of your life and then look back, what do you think would be the top ten regrets of your life?
00:28I actually want you to work with me in this khutbah mentally. There's going to be a lot of mental workbooks in the next 15 minutes, bismillah ta'ala.
00:39If you were still conscious enough and you're on this day and you're able to write and you have 30 minutes left, here's a notepad, here's a pen, write down the top ten regrets that you have in your life.
00:55What would you write down? I don't expect you to have all ten now, but I bet you already had one or two that immediately came to your mind.
01:04Because there are things that live inside of us that we already know and anytime something comes up, we already look back and we say, it's that or it's that.
01:13And you'll see all of these articles that come out and SubhanAllah, they're very fascinating. We interviewed 500 people that had near-death experiences and we asked them what were the regrets that they had.
01:24What were the things that they regretted? And you'll see article after article and they're very fascinating. Two, three thousand people interviewed.
01:31You know why they're so fascinating? Because the answers all revolve around the very same categories. They're actually very predictable what people regret at the end of their lives.
01:44And I was thinking about this for two reasons. Number one, a few years ago I did a series on the Day of Judgment and the stations of the Day of Judgment and how you prepare for every station of the Day of Judgment.
01:56And I did an exercise when I did that series for myself that I'll share with you all inshaAllah in this khutbah.
02:03But before I talk about that exercise, I want to talk about another exercise that someone who's very successful and in loud quotation marks, exclamation marks, from a dunyawi perspective, from a worldly perspective, said in an interview about 20 years ago.
02:20Jeff Bezos, who you probably never expected to hear in any good way from a khutbah, so I'm not praising anything about his character at all.
02:28But it was really interesting because obviously he's someone who's very successful from a worldly perspective. And he said that he has this framework, some of you might have heard of this framework, called the regret minimization framework.
02:42A regret minimization framework where basically he put himself at 80 years old and then he looked back at his life and he reverse engineered his life in accordance with what he thought would be his regrets at the age of 80.
02:59It's a phenomenal way to think about this from a worldly perspective. And Allah azzawajal tells us to think about the day of judgment and the hereafter in terms of trade as well.
03:09Not the value system, but perhaps the determination, some of the ideas of the ḥirs, the determination and ambition that people have for this world, converting that into a greater ambition for the hereafter.
03:23But really think about that for a moment. The idea is actually a very powerful idea. That you plan your today in accordance with your imagined perspective tomorrow.
03:35You go to the latest point that you can think of and you look back and you start to plan your days accordingly. You plan your life accordingly. You write your goals accordingly. You then discipline your time accordingly.
03:47And there's no doubt that he's a very successful person from a worldly perspective. Now, the exercise that I wanted us to do from a day of judgment perspective.
03:57If you read any book about the day of judgment and you go through the stations of the day of judgment, it goes in order of its happening.
04:04It goes from, you know, obviously Al-Hashr, the assembly where everyone is together until the very last moments where the people have arrived in their ranks in Jannah or they have arrived in their dwellings in the fire.
04:17And it walks you through the stations that way. I want you to actually walk backwards with me. This is the next mental exercise that I want you to do. And you can write this down later on after the khutbah somewhere.
04:30But I want you to do this inshallah ta'ala backwards. What if we took the last station of the day of judgment and walked backwards and reverse engineered our lives accordingly.
04:40And I'll tell you why that's so important and why Allah is giving us something to really ponder upon. When you think about the day of judgment, you think about how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions to us, مَا يَلْفِظُ مِن قَوْلٍ إِلَّا لَدَيْهِ رَقِيبٌ عَتِيدٌ
04:54Every word you say, Allah azawajal has documented it and you will see it on the day of judgment. فَمَنْ يَعْمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ خَيْرًا يَرَهُ وَمَنْ يَعْمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ شَرًّا يَرَهُ
05:04You do this atom's worth of good, you will see it. You do this atom's worth of evil, you will see it. Allah azawajal is telling you that everything you're saying today and doing today,
05:15none of it is lost and it will be brought back in front of you on the day of judgment. But you know what else is absolutely amazing?
05:23Allah azawajal also gives us explicit sentences that people will say on the day of judgment so that we can back project and we can ask ourselves, am I going to be the person that's saying that?
05:35How many يَا لَيْتَنِي statements are in the Quran? And they're very specific statements.
