Simple Plan!

What can we do to improve the conditions in Pakistan? Can we do anything? Can we make any difference at all? Frankly, I don’t know. But here is something to think about.

One of the most common and trusted ways to gauge the development of a country is the Human Development Index. Below, I have compared a country’s HDI and the voter turnout in its last elections.

Country HDI Voters Turnout
Australia 0.965 95%
Iceland 0.968 89%
Norway 0.968 81%
Ireland 0.960 74%
Japan 0.956 71%
Thailand 0.786 74%
India 0.609 58%
Pakistan 0.562 45%
Niger 0.370 45%
Chad 0.389 52%

I am not saying that this relationship between HDI and Voter turnout is constant throughout the world. In fact a few countries like Rwanda have extremely high turnout and still score dismally low on the HDI. However, in most of such cases, the turnout statistics are highly dubious.

My point is simple. Think all you want. Try to do something unique to improve the country, sure. But first things first. At least go out and vote. At least express your opinion. Or do you want people like Zardari in the President House forever? Don’t act like the Momin who ignores prayers but keeps looking for a miraculous rise in spirituality, who doesn’t give a damn about his neighbour but wants a non-stop ticket to heaven. Let’s wake up.

Thora Soch Lays!

We, Muslims, and especially Pakistani Muslims, are a cute bunch of people. We have the capability to ignore such serious sins as fornication, murder and drinking, taking them to be a part of life. We even indulge in hypocrisy, lying, greed, lethargy and what not without giving it a second thought. But on certain other (arguably less important issues) we raise an alarm that is, mildly put, extremely exaggerated.

Before coming to the issue that prompted me to write this, here is a little example of this sort of behaviour. Some time ago, I (for a change) went to visit a relative. When leaving his house, I, as is the custom, said “Khuda Hafiz”. At this, I was unexpectedly snubbed by a respected elder and told that that was not the proper Islamic way to say goodbye. Naturally confused, I asked her to elaborate. She explained that we should always say “Allah Hafiz” since Khuda means God and many different people have many different Gods, so we must be clear about whose protection we want to put the recipient of the prayer in. I just couldn’t help laughing. I tried to explain to her as briefly as possible that no matter how many different gods various people of the world believed in, we only believed in one and that was Allah. Since everyone present knew this, Khuda should not mean anything but Allah. To further elaborate, I told her that with her logic, she should call her dad by his name since various people had various dads and she should be clear about the person she was referring to.

Coming back to the point, I have received various text messages and heard from a number of friends that Lay’s chips are suddenly haraam and should be avoided at all costs since it is now a sin to have them. Some people have elaborated that the said snack contains something called E631 which is made from pork and thus makes it haraam.

I have no objection to my Muslim brothers avoiding the snack to protect their faith, but for anyone who has a curious bone like me, here is some information that might help decide the matter.

1.             E631 is used to enhance the flavour of food.

2.             Though E631 can be extracted from pig fat, it is not the only source. It can also be obtained from sardines, yeast extract and a plant extract called Tapioca. All these sources except pig fat are not Haraam under any Islamic law.

3.             E631 is mainly used in the Masala flavour of Lay’s (imported from Thailand). This E631 is extracted from Tapioca and has been certified by the Central Islamic Committee of Thailand to be Halal.

4.             A number of researchers have spent a lot of time studying all kinds of different foods including snacks and have decided on which products are halal and Haraam. The only Lay’s flavour that I found to be Haraam in these lists was Baked Lay’s Brand KC Masterpiece BBQ Flavour.

5.             One ounce of regular lays contains 130 calories, 380 mg of salt and ten grams of fat (three grams of saturated fat). It has next to no minerals or vitamins. So there are other, more realistic reasons for staying away from too much intake of the snack.

So, if you want to extremely careful and do not trust the Thai Islamic Society, avoid BBQ and Masala flavours, the rest are fine. Although if someone wants to quit eating Lay’s totally just to be on the safe side, I respect their opinion.

Coming to the earlier point, I still wonder what our society would look like if we spent so much time and energy thinking about things where there is no doubt. Lying, cheating, harming others for one’s own benefit, making money through forbidden means, corruption, nepotism, bribery, misuse of authority, cruelty to humans and animals, all these things are forbidden. There is no confusion in these. Forget Lay’s; remember these and we’ll be fine.

