Unquestioned Answers!

Enlightened people (and nations) spend their lives pursuing unanswered questions. They search and research, form theories, conduct experiments and leave their findings for future generations. However, doomed people (and nations) spend their lives following unquestioned answers. They are told something by their elders, or the media, or they read something, and start blindly following these things without questioning them.

Look at our lives. Questioning religion, questioning our parents, questioning our habits are all forbidden, to the extent of being labeled sins. We have become so accustomed to avoiding questions that we just cannot bring ourselves to question anything without feeling extremely scared and uncomfortable. We have lost the ability to rationalize things or to try and make some sense out of what is going on.

For instance, how many of the love birds who celebrated Valentine’s day with great fervour, have any clue about what this day is about? I am not against the occasion. It is good that people, at least for one day, concentrate on spreading love and exchanging gifts instead of the usual depressing stuff. But I do feel that if we follow something with the enthusiasm seen on this day, at least we should know what we are celebrating.

One of the legends I came across while trying to find out about the day has this explanation for its origins. “the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an effort to 'christianize' celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival. In ancient Rome, February was the official beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. Houses were ritually cleansed by sweeping them out and then sprinkling salt and a type of wheat called spelt throughout their interiors. Lupercalia, which began at the ides of February, February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at the sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would then sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. The boys then sliced the goat's hide into strips, dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both women and fields of crops with the goathide strips. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed being touched with the hides because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage. Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine's Day around 498 A.D.” (Source : www.history.com/content/valentine/history-of-valentine-s-day)

By the way, an internet site, while explaining the history of Valentine’s Day, has this to say about its celebration in the eastern world “Thanks to a concentrated marketing effort, Valentine's Day is celebrated in some Asian countries”

Today is the Urs of Hazrat Ali Hajvery (popularly known as Data Ganj Bukhsh). He was undoubtedly one of the greatest saints of this area. Very few people are aware of this occasion, (hardly anyone outside Lahore and its adjoining areas knows about it).

I see people celebrating the death anniversary of St. Valentine with a fanatic zeal and I see the same people not even noticing Data Sahib’s Urs and I wonder. Who are we? Pakistanis, Muslims, nobodys? Who? I also wonder how we can ever judge our direction, our goals or the standards of good and bad, when we just follow, without thinking. Adam and Eve were tricked by the Devil who used all his guile. We, on the other hand don’t need any elaborate scheme, all someone requires to do in order to destroy us is to simply tell us to plan our own destruction, and, at the most, combine it with a good marketing strategy. We will just follow, and not question.