Meant to Live

When I was young I wanted to be Remington Steele, no not because of Laura Holt but because he was a private detective...and well private detectives were just cool. Did you want to be Superman? I did, because Superman was just super. I never dreamed about becoming a computer scientist, did you ever dream of becoming an investment banker? Thought not.

Why are we allowed to dream? It seems that people never expect their dreams to come true any longer. The world jolts them to reality so hard that they start scrambling to join the rat race, to stay afloat while the ships sinks. Are we rats? Little rodents looking to just let life pass us by while we think from day to day how to avoid Tom's claws, because it is time to wake up and realize that this isn't the cartoon we're used to in which the mouse always has its way. Welcome to real life and Tom has real claws and guess what, even he gets tired of playing after a little while.

Were we meant to live for so much more? Do mice and men have second chances? So, my grown up side says great euphemisms like: Life is what you make it, All are equal in front of Allah and ofcourse, It's never too late. Well you know what? choice words to my grown up side. I know how to live life and be perfectly content with it but I wanted to be Remington Steele, dammit not Stephen Hawking. You wanted to be Superman and you're Clark Kent, they maybe alter egos and you may still have the heart of the Big S but lets face it, leap tall buildings with a single bound you do not.

I could just come right out and say it, you know, but i've always felt that too many writers insult their readers intelligence and I won't be guilty of doing the same. Maybe this is just a grown-ups tantrum, maybe I haven't even grown up or maybe you understand what i'm saying without having to say it out aloud. Quickly now, erase that thought from your mind because you don't want to tear away the protective layers around you and discover that no red and blue suit is adorned inside.

If everyone is super, no one is and that alone is a comforting thought because maybe i'm meant to be normal so that others can be supers. Important thing to remember is, the supers are human too...so why not me? Why not you? It's a game of chance with the question being that when your chance comes will you leap fealessly off the building or cower within the safety of normality?

Here's to the graveyard of dreams
Where they shall rest in unpeace
And here's to me, for I've shed the skin
Discovered no blue but plenty of red
I'm human and that's my crimson cape
I can fly, I'm not afraid

Remember that if you didn't find your blue underneath, Superman didn't really need it to fly. It was merely a costume. We can do without costumes...but I think i'll get myself a cape just to be safe.

Hallelujah

I wonder at times.

If the world is unhappy. You and I, Them and us; all of us. We just seem pre-occupied. This isn't a 'smell the breeze' message. I think anyone who's lived past their teenages (a proud mark that we all seem to be achieving these days) will willingly lay down more reasons than you can count as to why life is a cruel joke at times. How we seem to lose the things we care most about and then they seem trivial...but not quite. How, at times, no matter how hard you try, you just can't win and that serves to etch the reality of your misfortunes even more firmly in your mind. How we can't live the life we want, how our lives seem to be mapped out to an infinite horizon or the much more simple but just as effective cry of woe to the heavens; Why me?

If we've lost faith in God. Those three letters that we're supposed to love more than life, when was the last time you turned to him in earnest. In our actions do we show that we are muslims? Or is that a convenient term we use to define ourselves, just like many others ? It's not a question of practicing, what we've done is far worse...we've removed religion from our lives or at the very least given it a back seat to society, family and ourselves. Somehow, we've become more important than the world, our actions, their consequences, our heartbreaks, our lapses of madness and even our trivial non-securities all get nourished with more thought than something thats supposed to teach us how to live. I'm smiling at the irony, bitter-sweet as it is, that the answer to our problems can be laid before us and we'll refuse to see it. When the Book said that God can choose to blind us so that we cannot see the truth, I think I now understand what he meant.

If the game is already up. The game of life just like any other game needs a strong start. From there, you come to the crucial part the mid-game. Here the rules are yours for the making but the necessary caution is provided, anything changed is potentially permanant, there is no right answer; just your answer and you won't be allowed to create save-points which would help in fixing the mistakes we make. Then before you know it you're in the end-game where the only purpose is to live. Days passing with their usual suprises but even the dull can see the pattern. Because there will be a pattern, something that will come to define your life. Any game is only fun when it's outcome is still up for grabs, in the end-game of life we're reduced to being passive bystanders and the question really is: How do you know when you've reached it? And even more importantly: Would you be satisfied with you life now, if you're number was well and truly up?

I wonder at times, these times fly by
Much wondering leads me to light
I strain hard to see the answers it brings
And like life, I see that I have again misunderstood
For I stare not at my answers shining
But at the morning come with night yawning

Forty Plus Two

First mistake: Life has a purpose. It's the most natural mistake to make perhaps because we can't live without a purpose. There is a difference however between needing a purpose to live for and there being an inherent purpose to life. The former exists, the latter is a figment which we're fond of because without a greater purpose to live for we are forced to face the reality of our organic existence with a built-in timebomb ticking away with every breath.

We all need something to make us get back up when we've been knocked down, something bigger than us to believe in. We need that special someone to hold us tight when we're falling apart, we need the search for answers to find value in who we are, we need religion to bring peace, we need ethics and morals to differentiate ourselves from 'the others' and we need you to acknowledge all these needs as genuine otherwise it may very well prove to be the wind which blows our house of cards down. Because the great thing about doubts, they may be reasoned away but they always linger at the fringes defying our attempts to extinguish their existence. If it irks your mind it must be rationalized, if it disturbs than it has to be passed away as a freak occurence, if it depresses than it the silver lining has to be found.

What if life really had no purpose? What if all you had to do was live? What if you never found the answers you're looking for? What if everything didn't work out? And even if it did, would you be satisfied? I don't have the answers i'm looking for, at least not all of them and i'm beginning to understand that I may never have them. I'm also mildly surprised to realize that its alright because at least I still have all my questions. And then it becomes clear, maybe it isn't our answers that define us, maybe its the questions we dare to ask. If I can question the 'truths' of today then maybe someone else can rewrite them for tomorrow. Who knows maybe that someone else will be me because life isn't over yet, not just yet.

Stairway to Heaven

I've always found introductions boring, not because of the necessary formality at times, the rigid ordering of events, the procedure without which the event would cease to be itself. No, I dislike them because they represent a beginning, which is fine since everything must have a beginning but where as it can be gripping and at times even immersive, I think we'll all agree that the meat of the story comes a good deal later, after many page numbers have flicked by and almost always before you realize that you've read enough for one night (if there is such a thing).

So no introductions on my part, we're too far ahead in the story for me to bother with recaps. We've found the staircase, ascended it, found the Pearly Gates and taken whatever gifts we wished to take from the heaven of youth. It's time to start the descent back to earth, back to the real world. It's a much more interesting place, perhaps solely because time here is fleeting and before you know it heaven will come knocking on your door.

I believe this world is at the doorstep of many Angels, it presents many choices but there is one that shall come knocking for you regardless, a calling you will be challenged to ignore.