Hold Your Fire!

It is extremely surprising, scary and more than a little disconcerting to listen to some of the self-proclaimed revolutionaries of Pakistan sitting in their drawing rooms and offices and blurting out their own suggestions on how all the maladies of this country can be remedied. The most popular way out, in the opinions of these intellectuals, is a bloody revolution similar to the ones that, in their view, brought the people of France, Russia and more recently Iran, out of their tragic lives and put them on the path towards a new and promising future. According to these thinkers (and there are a large number of them), the only way to improve the conditions in our country and transform it into one of the great nations of the world, is to line up just a few of the top brass, including some power hungry politicians, a few of the corrupt beaurucrats and some of these bloody soldiers and simply shoot them. That simple. Kill them and Weill be rid of all our worries.

It is surprising that well-educated people think on these lines. It is scary that if some psychopathic individual or group actually tried to do this, he would get more than a few supporters. And it is very disconcerting that all these Pakistanis feel that this is a distinct possibility.

This is not a new thought. It has been moving around intellectual circles for a long long time now. A number of people, who were against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto must have had the same notion, and as for those who hated Gen. Zia, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif, Gen. Musharraf and now Mr. Zardari, I have personally heard them expressing their desire to kill and live happily after.

I have a large number of problems with this way of thinking. My greatest concern is that we, as a nation, have historically acted in haste. We are always too eager to get rid of a certain individual or group but have absolutely no clue about who we intend to replace the said person or group with. Come to think of it. Had such a revolution come in the time of ZAB, would a certain General Zia ul Haq been among the ones lined up and shot? If a revolutionary army had toppled Gen. Zia, would they have killed a young and cheerful Benazir Bhutto with him? If the people had risen up against BB in the late 80s, would Nawaz Sharif have been one of the victims of their violent wrath? If Mian Sahib had become target of some collective murder, would one General Pervez Musharraf have joined him? And finally, if the lawyers movement had turned into the bloody revolution so eagerly awaited by us, would they have killed the harmless and irrelevant Asif Ali Zardari? The answer to all these questions, as far as I know, is No.
We do not need to strain our brains too much trying to figure out how to get rid of any of our leaders. Fate, or Allah, takes care of it. ZAB was hanged, Zia blown up, Mian and BB dismissed by their trusted colleagues and Musharraf resigned out of sheer exhaustion. Agreed, the people did play some part in the resignation of Gen. Musharraf, though one can only wonder how long he would have lasted even without the rise of the black coats. However, as for the other rulers, there can be no two opinions on the point that the revolutionaries had very little, if anything, to do with their removal. Why worry about a bloody revolution to oust someone who can be ousted by his own bloody fate? Removal by revolution would also have brought a new face with the same old characteristics to power.

Our problem is not how to get rid of a certain President, PM or General. Our concern should be how to ensure that someone worthy of the seat sits on it. Do we have any standards or guidelines to judge who our ruler(s) should be? Is there any clarity on the subject in any of our minds? Don’t we just carry a vague, uncertain picture of a leader in our minds and then simply keep deciding that anyone who rises to the top position in the state simply does not fit the bill? How long can we go on like this?

We are still not even clear if we want a parliamentary or a presidential system. Hell, were not even sure what we personally expect from a government. It is always much easier and infinitely more logical to rise up for something than to rise simply against something or someone.

Our forefathers rose against the British and the Hindus, succeeded and then got lost. We did not want the Hindus and the British, fair enough. But what did we want instead? After more than sixty years, we are the Islamic Republic of Pakistani and keep reading articles in the papers and listening to experts stating that Jinnah’s dream was a secular country and we should follow it. What utter confusion! We have Taliban pouring in from the Western borders and threatening to turn our women into Burqa clad mimes and Bollywood, Star Plus and Boogie Woogie marching in through our Eastern borders and trying to turn them into half-dressed, made-up, dancing decorations. And us. We condemn both. We hate both. We consider both an attack on our national identity. What that national identity actually is, who knows? And who the hell cares?

