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“Look after your heart,” my wife tells me. “I need you.”

In this case, she’s talking about my physical heart. She can tell I’m stressed, dealing with another of those days.

Every phone call now delivers bad news. Even before looking, I know it’s the school. One after the other, it only seems to get worse.

So here I am, once more, sleepless in the early hours with aching chest and numb feet — all the symptoms of stress and disappointment.

Nothing we say or do seems to make any difference. No investment of time or money seems to help. And now it has all come to a head.

“Look after your heart,” I tell myself now.

In this case, I’m talking about my spiritual heart. The one I’ve been neglecting in my full-on charge towards oblivion.

I see these stresses as a rebuke to my soul. As divine intervention, calling me back. As if to say, “Wake up!” before it’s too late.

Both hearts not coalesce urgently: the physical and the spiritual, warning me of my imminent demise. I know I am not ready, possessor of this wayward soul.

This shaking pain in my body, I take as a sign. An awakening. To reform once more, if Allah wills, to return to Him and His way. To try to rectify my affairs.

As for that other soul in our midst, so intent on self-destruction. At this very moment, awake in the middle of the night, I just think to myself, “Who am I to judge?”

He merely holds a mirror up before me, showing me my own shortcomings. We’re both heading towards destruction in our own ways. Only, I should know better.