A quiet mind once asked, “What is pain?” “A relentless torrent of bitter thoughts that slowly burdens your will and corrupts your faith, till you are left fragile as an autumn leaf and lost as a bubble in the foaming sea.” answered a weary heart. “Nay dearest kin”, thought a forlorn soul, “true agony belittles such a loss of resolve and conviction. For it makes you lose your grip on reality as you are misunderstood and abandoned by those whose love becomes your sustenance. When honest affection is forced to become an innocent affectation, when pure love is feared for ever becoming a consuming lust, when the joy of a trusty companionship is buried beneath a million broken pieces of a once adored friendship, an unbreakable bond; It is then that one begins to understand pain and yearns to break free from such a torturous isolation. Thus are we humans ever trapped in an endless cycle of trial and torment we call life.” “Hark: noble child of Adam and Eve peace is upon them both; what truly distraught a human soul is his or her ignorant heedlessness to the ever loving voice of his or her Master. For it eventually makes you a ship without an anchor in the stormy seas of this world, a lost wanderer in the scorching wilderness of your empty, self-centered desires and disappointments, pains and pleasures.” Corrected a whispering conscience.
Dear friends, our lives revolve around a purpose. Each and every one of us has to walk through our own trial of knives to understand our individual rolls in the great unfolding of this universe. For some pain becomes a torturer who mercilessly consumes their faith, crushes their will, and burns their resolve to ashes. Others find it to be a jailor who imprisons them in self-pity till they begin to rot in their misery and reek of defeat and despair. Yet there are those noble souls whose pains and sufferings are a guide to self-discovery, a teacher of gratitude and wisdom with which they learn to see and appreciate the true beauty of their lives. They understand pain to be a revealer of loyal relations and their true potential to contribute in one’s evolution. They know it to be a test of their faith in Divine Wisdom and of their strength to endure, and trust His Love, The Love of their Master Allah for them. It was in my eighth grade that He blest me an opportunity to meet one of such noble servants of Him.
In the course of his job, my father often visited the war affected people. He would visit the wounded soldiers and officers in hospitals and would arrange funerals for the martyrs. During my summer vacations, once he asked me to accompany him to meet a Captain who had sustained serious injuries and had lost both of his feet in the cause of his duty. Brimming with passion for Pak Army and with an ambition to join it one day, I went with him to C.M.H and met a person who greatly changed my way of thinking.
When we entered his room we were met by his parents and his wife. All three of them had tears in their eyes. As we embraced I could feel them falling on my face. Their wetness dampened my childish heart and made me feel a tiniest bit of the helplessness they were suffering from. After the initial exchange of greetings they didn’t speak a single word and just stood there, silently crying. Their grief was so palpable that even without a single word from them I could still feel the overwhelming sadness of their anguish and the intense bitterness of their pain. Yet I could not help noticing how it connected them to each other in their suffering. Grieving for the same loss, together, as though parts of a single entity. Nevertheless the officer himself welcomed us without any trace of his troubles on his face. In fact he met us with such calm and peaceful countenance that his mere smile abated the choking pain I was feeling after meeting his family. His voice carried such a dignified air of tranquility that it was hard to believe, he had just lost his feet. I being my tactless self wondered this aloud to him. At which he laughed and told us his story.
The only son of his parents and newly married Captain Ahmed was far from his family, in a war zone, in Waziristan where, in middle of a Cordon and search operation he spotted a mine which was overlooked by a soldier of his. He shouted a warning to him but the soldier already had his foot on the bomb. With a rushing sense of protection for his men, Captain Ahmed ran to save him but in his urgency stepped on yet another mine. As a result two parallel mines exploded at once. His soldier half dead and he himself bleeding severely, he dragged his man with him and crawled for nearly an hour before he could find his comrades. After which he lost consciousness. When he came around again, he was told that the explosion mostly tore away at the lower half of his body and that he had two amputated stumps where his feet use to be. Here the Captain finished.
After a brief silence, he said that there were three things that together became the source of his motivation. Firstly he was proud of his nobility as an army officer. Allah the Most merciful had blessed him this opportunity to bring to surface his leadership qualities. He now knew that when it came to protect his nation, his men, and his family he wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to sacrifice anything for them, may it be his very life. Secondly the uniqueness of his contribution to his nation; not many men had the honor of being marked as a proud Pakistani. With a twinkle in his eyes, he told me, he now had a story to tell his children. He would tell them how he gave up his feet so that they could walk. How he embraced a lifetime’s worth stumbling to see the smooth and stable lives of his fellow Pakistanis. Finally and most importantly he said that this great event of his life had made him realize something; that this world is indeed a place of tests and trials. These were his words “each and every blessing, including our bodies is actually His Emaanah to us, to be used according to His Will and the way of His Beloved Prophet Muhammad P.B.U.H. His Sunnah is to take it away at once when we die but we forget that He is the Owner. If He decides to take it gradually, one piece after another; who are we to question His Judgment or His Authority?” Afterwards whenever I recited some verses of the Glorious Quran, I always saw him in my head as the man who practically illustrated the faith and steadfastness mentioned by our Creator.
“No calamity befalls save by leave of Allah, and he who believes in Allah, He guides his heart, and Allah is The knower of all things” Surah Taghabun.
“Surely, those who have declared: ‘Our Lord is Allah’, then remained steadfast, on them the angels will descend, saying, ‘Do not fear, and do not grieve; and be happy with the good news of the Jannah (Paradise) that you had been promised. We have been your friends in the worldly life, and (will remain as such) in the Hereafter. And for you here is whatever your soul’s desire, and for you here is whatever you call for, a gift of welcome from the Most-forgiving, the Very-Merciful’ “. Surah Hameem-Sajda
In essence, we often come across certain milestones in our lives whereupon we are offered a choice: to change the course of our lives or to be changed by its flow, to evolve under the warmth of His Light and Love, by absorbing the scorching heat of our trials or to be burnt by the raging inferno of our sufferings; broken by the consuming darkness of our doubts and disappointments. So you see, our choices have the power to make us the noble sons and daughters of Adam P.B.U.H. or to break us and let us betray our ancestry. May He enable us to make the right choice in every passing moment of our lives. Ameen.