Thursday, April 29, 2010

Your North Star


They call it the North Star – the core purpose of someone`s existence. When they asked me what mine was, I went blank…blank… blank. As if the memory address supposed to be holding the data had never been touched. Was my knowledge about myself this miserable? How could I not know something as basic as this about myself? I thought I was a fool. But if I was, I certainly was not the only one around. They asked the same to everyone in the hall – at least a 50 people if not more. Nobody knew!
It proved that human beings indeed are the biggest fools, unless of course they wake up from the slumber and understand the meaning of their existence. To realise why we relentlessly scamper around from morning to night every day, requires a good bit of brain mass. When someone does not know why he is living, he sets up goals – short term, long term, extra long term – closes his senses and runs mad after them. Goals finally get fulfilled, and when they do you set new goals until one day you realise that you have consumed your whole life pursuing useless goals that have left you with no returns to talk about. You have lived a happy and peaceful and satisfactory life. Great. But that was certainly not everything you wanted from it, for all that is gone as your life is nearing a close. What you have earned from the rigorous routines of our life is next to nothing.

When the flamboyant Pakistani opener Saeed Anwar lost his daughter, with her he lost a reason to live. He did not want money and fame and riches, because he already had everything. He soon found a better reason to live, the one that can only get stronger with every inevitable human loss, a goal that never lets you down. Something that alone can be your true North Star – the one that leads you to your creator and opens the gates of heavens for you, for the whole of eternity. The heavens where you need no more goals, no more reasons; where you stare at a scene for years together and never get tired!