I spend a lot of my time laughing. I approach life with laughter. When I am faced with a very tricky situation I find ways to joke around about it, even if its painful to make light of the situation. I often times feel thats the only way to address the circumstances, it will be a matter of a few days, anyway, when I can look back and laugh about whatever it was that was the big ordeal that day.
But a few weeks ago I posted a hadith, not sure how many people took notice of it. I brushed aside a large portion of the hadith to reflect on the main concept of the hadith which was about eating less.
The hadith went as follows:
Prophet SAW was asked “who is the most superior person? SAW replied “He who eats little, laughs little, and is content with his breeches”
“Laughing little”, what does that mean? And why did I title this post “laughing all the way to hell”? Lets be clear the Prophet SAW was not stoic man, nor was he one who did not laugh, here is a hadith that shows his sense of humor:
Ummayyah was sitting and a man was eating. He did not mention God’s name until the very last morsel was left to eat. When he raised it to his mouth, he said “in the name of God, at the beginning and at the end of it. The Prophet SAW laughed…
We can establish by this hadith that a “little” does not imply no laughter at all and that the Prophet SAW was himself someone who expressed laughter. “Little” also doesn’t mean he wasn’t visibly or overly expressive with his laughter, again another hadith:
Abu Huraira (RA) reported that a person came to the Prophet SAW saying “Prophet of God, I am undone.” He SAW said “What has brought about your ruin?” The man explained how he did something during Ramadan that he wasn’t supposed that broke his fast. The Prophet SAW then went through a list of things to make up for the action, to which the man responded he had no means to do any of these things, finally the Prophet SAW saw a bag of dates the man carried. The Prophet SAW said “Give these dates to charity” and the man responded “Am I to give to one who is poorer than me?” (there were was no one poorer than this man in Medina) To which the Prophet SAW laughed so that his teeth (molar, the ones in the back that are hard to see) were visible and he said “Go and give it to your family to eat.”
So that gives us idea of how little is not ‘never’ and possibly “laugh little” implies the idea of not wasting your laugh or time in joking around and not taking things seriously.
Corner Office Shaikh 