Revolutions in France and Iran were against monarchies that refused to listen to the plight of the people and did not have any plans to go anywhere. We don’t have any such problem. We live in a democracy. We are a nation that gained unprecedented freedom of expression even under a dictatorship. We have all the options in the world to grow, learn, groom and either choose or create alternative leaders. And if all else fails, we have more chances than people in most other countries, to try our hand at actually becoming that alternative.

The revolution in Russia was based on a new and hitherto untried philosophy, namely, communism. We have no such philosophy. The only thing we have is Islam and we don’t agree on anything in the religion. So a united uprising to implement the principles of Islam does not seem likely.

We need clarity. We need to know what we want, who we want and why we want it. Merely knowing what we don’t want is not enough. A revolution in our way of thinking is what we need. And that revolution starts with me, with every individual. Inquilaab Zindabad.

Whats in a Name!

What the hell is wrong with Pakistan? No, I have not been forced to ask this because of any specific event or group of events, this is a question that has dominated the mind of every thinking Pakistani for a long time. Even before we were hurled into the throes of terrorism, long before we became the reluctant partners in a never ending war against an invisible enemy and before we became a state always on the threshold of failure, one could always see that there was something seriously wrong with this state.

I don’t believe that we have been the victims of any extraordinary catastrophe perpetrated by foreign elements that has caused our continuous downfall into this abyss. We have the unusual distinction of being a state that never recovered from its creation. Yes, I know that the creation of Pakistan was not some tragedy that we had to recover from, but we made sure that it appeared to be more and more of a tragedy as years passed.

The people of Pakistan, especially those of Punjab, have historically been wonderful slaves, but never masters, not even of our own destiny. We have acquired the habits of following without questioning, stabbing our brothers in the back to gain the approval of our Lords, going to unheard of extremes to prove our loyalties to whoever rules us and linking our success and failure to the extent to which we can please or (God forbid) annoy our masters. 

The exodus of gora saabs from India left a gaping vacuum above us slaves, which we were supposed to rise and fill. Unfortunately, we never proved up to the task. Instead, we began our so-called independent existence appearing confused and scared and soon began looking for new masters to fill in this vacuum. America eventually obliged and now we are a nation that has lost its identity, is fighting wars against its own people, has strained relations with all its neighbours (including the Muslim brothers) and where the President and the top military brass has gone (for the umpteenth time) to USA to discuss sensitive security issues (read get fresh orders).

It is about time that we took a keener look at our history and developed the courage to face the demons in our closets. We have to admit our mistakes, accept our weaknesses and then attempt to rise above these petty attitudes and start on our way to becoming a nation.

Our common educated man (of which there are pathetically few, but enough) must be aware of the problems our nation faces and the history of how we ourselves created them. Even a basic knowledge could provide food for thought and I am sure we will eventually come up with better and workable ideas to get out of this mess.

The North Western Frontier Province and the threat of Talibanization and terrorism are all too obvious. I want to point to another issue that is far less threatening and far simpler. I am no expert on the subject but I don’t understand all the fuss about changing the name of the province. I mean, what’s wrong with it? Why not change it to Pakhtoonistan or whatever the residents of the area want? Seriously, N.W.F.P. is not even a name. As far as I know Punjab means the land of the five rivers, Balochistan means the land of the Balochs and Sind probably (though I am not sure) is named after the river Indus. What does N.W.F.P. mean? It means the province that is in the North-West of the country and on its border. In Urdu, it is called Sarhad which simply means boundary. I want all readers to think seriously, is that even a name? It is at best an address. How would anyone of you want to be named ‘the second child of Mr. so-and-so who lives in F-10?’ I think the government must accept their demand, which is not for a change of name but more for a name instead of an address.

We are not four provinces. We are one country. National integration demands some empathy for each other’s issues. And this name game is as good a place to start as any. It does not threaten our national security or survival and as far as I can tell, changing the name would not even be a burden on our economy. So why the fuss? We have no competitor when it comes to bugging our provinces to unbelievable extents. We’ve lost half the country with this sort of behaviour. It has to stop. We have to stop looking at NWFP or Balochistan as a threat to this country and start considering them a part of this country.

Blunt Axes!

