Long wishes!

Ali, (AS), said:

"No man prolongs his wishes, unless he forgets death and his actions become bad!"[1]

Long wishes make people fall into misbehavior and ugliness. In the Arabic language, two words mean hope and desire; one is "Rajaa" and the other is "Amal", the first one has a positive charge and means constructive hope and desire, but "Amal" sometimes has a negative charge and means non-constructive wishes.

In this meaningful narration, Imam Ali (AS) deals with one of the negative aspects of "faith" and points out its bad effect on human actions.

Question: by the way, why are "long wishes" so bad? Answer: The characteristic of the materialistic attractions of the world is that it has a strong attraction from a distance, but when a person gets close to it, he gets used to it and loses its attraction.

Like narcotics that people are attracted to before accessing it. But when they become addicted, it no longer has any attraction for them. And they have to increase its amount regularly so that they fall into the trap of death.

A person who is a Tenant and suffers from its problems wishes to get a house, even if it is small, and this is extremely attractive for him, but when he owns it, after a short period of time, it becomes normal for him and he wishes for a bigger house with more facilities.

But he is not satisfied with that either and every day he is thinking of a more prosperous home. Therefore, dreams have no boundaries and no end, so if a person wants to achieve his dreams, he must spend all his energy to achieve them, and it is natural that he no longer has time and energy to spend on the world of the hereafter.

For this reason, in the hadiths of the innocents, long wishes have been condemned and considered to cause forgetting the hereafter.

References:

[1]-110 examples of the words of Hazrat Ali (AS) Author: Makarem Shirazi, Nasser Volume: 1 Page: 23/ «ما اطالَ احَدٌ الْامَلَ الّا نَسِىَ الْاجَلَ و اساءَ الْعَمَلَ»