A Quest for Answers

There are many ways to define our unseemingly flimsy existence, many ways to give it meaning. It's like a sculpture, which we've framed with what we've done, and which we're still carving with what we're doing. A morsel of our existence is based on our past. That small fragment, that personal almanac of our good and bad memories is like a virus that is running inside our veins along with the reddish, thicker molecules. All those memories remind us of what we used to be, and we think about them every now and then, one memory at a time, hoping the ones we choose to remember don't betray or trap us. For it is the cruel irony of life that we are destined to hold the good with the bad, the right with the wrong. This is what defines us, what makes us weak and strong at the same instant, what makes us human, what we must admire, what we must hold on to for a while. But, I believe that we should also have the ability to move on, the wisdom to see the glimpses between the cracks of right and wrong, where light streams through, we must understand that the larger portion of our existence depends on what we have yet to do, and we must strive to make sure that whatever we do, does good to this world. 

At some point in time, we all want to solve the mysteries of life. So, we start asking questions to understand what we're dealing with. Answers to the questions hold a lot of meaning to us, they can give us the peace we've been searching for so long. But at times, questions are more powerful than answers, and the most difficult of those to answer is "Why?”. "Why is this happening? Why can't I do anything? Why am I so helpless?" These questions become nightmares to challenge our sleep. Still, we keep on thinking about them, because we believe that there is a reason for everything to happen, and if somehow we manage to find those reasons, we might get the ability to change the course of things. But, we fail to realize that some things don't depend on a reason to occur, they just happen to take us closer to our destiny. We don't understand the system by which destiny works. We’re not sure whether we choose our destiny or does it choose us? So, we don't stop until this search for answers extracts every element of strength out of us. And, when we're defeated in this unexpectedly "big" quest for answers, some of us head towards a tiring, more demanding search for "self". "Who am I? Why did God create me? What do I have to contribute to this world?" Another set of questions, harder to answer. And, in this ongoing search, there are these days when we find something genuinely new. Something obscure, cloaked. Something that we had no idea was there. And on that day of self-discovery, a question remains: "What kind of person are we? Does the good or the bad inside us win at the end of the day?" 

So basically, in all this investigation, our prime objective is to achieve the intelligence that enables us to define ourselves, the purpose of our lives and our destiny. No wonder, only a few of us get to the end of this journey, and a very minute fraction of us actually likes what we find. It might take a very long time, but at least we get the satisfaction that we know what we have to do with ourselves and our lives.

Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

~ The idea of maturity does not revolve around the dexterity to talk about big things. Maturity comes with experiences, learning and observations. Maturity is the state in which you're able to understand small things.

~ I like the notion of dreaming. Dreams seem to me like an exquisite edifice that has captivated all the strength of the universe. They are the places where I can do anything, where I can be anyone. And whenever I'm dreaming, I just don't want to wake up, because everytime it seems like I'm the main character of one of Christopher Nolan's directions, and I'm about to deliver the best dialogue of the movie. 

She Decides to Keep On Walking

A considerable number of people are walking around her, but she can't see any of them. All these buildings and structures seem like a large obscure edifice that's captivated all the haunting memories from her past. It is the same path that she takes to get back home every night after work, but it feels so strange. She has passed Uncle Sam's restaurant, is walking by Aunt Rose’s flower shop, and is about to cross Mia's laundry. These are the places that she sees every night on the way back home, but they don't look the same tonight. She's thinking that she has made a wrong turn. She has made many wrong decisions in her life, so technically, she is capable of making a wrong turn. But no, she is on the right dimension. She's exhausted, devastated. She's too tired to walk this road for another hundred steps to reach her home. She doesn't want to go home, not tonight. She wants to go far away, where her past can't chase her, she wants to walk away from it all. She has been through a lot of bad in her life, a lot that can shatter anyone's existence, a lot that can break anyone into a thousand uneven pieces. She can't even decide what her worst memory is. Was it the day when she found out that her father had another son from the woman he fell in love with after his marriage? Was it the day when her boyfriend left her all alone, because he had a mere notion that she was having an affair with another man while he was away? Or the day when her mother died in a plane crash? But, what difference does it make? At the end of the day, all these incidents brought an irrevocable change in her life, like a river suddenly reversing the direction of it’s flow, suddenly running uphill. All these happenings made her entire life seem like a fiction.

