I am always amazed, and I say in my heart, “Lord, what a doing of Yours. How You have implanted the feeling of love for me in the hearts of the people.”
Whenever there is a chance of going on a journey and I am riding a horse, at least one young man walks on foot alongside for my security. And when I get off the horse, he starts massaging my feet, and says, “Your Holiness may be tired.” I realize that I came on the horse and he walked on foot along the horse, but because the love he has for me, it does not occur to him that I was on the horse, so how could I be tired? He thinks that he was on the horse and I was on foot. Despite my insistence that I am not tired as I was riding the horse, he starts massaging my feet saying, “Your Holiness must be tired. Please let me avail the opportunity to serve you.”
Where there is love, a person sees his own trouble less and that of the beloved more. But in ordinary circumstances, a person feels his own pain more and another’s less.
Non-believers captured a companion of the Holy Prophet by deceit. A Meccan had been killed with his hands so they sold him to the Meccans. They wanted to kill this companion with torture in retaliation for their relative’s death. They kept him in confinement for a few days. One day they decided to martyr him, so they started preparing to kill him.
At that time they thought that he would be frightened. They asked the companion, “Do you not wish that (Hazrat) Muhammad would have been in your place at this moment and that you were sitting in peace with your wife and children?”
He said, “You ask if I want Hazrat Muhammad, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, to be here and I want to be with my wife and children in Medina, but I do not even desire that I would be sitting in my home and he be pricked by a thorn while walking in the streets of Medina.”
Now observe that the companion forgot his pain at that time, but being filled with the love and compassion for the Holy Prophet, the perceived pain of the Holy Prophet made him restless.