The Story of the Ship Owner

Antoninus said, “I am truly astonished at those who pin their hopes on this world and crave a long life. I have found that no one is more hostile to a man than his own children: their fathers toil to accumulate wealth for them, exhaust their bodies to secure the livelihood of others at the cost of their own lives, while the enjoyment of that wealth is shared by people besides them. Yet they alone will be questioned about the effort they expended—just like the ship owner.

They asked, ‘What is the parable of the ship owner?’

He replied, ‘They relate that there was a carpenter who worked with his own hands and earned one dirham each day. He spent half of it on an aged father, a wife, a son, and a daughter, and saved the other half. After some time, living in comfort, he looked at what he had earned and found that he had put aside one hundred dinars. He exclaimed, “By Allah, I have been wasting my life in vain…"'