There was a time when the most frustrating aspect regarding Pakistani society was our indifference and apathy to the tragic circumstances that prevailed in the country. Believe it or not, this attitude is a thing of the past now. The credit may go to the freedom of the media, the limit of our tolerance or sheer chance, but we, as a nation, have emerged from the depths of ignorance and inaction and are now at least prepared to take an interest in what is going on around us and react.

However, this is a slow process. We are in a transition from indifference to proper action and our biggest concern should be to make sure that, unlike a number of other transitions, this one does not become a permanent feature of our national life. We have a habit of hanging in the middle for too long, far too long. We delay the final push towards our destination so much that the transitional phase becomes a permanent one and if and when we do take the final steps, it is mostly too late and our destination no longer serves the purpose. Hence, we continue to move from one transition to another.

Times change too quickly now. We can’t spare too much time to congratulate ourselves, we must move on. New attitudes bring new challenges that need to be faced and tackled in order to get maximum advantage from the current situation. New things have to be learnt, and more importantly, a number of old things have to be unlearnt.

We have acquired a very bad habit of jumping to conclusions without first gaining clarity on a subject and taking on irrelevant burdens on our shoulders, consequently leading to frustrations. 

Some phrases that I have grown to hate over the years are ‘Drawing room Politics’, ‘Drawing room Discussions’ etc. Every other day, I hear things like ‘That is theoretically correct but ground realities are different’ or ‘We must stop discussing and act now’ and I feel a little perturbed by such thoughts. 

I feel the need to explain my views of some of these concepts once and for all.

The term ‘silent majority denotes the group of people who do not express their opinions publicly. However, this group may contain two kinds of people. Those who appear to have no desire to say anything on anything, who appear indifferent and have no realization of the fact that they can, in their own way, contribute towards improving the situation, are the real problem. The other group contains those who have opinions on things which they express amongst their close friends and enter into positive discussions and debates with each other in an effort to decide the best solution to a certain problem and the most useful way in which they can contribute. Such people are a very important asset. They should not be bombarded with insensitive criticism and asked repeatedly to stop talking and start acting. It is the minds, the debates and the drawing rooms of these people that are the potential breeding grounds for ideas, plans and courses that can become the fuel for our national development.

Everyone is not a revolutionary by nature. Yes, we need leaders and followers, we need activists. But much more than that, we need people who generate ideas; ideas about where we need to go, which path can become our salvation. Without a clear direction, the leader and the followers will be mere wanderers. And these ideas can develop in the drawing rooms. 

We, and a number of other nations and individuals, have committed the mistake of jumping without preparation and facing the consequences. We need to gain clarity on a number of things before we can be sure of how to act. So let the active people act, the thinking people think and the drawing room politicians discuss. Let everyone do their own job and hope to utilize the best product of every effort.

One example of our lack of clarity; the operation on Lal Masjid was universally condemned and became one of the major causes of Gen. Musharraf’s downfall. Our ‘civil society’ and ‘intelligentsia’ not only condemned the operation but openly expressed their opinions against it, in the newspapers, in public gatherings and on the streets. The same intelligentsia, though, does not seem to mind the current military operation in N.W.F.P. and some members of this elite group have gone to the extent of appreciating and welcoming the step. 

I fail to understand the difference between the two operations. If anything, the attack on Lal Masjid was better planned since it was a preemptive strike to prevent the possibility of something like what happened in Swat. 

We direly need some people to take on the task of showing us direction. And anyone of us can play that role, provided he has put in all his intellectual resources and come up with a plan. If we need to do something for the country, we must spend most of our time figuring out the best thing to do. Once the plan is in place and there is a will, implementation is the easiest part.

Russian revolution without Marx or the French revolution without Rosseau could not have been possible.

Silent majority is a phrase coined by Richard Nixon, one of the most controversial of American Presidents. Maybe we would be better off learning a thing or two from one of the greatest American Presidents. Abraham Lincoln said “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax”.

Taliban vs. Jaahilan!

The world is a funny place. As they say, truth is stranger than fiction. Life never ceases to amaze you, always coming up with surprises, phenomena that you least expected occur and things that were beyond your wildest imagination suddenly become a part of your life.

Who could have imagined that our dear country, formed in the name of Islam and then abused in the name of the same religion for more than sixty years, would one day be under attack by fundamentalists with their own version of the same religion. 

