The Young Man

He couldn't understand the reason behind his incapacitation to see anything clearly. He had other important things to make sense of too, but the disabled sight was the biggest of his concerns at that instant. It was nearly 2 o clock in the night, and he was battering his eyes again and again, just like having to restart a machine occasionally when it gets old and rusty. He was a young, strong man of 73 years of age; young because he had this vehement of doing whatever that pleased him, and strong because he was standing straight after every fraction of castigation that life put him through. But, apart from his poetic youth and plausible strength, his mechanism was still nearing the days of inevitable expiry. His bones were becoming weaker, and his intelligence obscure. His old, exhausted mind was getting insatiable of keeping up with his youthful heart. But for now, he was sprawling on his bed, trying to find a way to get the ability to see properly. And, just then, he remembered that he wasn't accommodated by the technical support he needed to be able to see things right, he wasn't wearing his glasses. This sleepy remembrance was another drawback of his increasing age. But, then again, something is better than nothing, so he wasn't angry or annoyed about it. He opened his drawer situated on the left side of his bed, took out his metal-framed Zeiss and put them on. He could see now. He could see everything clear and vivid.

The name of this person was William Ron Locke. He graduated from a moderate university in the United States, spent a large part of his career serving the research department of the same university with his proficience at mathematics, and adopted teaching as his profession in the later years. 40 years ago, when he was 33 years old, he developed a mathematical theorem related to quantum physics. He believed that his theorem was correct and it could extend the horizon of quantum physics to a modern proximity. So, he started working day and night to find the proof to support his claim. It’s obvious that he was an ambitious man, but more than that, he was someone with a stubborn belief of never giving up on anything. And an example of his determination could be that now, even after 40 years of restless work and devotion and getting abandoned by his wife and children, he was still trying to find the one expression that could complete his theorem. And tonight, he had an idea related to his project while he was dreaming, so he woke up to make another attempt to succeed in this challenge.

After wearing the glasses on his chafed up eyes, he stood up from his bed and walked towards the switchboard to turn on the light. But, just then, he noticed that there was a hailstorm outside and the electricity was not running. So, he decisively lit up the oil lamp placed on one corner of his study table. The intensity of the light coming out of the lamp wasn't something that could be compared to the light of a bulb, but it did the job for him. After lighting the lamp, he slowly sat on the chair, picked up his pen and started writing some sort of a function on a page. He was forming the one function that was required to complete his equation. And, for the first time in these forty years, he didn't have to cut anything and rewrite the corrected version of it. Because, it was the first time that he was doing everything right. Every mathematical character in the function seemed like it was meant to be there. Everything was perfect. And just after an hour, when he derived that function and put it in the equation, the joyful molecules of water appeared in his eyes. It had been a long time since he last cried, and he could not control it tonight. His hard work had paid off. He had just developed the most advanced theorem of his time. His life was complete, and his aim achieved. And, it was the first time he felt that he had aged, not because he just got his life time achievement, but because he had no other goal to score anymore.


Having an aim or an objective is one of the most important things in life. It makes you productive, efficient and alive. And when aimless, you’re not doing much for yourself or for the people around you.

Mr.William Locke's pursuit got him several awards and admiration. He died of a natural cause, just 5 months after the acceptance of his theorem.

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

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.