05:43And this is not the subjective data of doctors or someone that is asking patients on their deathbeds what they regret.
05:51This is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala who creates reality, who is not subjected to time, who is giving you the exact sentences that will be said on the day of judgment.
06:04The I wish statements, the I regret statements. Allah is giving you the words that will be said so that you can take heed and not be the one saying those words.
06:17I wish I wouldn't have done this, I wish I would have done that. So Allah azawajal gives us the يَا لَيْتَنِي statements. And the day of judgment itself is called يوم الحسرة, the day of regrets.
06:30And it's also called يوم التغابن, the day of mutual loss and gain. So it's a day that people regret the bad that they did, the good they didn't do. And it's a day of تغابن, trade. What is the trade here?
06:44Scholars mention that it is the houses and the properties in Jannah that someone could have had, or of the implications of يوم التغابن, the stations, the places in Jannah someone could have had,
06:57and the believers taking their share. Can you imagine that? If you have a house in paradise, and every single person does, but because you did not make it to your house in paradise,
07:08someone else takes that house as well and it becomes part of their larger share of reward, that's يوم التغابن. Someone took advantage of the opportunity, someone missed out. So the day of judgment is actually expressed in these terms as well.
07:21And sometimes it's a regret of something I did, sometimes it's a regret of something I didn't do. There are a lot of regrets about relationships. يَا لَيْتَنِي كُنْتُ مَعَهُمْ فَأَفُوزَ فَوْزًا عَظِيمًا You see the good going ahead of you? I wish I would have been with them.
07:35I know who they were. I saw more religious people than me in life. I saw people that did better than me in life. I wish I went with those people because I would have really been successful today. Right? On the other hand,
07:48يَا وَيْلَتَى لَيْتَنِي لَمْ أَتَّخِذْ فُلَانًا خَلِيلًا I know how I wish. Woe to me. I did not befriend that person who led me astray. So you have all of these regret statements
08:02that you're supposed to say in your qira'ah in hopes that you won't say them on the Day of Judgment in reality because you're not living that reality. You're not living those regrets. Now let's go back to the exercise, the framework, okay?
08:16From a worldly success perspective, how do you do regret minimization, right? The problem with these people is they are completely limited to a materialistic world. They believe you only live once, right?
08:29So they have to engineer in accordance with a wall of death. And so obviously the risks that they're willing to take and their regrets don't have any moral compass to them. They're entirely capitalistic. They're entirely in accordance with how much money I could have made
08:43and what I could have got out of this life. But if you think about it from a worldly perspective, you have the large swaths of humanity. And then in Bezos' construction and these people, you've got this small group of billionaires
08:55who in their perspective are the most successful people in the world. The five or six people who own more than 60-70% of the wealth of the world, if not more. Allah knows what that equation is with the corruption that exists today. So it starts off with a large group of people
09:09and you have this small group of people that reverse engineered their lives in accordance with what they wanted from this dunya. Let's expand it to the very last place. What's the very last place that a believer wants to get to? Jannatul Firdaus.
09:23With the Prophet ﷺ. Start from that station. That's what Rabi'a ibn Ka'b al-Aslami radiyallahu ta'ala anhu did. Rasulullah ﷺ said, ask me for anything. He asked a young man who is from Ashab al-Suffah,
09:37the people who live in the masjid, who didn't have a home, who didn't have a wife, who didn't have material wealth, make a wish. Make a wish. Where did he go? He applied the best regret minimization framework
09:51that you could possibly apply. He said, مُرَافَقَتَكَ يَا رَسُولَ اللهِ I want your companionship, O Messenger of Allah ﷺ. My companionship? That's what you're asking. He said, okay. That's what you want.
10:05أَعِنِّي عَلَى نَفْسِكَ بِكَثْرَةِ السُّجُودِ Then you need to increase your sajdas. He went all the way to, I want to be your companion in Jannah. And so let's start from there. If you're in Jannah,
10:18but you're not at the highest level, what are the regrets? What are the things that I'm thinking about in that station there that I can start planning for here? If I go there, what am I thinking about?
