Is There A Finish Line?

After the long and hot summer day, the weather was getting better in the evening so I decided to go out for a walk around the hilly and green part of the town as it is always comparatively cooler. During the walk, I saw an old man wearing a baseball hat, lost in his thoughts, walking slowly, as if somebody forced him to go out for a walk… perhaps his wife. Behind his hat, I saw an amazing embroidered statement that read, “There is no finish line!” I was really impressed by this statement and decided to save it on my phone and research about it later in the reflection of my life i.e. “Is there a finish line?”
It was the truth behind this statement that made me fall in love with it because we spend all our lives looking and searching for a finish line but after achieving each landmark or milestone, we find something new and more attractive to pursue, to achieve, and accomplish which results in another race and a new quest for a whole new finish line starts i.e. a never ending loop that only ends with death. It is this blind pursuit of wants and desires that forces us to forget or ignore the things that really matter in this life and the next i.e. the things without any attached finish line or glued victory stand, things that cannot be touched but felt, the things that are abstract and intangible, things like soul, love, conscience, ethics, morals, discipline, emotions, feelings, gratitude, happiness, fun, wisdom, patience, friendship, care, loyalty, etc.
As humans, we were designed and created to be eternal beings, hence soul was put in each one of us (except gingers 😛 j/k) because a body can die, but not the soul. Hence what really defines us is not the body but the soul. It is when the material takes over abstract, the body takes over the soul and the never ending pursuit of goals without any finish line takes over our lives, we start to feel unhappy, weak, unsatisfied, lonely, feeble, sad, angry, suicidal, fearful, etc. also known as suffering of soul.
So what really triggers us to forget the things that really matter and pushes us towards the never ending pursuit of happiness through finish lines and victory stands? The answer to this question is very simple i.e. A Single Glance…, It all starts with a single glance! The human soul is temptress and loves to look at beautiful forms, shapes, faces, etc. and our eyes are the guides of our heart, where the soul lives. The heart commands its guide (eyes) to go and look what is out there and explore, eyes obey and start sending back the images and messages of new and beautiful shapes and forms. These images and messages trigger our hearts to fall in love with the projections of those images, which then gives birth to desire or lust. The desire then leads to perpetual state of loss and anguish because not everything is for sale, not everything is achievable, and not everyone will love us back. This results in the dependence on the object/person and something that started with just a gaze or glance becomes a leech attached to the heart, clinging, melting, dissolving and eating away the body from outside and the soul from the inside. The love or lust eventually takes control of the body, mind and the soul and this is when boundaries, morals, and ethics lose their meanings and total obedience or worship is enjoyed by something material and mortal.
Hence the heart begins to worship something that it was not created to worship and the only thing to blame for all this mess and destruction is a single glance. After this state, the heart becomes powerless and is bound in chains of unstable and uncertain attachment, whereas before it used to be the master of everything. Now the heart cannot complain either, because it was the heart that ordered the eyes to the and look for new excitement in the first place. Waris Shah, a Punjabi poet talk about this state of a person as follows:

Ranjha ranjha kardi wey main, Aape ranjha hoyee
Ranjha ranjha saddo ni mainu, Heer na aakho koi

I have chanted Ranjha’s(Hero) name so much that I have become Ranjha myself
Call me Ranjha everyone, and Don’t call me Heer anymore

Heer (the heroin) says that I miss my love so much that I think about him all the time and his name is always on my tongue. I have chanted his name (Ranjha) so much that I have turned into Ranjha myself so now everyone should call her Ranjha instead of Heer.
All of us experience this battle between heart and soul almost everyday. For example attraction to the opposite sex is one of the examples, where a man (Edward VIII) decided to give up his kingdom and power for a woman. Or another man who decides to change the religion of his nation by creating a new church i.e. the church of England and all this is done to be with a women, etc. Same is true for money, gold and silver for which people cheat, bribe, kill, etc.
Hence the questions one should ask are: Is there a finish line, what exactly is true love, who deserves my love, and finally, who or what is my God or gods? is it desire, lust, power, money, man, woman, etc. or my heart is still in my control and is not corrupted and controlled by finish lines, gold, power, etc. also known as false gods. Everything I have written above, Iqbal said it in this beautiful verse:

Baraheemi Nazar Paida Magar Mushkil Se Hoti Hai
Hawas Chup Chup Ke Seenon Mein Bana Leti Hai Tasweerain

But it is difficult to gain the insight of Abraham (A.S.) because
Desire insidiously and deceptively paints pictures of false gods in our hearts.