Then again, maybe it is not that surprising after all. Maybe we asked for it. Yes, the Taliban are a threat, but to what? They cannot be a threat to our freedom, our peace of mind, our ideology, our religion, our unity or our march towards better times. It can’t be an attack on any of these things simply because none of these things exist here. We’re still slaves to centuries old fallacies in the name of traditions, culture and religion, we have no intention of striving to develop and instead spend all our energies fighting against ourselves, we have never agreed on our definition of better times, we are still to develop the tolerance and sense to coexist despite the differences in our thinking and culture. In short we are an idle, indifferent and sleeping nation.

I feel that this purposeless existence, which most of us have become used to and do not want to change, is the very thing under attack. We fear the Taliban, not just because they have a fundamentalist, illogical and violent outlook on Islam, but more so because they are a force that would make us gets off our butts. Whether we support them, oppose them, follow them or block them, we just cannot stay asleep. And that is what scares the living hell out of us.

I am not a supporter of the Taliban but I am an even bigger opponent of the Jaahilan. In the possibility of the approaching battle between the Taliban and the Jaahilan, victory will probably not grace the one who is right or even the one who is more powerful but the one who is readier to move his ass. The Taliban might stop short of Islamabad, but our own lethargy is the enemy that has already entered our gates.

Historically, we have never required an external enemy to defeat us; we are pretty self-sufficient in that. It is about time we put an end to this. Open our eyes and see the life we lead, the things we believe and the shame we put our religion and ideology to.

One cannot succeed if he does not know what he wants to achieve, can’t grow if he doesn’t have an idea of what growth is and can’t fight unless he knows what he is fighting for.

Unlearn!

The ability to learn is one of the greatest assets we have. But the apparent inability to unlearn, or more appropriately the unwillingness to unlearn whatever we have learnt by whatever means is one of our biggest weaknesses. 

Starting from our early childhood when we are always trying to satisfy our curiosity by learning from our environment, our family and our teachers, we become the target of an unconscious campaign by these very people to kill the said curiosity. A lot of the questions remain unanswered and we acquire the habit of ignoring these questions that our minds generate so frequently during our early years. As soon as our egos become large enough to play their part, we start getting convinced that any question that is still unanswered does not matter, that it is unimportant. These unanswered questions further put a stop to the birth of other questions in our minds and gradually, we only ask trivial questions, the answers to which do not affect anything which has any real significance in the time-space curves of the universe. We are only interested in learning things that affect our immediate surroundings in time and space. We are not bothered about the actual questions of time and space. We have to re-awaken the curiosity. We have to accept the fact that nobody knows everything and that there may be hundreds of truths that nobody knows at all. And somebody will be the first to uncover them and that that somebody could be us. 

In this age of technological revolution, information is more accessible than it ever was before. Thus, satisfaction of most kinds of intellectual curiosities is just a click away. What stops us from pursuing this path then? More than anything else, it is our belief that it is a useless exercise. Amusingly, by believing that learning varied things is a waste of time, we do not actually stop learning. We continue the process and learn new things everyday from people, from our experiences, from books, from the media. The only difference such an attitude makes that we learn whatever is thrown at us, whether we want to know it or not. In other words, our learning process escapes the boundaries of our free will. And when even our intellectual growth is in the hands of forces beyond our control, what else can we expect to hold on to?

The first thing we have to unlearn is this attitude. We must know the truth and if it is not readily available, we must find it. We must discover the truth about what we are doing at any given time and then decide whether it is worth doing or not. There should be only two reasons for doing anything. One that you want to do it and two that you have to do it. If nothing else we should at least be interested in learning and ensure that what we are doing is either what we actually want or it is something that we definitely have to do. We must unlearn to ignore unanswered questions. We must learn to ask and then to seek.

Even more harmful than the unanswered questions are the unquestioned answers; things that we learn starting from our childhood to the end of our lives; things that we learn not to question. We believe a lot of things merely because we hear them from someone, and are more prone to believe them without question if we read them in print or hear them from someone on media. Such unquestioned answers play a huge role in turning us away from the truth and making us believe a lot of falsehoods as if they were the absolute truths. Unfortunately we start living our lives on the basis of these facts and gradually the chances of our stumbling on the truth diminish. Then a time comes when even if we do stumble upon it, we try to ignore it since it does not fit in with our life and concepts, mostly based on false notions. When falsehood is believed to be the truth, the actual truth becomes a lie.