For now, all she wants is relief. She wants to go, lay down on the top of the tallest building in New Orleans, and look at the clear summer sky. She wants to lay there and feel that slight breeze that runs down your entire body, making your soul shiver and sense the incredible strength that it possesses. She wants to lay there naked, under an imposing dome of stars, unaware of whatever’s happening on the roads 20 flights down. She has always believed that it is not important in life to be strong but to feel strong. And all she wants now, is to feel free. She wants to believe that this is God's place all around her, and joy is in everything inside it. But, she can't do any of it. She has to get back to her hypocrite father who is laying numb on his death bed, waiting for her to feed him dinner. So, she decides to keep on walking.

She can't walk away from her life, despite all the darkness inside it. She can’t walk away from the truth. So, she decides to keep on walking, holding on to the hope that someday.. She will find the relief.

Hi There!
Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

~  When you start walking in the right direction with the hope that you'll reach the place where you want to be, but you don't get there. That is what I call destiny.

The NeverEnding Road

~  He has his hands inside his pockets, he's smoking a cigarette, trying to mush it with the pressure he has been forcing through his lips, and he's walking a road around the place where he used to live when he was young. But, he can’t remember it. He has spent a large fraction of his childhood in that vicinity, yet none of it seems familiar. This boulevard goes straight to somewhere he has forgotten, but he knows that he’ll end up in a nice place, because he has always believed that beautiful dimensions lead to better destinations.

On each side of the road, there are a few cemented structures with too many windows to open halfway each morning and to close halfway each night, there are lots of elms planted on a systematic distance from each other, which have their branches breaking the sun into graceful shafts of light. And, it’s going to be winter soon, so the leaves have started betraying their tenants and falling on the road making a rustling, dark green, carpeted path for him to walk on. And, the slightly cool breeze running with a considerably fast velocity is toppling the leaves and covering his footsteps as he moves on. The people that are moving around him are all strangers, he hasn't seen any of them before, or maybe he has but he doesn't remember, but he knows that they are all nice people who won't hurt him. All of this seems like an exquisite projection of his mind, a fascinating figment of his brain. Apart from that pain somewhere around the right side of his ribs, everything is so angelic and alluring.  He feels like he’s undergoing some catharsis, like he’s going to be pure when he gets to the end of the road, born all over again, given another chance to relive his life. But, he doesn't know where the road is taking him. He doesn't even know about the genesis of this walk. 

That’s the thing about dreams. You may know what you’re doing, you may think you know where you’re going, but you don’t remember where you started from. 

And, this is his reality. He is in a dream, he has been there since the last 4 years. He has been walking that road for 4 years, but it hasn't ended. He has been smoking that cigarette and trying to mush it for the past 49 months, but it is still the same. And, that pain in his ribs, it is because of the bullet that went through his body, crushing and cracking the regions of his ribs it hit. He was waiting for his train near the Hoboken Terminal four years and a month ago, when he got shot by a robber after he refused to give away his possessions, and since then he is in coma. He always wanted to dream before all this, he wanted to feel the ability to do almost anything, but he couldn't. And now, he’s stuck in one for a very long time, and the only way to get out of there is to wake up, but he can’t. This road is the boulevard that goes to the firmament of heavens, and the day it ends, he will never be able to wake up, he will die and depart to the afterlife. But, it won’t affect him, he is happy to walk this road till the end, because it is by far the most beautiful one he has traveled. And, he is hoping to see the one person among all these strangers, that he has loved the most, he is hoping to meet her again and walk the rest of the path with her. It is this hope that has kept him walking for four years now, and the day he gives up, he’ll wake up and get back into his body. But, he probably won’t give up, because he loves that woman, and love is the strongest of all feelings. So probably, he will see her, the dream will end, and he will be in heaven.

Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The image used was originally posted by Todd Binger on flickr.
  by  Todd Binger