10:31I'm thinking about the rewards that I missed out on. I'm thinking about the extra things that I could have done. I'm thinking about how I could have raised my rank. Right? Now, of the blessings of Jannah
10:43is that everyone in Jannah thinks that they're good. They're maxed out. Because obviously it wouldn't be Jannah if you're sitting there dwelling in regret. But we know that there are ranks in Jannah. So what's the regret there? I could have done more. I could have been up there
10:56with the Prophet ﷺ. Let me start from there. So what does that mean? That means polishing my character to be as much like the Prophet ﷺ as possible. That means taking care of orphans.
11:08That means raising my children properly. That means trying to cultivate the family that I want to have. That means marrying the right person. Because the right person will pull me up to the higher place.
11:22That means having children that will be better than me. Because the right children will pull me up to a higher place. That means serving my parents. Because Jannah is at their feet. That means all of these different things. You can start doing the framework in your mind,
11:36inshaAllah ta'ala. I don't have to go through all of the little details. But you get the point. It's, I could have done this and done that. Getting really specific. More tahajjud, more qiyam. Kathratul sujood. More prostration means more salah. Could have done this and I could have done that.
11:50Okay. Let's move a station prior to Jannah. You're on the Qantarah now. The Qantarah is the bridge where the believers, who still have some issues with each other. It's not a bridge, as the ulema mention,
12:04of zulm, oppression. Because oppression is solved at the mizan. It's solved before that on the Day of Judgment. Right? So you have the most elite group of people and you have the swaths of humanity. You have Ard al-Mahshar, the land of assembly,
12:18all of humanity that's ever been created. And now you have the cream of the crop with the Prophet ﷺ in Jannatul Firdaus. And now we're coming down. Okay. And now you have a large group of people, they're on this Qantarah, this bridge. What is it with this bridge?
12:32Two believers that still have some issues with each other. They've got some hard feelings and they haven't really let it go with each other. It's not zulm. It's not oppression. But it's the natural stuff that happens with humanity.
12:45And the believer is incentivized, you want to hurry up and get to Jannah, right? Then forgive your brother. Forgive your sister. Let that go. It's not worth holding you back in terms of your entry into Jannah.
12:59Okay. So what am I thinking about on the Qantarah? How am I reverse engineering my life from there? I'm thinking about how silly and petty the arguments could be. And I could let them go. And I could forgive for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
13:12And Allah عز و جل increase me. It's not that big of a deal. I will let things go because I want to get into Jannah faster. Okay. You walk back from the Qantarah. We're walking backwards.
13:24You'll notice that as you get backwards, the issues become more severe. Because we're talking about the elite of the elite with the Prophet ﷺ. These aren't five billionaires. These are people that deserve the companionship of the Prophet ﷺ.
13:39As you walk backwards on the Day of Judgment, the issues get more severe. Okay. Now I walk back to the Sirat. What is the Sirat? How quickly did I pass to the obedience of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? But you know what else?
13:53The Prophet ﷺ mentioned the hooks of deficiencies now that catch you. You have the hook of salah, the missed prayers. Prayers you didn't pray on time. You have the hook of the obligations you didn't fulfill to Allah or to the people.
14:08Rasulullah ﷺ mentioned the speed on the Sirat and then he mentioned two things that will be on the side of the Sirat. If I was to take a guess, I would say maybe two or three people could tell me off the top of their heads what those two things are.
14:21Imagine how severe the Sirat is. And the Prophet ﷺ said an authentic hadith, two things on the side of the Sirat. Ar-Rahim wal-Amanah. Your family ties. And your Amanah. Whether you were trustworthy or not.
14:36Trustworthy with your contracts. Trustworthy with your promises. Trustworthy with the secrets that were told to you. Could people trust you when they did business with you? Could people trust you with their sensitive affairs? Your family on the other side.
14:49How did you treat your family relationships? Did you prioritize them? Did you uphold the ties of kinship? So if you lost those two things, you imagine walking on a bridge over water and not having the rails.
15:02You missed those two. That's my regret. Have I upheld the rails? And then how fast am I getting there? That's how severe it is now. Then you walk backwards. What comes before the Sirat? What comes before the Sirat is the Mizan.
15:16Now in the Mizan when it comes to the scales, there is a scale in regards to the things that you could have done for Allah عز و جل and that you did do in terms of sin. And then there are the scales of people's rights. When it comes to the things
15:30you could have done, what are the things that I considered small and not a big deal? Because that's the mindset of the Meezan. That Meezan weighs everything to a decimal point that you don't even know exists.
