the lost years

Last Monday was an Islamic holiday, Eid ul-Fitr.  It marks the end of Ramadan.  It was a non-working holiday so I happily spent the day alternating between watching TV and surfing the net.  Here's an interesting fact that I found: there's a part in both Muhammad and Jesus' life that are unknown, several lost years that are unrecorded.   Muhammad started preaching when he was around 40 years old.  Jesus started when he was in his thirties.  Before all that, there's an information gap between their childhood and adult years.  We do know that Muhammad dabbled in trade and he married at 25 but little is known of him during his later youth.  All we have are speculations but no actual history of who they were and what they did. What happened to them during those years? 

I do hope that someone will discover actual records of the life that they led before their ministry.  Maybe Jesus worked as a carpenter, building furnitures & houses everyday, while Muhammad was a merchant, bargaining with traders and counting his profits & losses.  It just makes them more within our reach-- working, needing the money, tired, bored & frustrated.  I think it makes their history richer. It's funny that such ordinary details could make one's history rich.  It just makes them more human than gods.

But it wouldn't be funny if that's all a person will ever have.  It wouldn't be funny at all if the history that he could've made goes by unrecorded, lost for good.