All progress in humanity occurred when a few people, scattered throughout history, questioned the hitherto unquestioned answers. Almost every time, they found them to be wrong and went on to ask, to seek and to learn, and a number of them ended up changing the world forever. We must unlearn the things we have been taught against our desires. It is not necessary that all of them would turn out to be wrong, but even if most of them were true, this questioning, learning and unlearning would give us an infinitely stronger basis to believe in them. Such a line of thought would omit the fiction from our belief and would strengthen the facts that already exist along with starting us off on the path to learning the truth that we do not know as yet.

Once we have uncovered the truth of all the forces that control us, we will realize that the strength of these powers is merely in our minds, a mere illusion. Only when we realize that we can be free of the powers these factors exercise on us. And only then would we be able to breathe the fresh air of freedom and take our own decisions based on our own choice. Freedom is something that just cannot be appreciated unless it is experienced.

In-Charge!

It must be realized that we are probably one of the few (if not the only) creatures with ego. There is this unfathomable desire in all humans to justify whatever they think, say or do. Where we should be analyzing the causes of our thoughts and actions and then beginning our efforts to liberate these from influences which are regressive, we waste our time in convincing ourselves and all around us that we already are free and that we are not controlled by these influences against our will. We want to believe that we have chosen to be controlled by them. The simple reason for such an attitude is that any other explanation casts doubts in our own minds about the veracity of our status as God’s great (if not greatest) creation and deals a tremendous blow to our self-esteem, both individually and as a race. Hence, you see all around you people explaining that they are not free and the reasoning is that they have to follow whatever customs, traditions, laws and rules that they are following. Paradoxically, we justify that we are not free because we have freely chosen not to be free. I wonder if anything could sound more absurd. Unfortunately though, since almost the whole race believes in this absurdity, it does not seem that odd to the untrained eye.

Setting our egos aside for a moment, we would instantly become much better equipped to understand our position vis-à-vis all the internal and external forces that are controlling our lives and because of which we are spending our lives and not living them. Though these forces and their relative influence may vary from person to person, for the sake of clarity, some of the more common ones are listed below.

(i) Our physical and physiological requirements that account for the desire for food, clothing, sex and dwelling; 

(ii) Our emotional make up generates the desire to love and be loved in return;

(iii) Religion, or more importantly, what we have been taught or have learnt in the name of religion continuously pricks our conscience in the name of good and bad, right and wrong;

(iv) Society with its own peculiar sets of customs and traditions, dos and don’ts is a constant irritant as we perform a large number of acts against our wish, and sometimes, against our better sense, only to gain social approval and sometimes refrain from great deeds only to avoid social isolation;

(v) Law of the land we live in forces us to abide by it, not for any particular gain, but more so to avoid punishment, and more often than not, social degradation as a consequence;

(vi) Peer pressure exerts a greater influence than the society as a whole and exploits our inherent desire to stay a part of the group. Interestingly, this group is also mostly not of our own choice but imposed upon us by circumstances;

(i) Family is the most powerful part of the society, especially in the eastern culture. We feel obliged to continue the sort of life our families approve of, without giving much thought to whether it makes much sense;

The list could go on and on but the above examples give a fair idea of the point. It must be remembered here that these factors are not evil in themselves. Not only are they necessary for our survival individually as well as collectively, they are also great fillips to our struggle for a quality existence. Hence, they do not constitute a problem in themselves. Like all other entities that humans interact with the problem does not lie in them but in the way we deal with them. These factors are necessary and useful but only as long as we are ones using them. The moment we start becoming used by them, we falter, since none of these forces have the capability of free will. Only someone or something that has this capacity has the ability to use others, we however, have surrendered our wills to these factors without as much as a complaining whimper. So rather than controlling all these influences with our intellect, we have chosen to let our intellects be controlled by them. We are convinced that these factors are in fact the indisputable truth in this world and have thus created our very own golems1. 

It is essential that we take some time out for introspection and analyze which of these factors are controlling our decisions and acts, and to what extent. There must be a fairly accurate assessment of these issues and the only way to do that is simply, to want to do that. Egos must be left behind; we cannot fully be free unless we believe two things; one, that we are not great and two, that we can achieve greatness.