15:44And it weighs every single point of it. Do you have the attitude of, it's not that big of a deal, I can miss this. The Prophet ﷺ mentioned that every gathering in which Allah عز و جل is not mentioned will be a source of regret on the Day of Judgment. It wasn't a big deal.
15:58I say this with love to the brothers and sisters that came after the Adhan of Jumu'ah today. The Prophet ﷺ said that the angels write down the names of every single person who enters into the Masjid of Jumu'ah. But when the imam says, salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah,
16:13that roll book is closed. That's alright. I still caught Jumu'ah. You missed a week of forgiveness of your sins perhaps. Right? You missed the angels roll book. Not a big deal. That sin, not a big deal.
16:27فَمَنْ يَعْمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ خَيْرًا يَرَهُ وَمَنْ يَعْمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ شَرًّا يَرَهُ A small deed of good or bad could tip your scale either way. And then you have the more severe areas of the mizan
16:40where you actually have to take stuff out of your mizan of good and give it to someone else because of the bad tongue that you had about others. سَبَّ هَذَا وَشَتَمَ هَذَا وَضَرَبَ هَذَا وَأَكَلَ مَالَ هَذَا Okay. Now, I'm like depleting
16:55my income of good deeds because I had a reckless tongue. Move back. Did I even get a book in my right hand to show up there or not? Because now the matter is more severe because if you got the book in your left hand
17:07you're not even making it to the mizan. What am I embarrassed about that's in that book right now that I need to erase so I can make sure it comes in my right hand? Did I fulfill the bare requirement of passing? Did I get a passing grade
17:21to get the book in my right hand or not? Zoom out. Standing before Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala when Allah عز و جل calls me up to Him. Did I believe or did I disbelieve? Did I choose Him or did I choose others?
17:35إِذْ تَبَرَّأَ الَّذِينَ اتُّبِعُوا مِنَ الَّذِينَ اتَّبَعُوا وَرَأَوُا الْعَذَابَ وَتَقَطَّعَتْ بِهِمُ الْأَسْبَابُ I'm already running out of time. But people are fleeing from all that they chose over Allah عز و جل on that day and this is the first furqan of humanity.
17:49The first criterion. Did you choose Allah? And then how much did you choose Allah? You see, if you start from the very end and you aim to be of that elite of the elite
18:01and you do regret minimization from there, you'll have a very good life and a much better afterlife. But if you start from the bare minimum and you're someone who closes their eyes and says, I don't want to think about my regrets. I don't want to think about my regrets.
18:15I don't want to think about my regrets. You're setting yourself up for failure every single time. You know, subhanAllah, one of the most painful ayat, حَتَّىٰ إِذَا جَاءَ أَحَدَهُمُ الْمَوْتُ قَالَ رَبِّ ارْجِعُونِ لَعَلِّي أَعْمَلُ صَالِحًا فِيمَا تَرَكْتُ
18:30Allah says about each and every single one of us, when death comes to us, the first thing we say at death is, my Lord, take me back so I can do good with what I'm leaving behind. And then after you die, يَا لَيْتَنِي قَدَّمْتُ لِحَيَاتِي
18:43I wish I prepared for my life. The regret on the deathbed, dear brothers and sisters. It's actually very profound. Because we treat every single new day as a new life. If I was to ask anyone in here,
18:58how many days on this earth have you lived? You'd have to do a calculation, right? Unless you're a genius, mashaAllah, and you could pop it out. Most of us would not be able to say how many days we've lived on this earth just like that. Every single night when you go to sleep, you're dying.
19:12And even though you're not verbalizing it, you're hoping, رَبِّ ارْجِعُونِ My Lord, send me back for another day so I can do better tomorrow. And Allah gave that to you. How many days? How many new lives did Allah عز و جل give you
19:25so you could start to plan for the regrets that you know you're going to have? And this I'm going to give you from the heart. And I really do mean it. It's so strange. We had a janazah of a newborn. May Allah سبحانه وتعالى
19:39allow that child to be the intercessor. Her name, Layla, they named her Layla. May Allah عز و جل allow her to be a shafi'ah, an intercessor for her parents on the Day of Judgment. And it's always strange when you see a baby that's this size,
19:53when you see the casket laid before you, and it's not a full-grown human being. And you look at that child, and wallahi, there are so many emotions. And you know one of the emotions I have when I look at that casket?