The Perfect Plan, The Flawless Logic, & Is It Random – Part 2

The main event that inspired me to write this post today, is the asteroid 2012 DA14 that missed us by just 15 minutes last Friday. What 15 minutes means is that if the earth was 15 minutes ahead in its orbit around the sun, 2012 DA14 would have hit us and caused a lot of destruction. In other words, earth spent fifteen minutes on car insurance sometime in it’s past, delaying it in space-time continuum by ‘of course’ 15 minutes saving us from huge destruction, and all the credit goes to no one other than GEICO.
As it was the start of the universe and the infancy of the solar system, when the orbits, speed, mass, and other related variables were defined for both earth and the asteroid, it is not wrong to say that Friday’s close encounter was tightly knitted and linked to the events happened at the start of the universe. In other words, big bang that happened 13.77 billion years ago defined the outcome of Friday’s event. So even purely logically speaking, this is enough proof that Friday’s event was not random but well planned just like everything in the universe from dark energy to sub atomic particles, from a falling leaf to a blossoming flower, from abstract to material, including everything that happens to us in this life, from start to finish during our brief stay on earth, and beyond.
Just like earth/asteroid, a falling leaf in a windy autumn evening has a reason, has an effect on the overall universe and is perfectly connected to it’s surrounding and the whole universe. The falling leaf, the time at which it will fall, how it will fall, what will happen after the touchdown, and infinite other variables and possibilities are not random in any way and are part of a perfect plan.
For example let us consider a leaf fell from a tree in Mesopotamia around 5000 years ago. The leaf fell near a river bank and amazingly near a drowning mosquito taking it’s last breath. This falling leaf gives the mosquito a new hope, the survival skills kick in, it drags itself on the leaf. After regaining the strength, it flies by a tall building and sees a man standing on the top of the building. The mosquito, extremely hungry after the near death experience sits on the nose of this man for a drink. The man tries to kill the mosquito but fails and the mosquito in panic, enters in the nose of this man… and rest my friends is history. Same is true for the 32 years old conqueror who had plans to conquer the whole world, but malaria caused by a mosquito shattered all his dreams and aspirations.  
When mongols conquered Baghdad, their leader Hulagu Khan gathered some of the captured Muslim religious scholars and asked them, “where is your God now, ask Him to help you, ask Him to stop me!” while plying catch with a lemon on the horseback. One of the scholar stood up and said, “my God can finish you before this lemon comes back in your hand”. Right after the scholar finished his sentence, the lemon came down but Hulagu couldn’t catch it and it fell on the ground. His horse saw the lemon, got scared, jumped and started running. Hulagu lost his balance and fell on the ground while his foot stuck in the stirrup iron, and was dragged for a mile injuring him badly. It was same wounds and injuries eventually resulted in his death.  Hence a lemon, just a lemon was all it took; a very powerful tiny little lemon part of infinite universe, doing its part.
Now consider a dying star that lived for a billion years and is read for supernova. After supernova, this star turns into a black hole. A lot of energy and radiation is emitted during supernova and all these charged particles and radiation travels millions of light years and hits the skin of a human damaging the DNA of a single cell. This damage to the DNA mutates the cell and eventually making it cancerous. Hence an event that happened millions of light years ago affected somebody millions of light years away from ground zero, the point in space where supernova actually happened.
The world history and the universe itself is full of events and phenomenons depicting the complexity at which everything in the universe is connected and the elegance of this flawless and amazing design and all it’s components, variables and constants working together in perfect harmony to present this superb show, we call the universe. 
Even after all the technological and scientific advancements achieved by us today, our knowledge about ourselves (both individually and as a specie) and about our surroundings is extremely limited and incomplete. For example we have no way of explaining how subatomic particles interact with the universe as a whole at individual level. We cannot explain gravity and it’s source, value of pi is still unknown, etc. Yes we know that light bends due to gravity of (for example) the sun but we still cannot say anything about how the sun is affected by those photons of light or waves of light. Science today disregards much of the data and variables because their value is too small but I think small amount of something does not means it is not there or it should not be considered. So is it all random, is it all disconnected, is it all without purpose??? Isn’t it proof enough that we are tightly connected to the universe and everything in it i.e. you, me, them, it, those, him, her, and everything else!

The Perfect Plan, The Flawless Logic

In the middle of a hot summer day in Middle East, there was a construction worker fixing windows on the 8th floor of a building. Due to the hot weather or perhaps his negligence, he lost his balance and fell down on the hard surface of the sidewalk. The onlookers and his coworkers ran towards him to help but were not very optimistic for his survival. To their amazement, this guy who just fell from the 8th floor, stood up smiling and upon inspection they found out that there was not even a scratch on his body. Everyone was really happy to witness this miracle including the survivor himself and to show his gratitude, he offered free drinks and tea to his friends and all those who were there to celebrate his great escape from the claws of death. After getting the order list, he started walking towards the nearby convenient store to buy tea and drinks. He was super excited and jumpy because of his near death experience and was lost in his thoughts while crossing the road to go to the convenient store that was located on the other side of the road. When he reached the middle of the road, he was hit by a car and died there in the middle of the road. All his friends, who were celebrating his close encounter with death minutes ago, were shocked to see him dead 15 feet away from the spot where he fell 10 minutes ago and survived certain death. Just like all of us right now, they were also thinking the same thing, “why was he saved from the fall but not from the car accident, why was he given 10 more minutes to live instead of dying after the fall, etc.”
Similarly, it is said that prophet Idris or Enoch a.s had a friend among the angels and he asked the angel to take him to heavens so that he can talk to Allah to increase his life enabling him to do more good deeds. The angel then carried him on his wings and went up into the heaven. When they passed by the fourth heaven, they met the angel of death, who was descending. The angel told the angel of death what Idris had spoken to him earlier and the purpose of his journey. After hearing this, the angel of death said, “Where is Idris?” He replied, “he is upon my back.” The angle of death said, “How amazing, I was sent to seize his soul and was told to do it on the fourth heaven and I was thinking to myself that how can I seize Idris’s soul on the forth heaven when he is on the earth?” This event is described in Quran as follows, “And we raised him high in the heaven.” Yet again, just like the earlier example, a perfect plan executing events perfectly with ultimate precision can be seen where events only take place in correct order, at precise time and at the precise location.
If we look around we can see numerous events and examples that depict the same pattern and a flawless design at work. For example, when a red light on the traffic signal delays you by 20 seconds saving you from a huge pileup, or someone surviving a plane crash just because he overslept, or a soldier survives because the bullet missed his heart by few millimeters, or when we fail even with perfect preparation, or when smaller and weaker army wins a battle against the most powerful enemy defying all odds, etc. Hence there is a perfect plan, purpose and logic behind our birth, death, success, failure, and everything that happens to us or by us from the cradle to the grave.