Sink or Swim

Lombok Reflections

Sink or Swim

On the Island of Gili Air, just off the coast of mainland Lombok, I stumbled upon what used to be a thriving resort. The earthquake years ago had left its mark. Roofs caved in, walls fractured, and memories abandoned to the salt air.

Time had not been kind, and what was once luxury now sat in ruins. But among the decay, there was something that caught my eye. A drained swimming pool, right at the edge of the ocean, its walls splashed with graffiti.

Bold letters stretched across the tiles, declaring: “We work hard for this lazy vibes!”

It was an odd message in such a place, a celebration of idleness painted onto something broken. The pool was no longer a space of leisure, just a shell of what it once promised. Yet the slogan lingered like a whisper of the dunya’s promise. If you just keep grinding, keep sacrificing, one day you’ll retire to comfort, to lazy mornings, to sunsets with nothing to do.

Isn’t that what so much of the world chases? Work for decades so you can finally do nothing?

But the irony struck me. The pool was abandoned. The dream it advertised had collapsed. And isn’t that exactly how the dunya often deceives?

We chase a promise that slips through our fingers. Many work themselves to exhaustion dreaming of retirement at sixty-five, yet some never reach it. Others reach it, only to find sickness waiting for them, or loneliness, or the hollowness of unfulfilled pursuits.

The graffiti said, “We work hard for this lazy vibes.” But Allah reminds us of a different truth:

“But you prefer the worldly life, while the Hereafter is better and more enduring.” (Surah Al-A‘la 87:16–17)

The akhirah, not the dunya, is where true rest lies. Here, every moment of striving matters, not because it leads to an empty pool by the ocean, but because it is written and weighed for eternity.

Retirement is not at sixty-five for a Mulsim. Retirement is at death. Until then, the believer does not lay down his striving.

The Prophet ﷺ taught us:

“The intelligent one is he who subdues his soul and works for what is after death, and the foolish one is he who follows his desires and merely wishes upon Allah.” (Tirmidhi)

How clear and piercing are these words. Intelligence is not amassing wealth, not buying leisure, not chasing lazy vibes but rather, it is seeing beyond the thin veil of this dunya, disciplining the self, and investing in what will outlast the grave.

And again, he ﷺ said:

“Take advantage of five before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your sickness, your wealth before your poverty, your free time before your preoccupation, and your life before your death.” (Ibn Abbas, Musnad Ahmad)

There is no room here for the illusion of endless leisure. Time is a gift that slips quickly. To waste it is a loss greater than we realise until it is too late.

As I stood there by the cracked pool, the ocean waves rising and falling in the background, I thought about how easily we are lulled by slogans like these. The dunya wraps its deception in humor, in art, in lifestyle branding.

“Work hard now so you can be lazy later.”

But a Muslim’s striving has no such end point. We are not working for laziness, but for Jannah. We are not seeking to retire into idleness, but to labour in worship, in gratitude, in patience, until the very last breath leaves us.

Allah says:

“And worship your Lord until there comes to you the certainty (death).” (Surah Al-Hijr 15:99)

That is the retirement plan of a believer. There is no pause button on ibadah, no sabbatical from the remembrance of Allah. Every stage of life, from youth to old age, carries its own tests and responsibilities. Even in rest, even in leisure, the heart of a believer is connected to Allah, mindful, grateful, seeking His pleasure.

The pool before me was empty, its promise void. And perhaps that’s the lesson hidden in it. The dunya’s pools will always crack, its walls will always fade, its slogans will always fail.

But the akhirah’s rivers are everlasting. Rivers of milk, honey, and water pure, beneath gardens where no one grows weary and no joy fades. That is where the true “lazy vibes” exist, not in idleness, but in eternal rest granted by Allah to those who strove in this world.

I walked away reminded that the only rest worth longing for is not here. It is beyond, waiting for those who kept striving, who kept worshipping, who never let themselves believe that the dunya could deliver what only the akhirah holds.

And so we keep working, not for broken pools by the ocean, but for palaces in Paradise. Ameen