DIFFERENT DRIVES-IV
By: Gowhar Geelani
'Understanding Unique Journey With Someone Special'
"Explain life to me," a sweet child aged between 7-8 asked me the other night. Be honest, fair and objective, he insisted. A perennial smile on child's face made me think that he's just like all other children. Children, who often ask tough questions with innocence. But, the content of the question asked and the bravado exhibited while asking it forced me to explain the meaning(s) of life to him in some detail. So, I started, explaining life to him; as I've understood it so far.
"Life is a meaningful journey. In many ways life is a unique experience as well, and at times, quite strange too. It throws up many a challenges, springs up quite a few surprises, some sweet and some not-so-sweet!
Life is a great teacher. It teaches us all the time, a learning curve, an opportunity to unlearn various things and actions, which we might have learnt and done respectively for some particular reasons and under some particular circumstances.
Along the way, we learn about the values of emotions; love, friendship, moments of hatred and acrimony. Life is about building bridges and making bonds, winning hearts; but the life could also mean breaking hearts.
At the outset, we learn to love without expecting anything in return, then we love having some expectations in return and also set up pre-conditions. Moving on, we also learn that expectations generally breed frustrations.
We appreciate beauty, honesty, truthfulness, ethics and other moral values, and then also learn about pragmatism. While we grow up, we start lecturing others on various do's and dont's, but pretty often come to this realization that what values we generally preach or teach; we ourselves, as a matter of routine, miserably fail to follow.
In life we come to know about two broad aspects: theory and practice. We gain knowledge and then try learning the values of understanding it too.
In our classrooms, as students, we're made to believe that the English letter 'C' stands for Christmas, Carnival and Cricket, but once we grow up; we learn in practice that the same letter generally refers to Corruption, Crime and Confusion. As teenagers, we think the letter 'P' refers to Pen, Poetry and Peacock, but life's subsequent stages teach us that the same letter stands for Poverty, Pain and Politics.
The journey of life is all about moments of joy and jubilation, victory and triumph, but also about sorrow and sadness, pain and agony. It is about straight-forwardness and openness, but also about hypocrisy and double game. Life is about pulverizing the poor, a mantra of 'might is right', state-sponsored terrorism, terrorism by non-state actors, and also about standards and double standards. It is about oppression, occupation and torture, and then about the diplomatic skills of justifying everything in the name of security, patriotism and national pride. It is about struggles of freedom - some successful and some failed attempts - by the powerless people seeking justice.
Life is a mystery, which we always endeavour to unravel. It is also an open book we prefer to hide from others. It is a journey to which we add various complexities along the way -by the very nature of being the 'master piece of creation' - ensuring that it ceases to remain simple. Life, at times, gives us many opportunites to stage comebacks, but most of the times, it doesn't provide us with a second chance even. Sometimes it is about luck, hardwork, mettle and talent, and at times, only about nepotism, favouritism and money matters. It is about choices and chances.
Journey of life is about dreams, waking up to realize those dreams, living them; but this journey could also mean the death of our dreams. It is about making promises, keeping them for no return, or, breaking them for petty gains. Life is about words, words we really mean, or, words that are purely cosmetic; where we're fully aware of the chasm and huge gulf between saying and doing. It is a journey about worldly pleasures, a process of enlightment, spiritual enrichment, and also a path of discovering God (the creator) within ourselves. It is about following different religions and then engaging ourselves in fights over issues of little or no significance.
Yet, life is all about destiny."
Visibly upbeat and glad with my somewhat simplistic explanation of the journey of life, the child gave me a broad smile. I returned the favour by smiling back. "I'm not disappointed with your explanation. You seem to be on the right path but a long way from really knowing and understanding the deep and hidden meaning(s) of life still. Keep learning from cradle to grave and exploring more and more, and remember, never ever give-up," the child said to me.
Before I could say 'thank you' to the child, he disappeared - all of a sudden- from the scene.
And I woke up from my dream. It was another morning, another day. Back on track, experiencing this journey of learning and exploration; back to the struggle of realizing my dreams to unravel the complex knots of this entity called LIFE.
But, to tell you honestly, I don't really know what life is all about; do you?
About the author: Gowhar Geelani is a Kashmiri journalist with more than 10 years of professional experience, both at the national and international level.