20:07هنيئًا لك. What a good life you lived. You have nothing to regret. Nothing to regret. We don't even have to ask Allah to forgive you. You have nothing to regret.
20:21Right? That small casket, the small numbers of days, yes, it's painful, and you feel bad for the parents, but هنيئًا لك. You don't have regrets. You didn't live enough to regret.
20:34Every single one of us, dear brothers and sisters, I want you to think right now. The end of your life. And reverse-engineer your relationships.
20:48First and foremost, your relationship with Allah. Then your family. You know how many times you see people crying at the janazahs of their family members? Because they knew they could have done better. Why are you waiting?
21:01You knew you were gonna cry that day. Why are you waiting till then? Why not fix it now? You know when a stain goes into a garment, there's a time where you could wash it out no matter how stubborn the stain. Sometimes it's a light one though. If you leave it for years there,
21:13it penetrates and it becomes impossible to take out. This was so resolvable. Why did you wait until the stain became permanent? Reverse-engineer your relationships. I wish I would have treated my parents this way. I wish I would have treated my spouse this way.
21:27I wish I would have treated my children this way. I wish I would have treated my siblings this way. I know exactly what I could have done and I didn't do. Reverse-engineer from there. What a great life you'll have with your family. Reverse-engineer with your friends.
21:41Reverse-engineer with your course of action. The things that you knew you should have done. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to be a people that when we leave this world, we leave this world breathing a sigh of relief,
21:55not a sigh of regret. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us on the day of judgment with every passing station to be amongst those who were well-prepared and who look back and say, Alhamdulillah I was ready for this, Alhamdulillah I was ready for that,
22:10until we're saying Alhamdulillah we're neighbors of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in jannah. May Allah azza wa jal allow us to not be amongst those who are deluded. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us amongst those who plan for their regrets, who plan for their wishes.
22:24May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to be amongst those who change what is in their capacity. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to be amongst those who are firm despite all circumstances. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to be amongst those who swallow their egos before their regrets.
22:38May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to be amongst those who forgive and who are forgiven. May Allah forgive us for all of our shortcomings that are inevitable no matter what, and allow us to enter jannah, jannah al-firdaws, without any form of 'adhab, or any form of hisab.
22:53Allahumma ameen. أقول قولي هذا واستغفر الله لي ولكم فاستغفروه إنه هو الغفور الرحيم
23:24اللهم إنك عفو كريم تحب العفو فاعف عنا اللهم اغفر لوالدي رب ارحمهما كما ربياني صغيرا ربنا هب لنا من أزواجنا وذرياتنا قرة أعين واجعلنا للمتقين إماما اللهم انصر إخواننا المستضعفين في مشارق الأرض ومغاربها
23:38اللهم انصرهم في فلسطين وفي السودان وفي كل مكان اللهم عليك بأعدائك أعداء الدين اللهم أرِنا في الظالمين عجائب قدرتك اللهم أهلك الظالمين بالظالمين وأخرجنا وإخواننا من بينهم سالمين عباد الله إن الله يأمر بالعدل والإحسان وإيتاء ذي القربى
23:52وينهى عن الفحشاء والمنكر والبغي يعظكم لعلكم تذكرون فاذكروا الله يذكركم واشكروه على نعمه يزدكم ولذكر الله أكبر والله يعلم ما تصنعون وأقم الصلاة
























































































































































































































































































