Spend it away!

The first step towards the solution of any problem is the admission that a problem exists. Under the given environment in which we are spending our lives, we do not have the capacity to exercise free will. 

Note the word ‘spending’ above. This is the way in which we normally refer to the passing of days from our arrival in this world to our departure for the next. We spend our lives, but do we live them? It is a matter of common knowledge, not requiring any level of study in finance or economics, that when you spend something, you must get something else in return, something better or at least as good as that spent. Another matter of common sense is that when you spend something, you part with it. It is gone from your possession. Whereas our spending of life fulfills the second criteria, i.e. we don’t possess the spent moments anymore, the first condition is hardly ever present. What makes the whole transaction even more serious is that the spent moments, unlike spent money, can never be recovered. When spent, they are gone forever. But what do we get in return. Do we get anything beyond life in return? We cant prolong our life, we can only improve its quality, and that too according to the definition of improvement that we have received from the world, a definition that has been infinitely influenced by our genes, our environment, our education, our society etc. all of which, as explained above, are not under our control. When your life does not give you anything beyond itself, you have spent it. When you gain things that are not within the domain of the life itself in return, you have lived. Thus, if it is accepted that the possibility of spending your life in return for gains that are not a part of this mundane and uncertain existence exists, and when it is also admitted that we are not making such gains to any mentionable degree, the logical conclusion is that there is something wrong.

We have the gift of free will but we have not achieved the freedom required to exercise it. Therein lies the problem and in the realization of this lies the first step towards the solution, the first step towards becoming human.

I Don’t Have Time!

We don’t have time. In fact, a number of readers might even not read this to the end for the reason that they don’t have time.

We keep hearing things like time is short, time is money, we must not waste time, always be on time, there is a time for everything, the time is not right, and so on throughout our lives. As we move on in years, we hear ourselves uttering tragic remarks like, time went by too quickly, I didn’t notice how swiftly time passed, I have wasted too much time and the like. This, for all practical purposes, is an illusion.

To understand the illusory nature of this belief of not having enough time, we have to see how we measure time. The passing of day and night, coming and going of seasons, the physical and other changes brought upon us and those around us show us that time is passing. Even more so, with the invention of the clock in the Middle Ages and then its spread to all corners of the globe to the extent that life without it is inconceivable in the modern world, has divided time into even smaller portions. Where time was normally divided into dawn, noon, evening, sunset and night, i.e. five parts, we now are capable of dividing it into seconds, which means one day has 86,400 parts. Hence, even if nothing much changes, we still feel the passage of time and consequently also believe that we are wasting it.

To find a way to get out of this dilemma we have to stop concentrating on the temporary aspects of life and the universe. Our predominant concentration on the years, days, hours and minutes traps us in a circle where everything keeps changing so speedily that we sometimes fall under the extreme illusion that the speed of time is actually increasing. Here, religious and spiritual people can be of much help. Take a look at the lives of priests, yogis, Sufis and the like. You will never see them in a hurry, or gloomy for the reason that time is flying by and being wasted. The reason is that these people are predominantly concerned with things which are not bound by time, or in other words, are eternal. They concentrate on the existence and characteristics of God, the creation, cause and end of the world, the moral and ethical principles which define right and wrong on the criteria of absolute truth, on the messengers of God and their message, on the heavens and so on. All these things are either eternal or relate to such huge expanses of time compared to our own mundane existence that they seem eternal. They don’t change with time. An eye on these eternal realities from time to time takes the mind off all the speedily changing stuff and we realize that though time does pass, it does so only for a very limited, to the extent of being infinitesimal, proportion of things. Most realities do not change with time as much. And if the truly important things don’t change, time does not seem to go by that quickly at all.

Meditation and prayer routines are a great help in this realization. Even taking a little time out of the daily routine to concentrate on eternity completely changes the perspective with which we look at life. Just closing your mind to the daily businesses and sitting calmly does the trick. I can almost hear some readers thinking that they don’t have time to indulge in such activities. This response is another absurdity since all it means is that ‘we do not have the time to realize that we actually do have time’. Amusing if you just read it but tragic if you actually believe it.