We confuse earning a living with living itself. Life is not only about earning a living. Life is about something much more important than earning a living or making money. Life is about living with honor and about leaving a legacy to be remembered by. Life is not about competition but about having an impact on the hearts of others. Life is not about consumption but about contribution. Because power comes with territory and contribution defines territory.

I want to share with you three points we must never lose focus on, if we want to live a life where you will be influential while we live and remembered after we’re gone. 

The three points in one sentence: Stand for justice, with compassion and courage.

Remember that all goodness begins with justice. Justice means you give everything it’s due. To respect elders, to be kind to the young and weak, to stand up against oppression, to help someone in need, to comfort someone in grief, to walk the path that others don’t want to, are all signs that you are focused on justice. Look into your life from time to time to see if you’re still on the path to establish justice.

Remember that what’s legal and what’s right are not always the same. Slavery was legal. Colonialism was legal. Racial and religious discrimination and segregation was legal. Apartheid was legal. The Holocaust was legal. Disparity of wages for men and women was and sadly still is legal. But not a single one of them is right or just. To fight against these or not is your choice and your meter to show whether you’re still on the path of justice.

Compassion is the foundation. It is the bedrock in which justice is rooted. If that cracks or dies, then justice dies with it. Justice without mercy is cruelty with a mask. Compassion is the result of empathy. It happens when we see ourselves in the position of others, not with pity for them but with gratitude at having been spared that test. That’s when we start to see life through their lens and understand that we were not created to be spectators but to be players in the game. You win that game also in the same way, by helping each other, taking care of each other and protecting each other. Knowing that a culture of compassion is our best safety net. You help them not because they need that help but because you need it more.

Finally, and most importantly, the single most critical quality that enables compassion to sustain and justice to thrive is courage. 

Courage is not an absence of fear but the willingness to continue. Courage is what enables us to put self-interest behind and stand up for the rights of others because we understand their pain and are willing to take the pain to alleviate their suffering. That’s justice. And courage enables it to be established.

Courage is honor. Courage is to stand up for the truth even if I stand alone. Courage is to stand up for the truth, especially if I stand alone. Courage is to ask, “If not me, then who? If not now, then when?”

Courage is to know that it doesn’t matter whether we win or lose the battle. What matters is which side we fought on. We all live, and we will all die. Every single one of us will die one day. That doesn’t matter. What matters is how we live and how we die.

That is why the cardinal principle in Islam is to stand for justice.

Qur’an 4: 135   O believers! Stand firm for justice as witnesses for Allah even if it is against yourselves, your parents, or close relatives. Be they rich or poor, Allah is best to ensure their interests. So do not let your desires cause you to deviate ˹from justice˺. If you distort your testimony or refuse to give it, then ˹know that˺ Allah is certainly All-Aware of what you do.

And in the famous words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: 
“Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But Conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”

Remember, in the end, your choices define your brand-value and character. Choose wisely because that is how you will be remembered.