“Take advantage of five before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your illness, your wealth before your poverty, your free time before your busyness, and your life before your death.”

This wording is preserved by al-Hakim and others, narrated from Ibn ‘Abbas, and hadith scholars have differed over its chains. Its meaning is firmly established by a hadith in al-Bukhari from the same companion: “There are two blessings in which many people incur loss — health and free time.” The list of five is that sentence opened out: each pair names something possessed now that will not always be there.