Fired Up, Then Cooled Down

In general, today, we are very emotional. We get fired up fast. There could be a very fiery khuṭbah at Jumuʿah, speaking about jihād, for example, and during that khuṭbah everyone feels like Khālid ibn al-Walīd, ready to go to the battlefield. The prayer ends, and a few moments later, by the time your foot is out of the masjid, you have left all that emotion behind you and you are back in the dunyā again.

We are very easily fired up, and we very easily cool down. That is not ṣabr. That is not ṣabr. We are reactionary: we react to situations, then after a while we calm down, and it is back to normal. But the Companions had a plan, and they carried out that plan steadily. They worked on it, and in the end they were victorious. And this does not only work for the believers: it is a law of Allah (swt) that applies even to the non-believer.