Go Ignorance Go!

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” Lewis Carrol (Alice in Wonderland).

That is our dilemma. Spending all our energies in removing obstacles, we cannot seem to take time out to decide what we want to use the obstacle free path for. During the first half of the twentieth century, the Muslims of India showed unbelievable courage in standing up against the Hindus and the British (or at least that is what we were taught) to get a separate homeland for themselves. They wanted to remove the British and the Hindus from their path. Once that was achieved, we had no clue where to go on the path we had cleared. Hence, after more than sixty years of independence, we are still not clear about whether we want democracy or not, and if we do, should we have a parliamentary or a presidential system, are we an Islamic or a secular state, and so on.

We are always charged up, ready to move, without any idea of our destination. Just look at our behaviour on the roads. If some poor soul takes two seconds to move his car after the light has turned green, he is bombarded with all kinds of terrifying honking sounds from all sides. In fact, have you ever experienced the pain of having to stop at a red light on a road with no traffic except a car right behind you? It feels like you are the dumbest, most laid back person in the world, and that nothing could waste more time than obeying the law. You get an extremely irritating barrage of continuous honking until you move and give the person behind you a clear path to ………. well, probably to a place where he would be even more useless than on the traffic signal.

Moving to the larger picture, all of us were and still are witnesses to (and some of us are a part of) the country-wide movement initiated by lawyers and joined by a large part of the civil society and political parties. The movement, at its peak, swept all other issues aside and was the only news worth discussing in the country. Slogans of “Go Musharraf Go!” echoed from all corners of Pakistan. A huge majority of us joined in the chorus, believing that Gen. Musharraf was the cause of all trouble and once he went and democracy returned, all our problems would be solved (the exact nature of those problems was always unclear, the only thing that mattered was that there were problems and they had to be solved).

And Musharraf did go eventually, handing over the government to democratically elected representatives of the people led by Mr. Asif Ali Zardari, the new President of Pakistan. And today news report in the leading dailies of the country tell us that emotionally charged lawyers chanted slogans of “Go Zardari Go!” during a rally in Karachi. I have little doubt that this slogan will soon spread all over the country and will probably continue till the President actually goes. Then we just have to wait for the new President so that the slogan can be changed accordingly. I do not want to criticize the lawyers at all. They are doing a tremendous job and have proved to be the only professional community that has the strength and the numbers to start and maintain such a movement for such a long period, as well as the courage and the will to actually put their numbers to use. I just want to do my bit in helping us realize that we have to be absolutely clear about our objectives and the place we want to get to before we can even hope to succeed.

I have often wondered why we show such urgency in removing things that delay us, so that we can get to our destination instantly, only to show the same urgency there to get to the next place. I am no psychologist or sociologist but I think this may be due to a vicious circle of ignorance. We don’t know what we want from our lives, as a result of which we are uncomfortable with our lives and ourselves, as a result of which we want to get out of any and every situation we are in and get to the next place hoping that it might be better, as a result of which we are always in a hurry, as a result of which we have no time to think, as a result of which we don’t know what we want from our lives, as a result of which we are uncomfortable and so on. The most logical way of breaking this cycle of silliness is to stop and think. What do we want? Only after we have the answer to this question, will we be able to differentiate between assets and obstacles. Only then will we be able to decide what should be removed. Only then can we concentrate our efforts on the right job. And only then will we have a clear concept of our next step once the obstacle is removed.

As long as all this is ignored, we will continue to be engulfed in the most time consuming and most worthless of pursuits and the world will continue to look at us with a mixture of amusement and mistrust.

I have a friend who is continuously complaining that life has not dealt him a fair hand. He always has a big problem on his mind, which, he believes, is the cause of all the tension in his life. I have often heard him say that if only this particular problem is solved, he will have no further problems. And those problems do get solved, only to be replaced by others of equal significance and he repeats the same belief about them. His salvation also lies in understanding what he wants rather than concentrating only on why he can’t get it.

Let’s see who learns first. My friend or my nation.