Dua for beneficial outcome in all affairs

When. At the point where the trouble is not one thing but everything at once — work, money, health and a relationship all sliding together, so that no single request would cover it. It is also the supplication for the moment before a decision you do not trust yourself to make.

The words. Ya Hayyu ya Qayyum, the two names paired in the Verse of the Throne (al-Baqara 2:255). Al-Hayy is the Living, life belonging to Him rather than lent to Him. Al-Qayyum is from q-w-m, standing: the One who stands by Himself and holds everything else standing. Together they say that the One being called does not tire and is not, at this moment, occupied elsewhere. Astaghith is not the ordinary verb for asking. Istighatha is the cry of the drowning and the buried — a call for rescue, not a request for a favour, and it is what makes the sentence urgent rather than polite.

Everything, unlisted. Aslih li sha'ni kullah — set right my affair, all of it. Sha'n is a person's whole state and business, and kullah saves the speaker from having to enumerate. Anyone who has tried to pray through a bad month knows the exhaustion of listing; this line refuses the list.

Not for a blink. La takilni ila nafsi uses the root of wakil, the appointed agent. Where the supplication for leaving home appoints Allah as one's agent, this one asks not to be made one's own — and tarfata 'ayn, the time it takes an eyelid to fall, sets the shortest span the language has for how long that would be survivable.