Once before I wrote about the beauty of life and had described how it is a natural part of our lives but most of us either take it for granted or do not appreciate it’s existence at all. Lately however, I have been told and coerced by my hurt and pain into considering, if perhaps the beauty of all such concepts are lies and self delusional fantasies as claimed by many self proclaimed realists. You see, I have always challenged such cynical skepticism and dismissive claims regarding the beauty of our lives. It’s simply because for the last 18 years the beauty of one of such belittled beliefs empowered me to respect and appreciate life’s ever-changing colors, to love and live their every single shade as an ever evolving beauty of my own character. As a result, it had been the heart and soul of my world. So let me tell you the story of this belief… And perhaps by its end we would know, if such a beauty truly exists or have I just been lying to myself and to you for all that time.
The story begins by a memory of an innocent question. I remember as a third grader, a student once asked my very first teacher mam Farah Salahudin (may she be blessed all the riches of this world and the hereafter) about how would I study without my eyes and hands. In those life changing moments, she returned with a question, “how many students are there in our class?”, the child replied,”34″. My teacher smilingly asked him again, “so how many pairs of eyes and hands are there?” The child replied confusedly, “68?”. My teacher said to all my class fellows and later my friends that I had as many eyes to see from and as many hands to hold onto the reality of this world. You see, she might just have been giving a moral lesson about friendship or saying a kind thing to make everybody feel special, but with our childish imagination, we took her words to heart and believed in them as an undeniable truth. Consequently, It became a principle, a drive, a worldview wherein my family and friends became my eyes and hands. What they saw brought light and color to my darkness. What they held true in their hands became the beauty of my life.
Only a handful of friends became so intimate that the boundaries between my belief and my reality blurred. And I, according to the rationalists of today, foolishly started considering them as a return of my sight and my hands, a reversal of fortune. A retreat of reality before the love and friendship of a few dear souls. Friends whose love and devotion became the beauty of my life.
However, for last two years or so, they have started closing their eyes; unknowingly turning me blind a second time. Some went so far in their loyalty is to tell me point-blank that I should stop making a fool of myself by believing in such nonsense. I think in their admirable honesty they believe it to be a weakness to try to cling on to such ideals. Nevertheless, no matter how sincere they were in their regard for my well-being, trust me when I say that this second blindness was far more agonizing than before. I bled but no-one could see the helplessness bleeding out of my eyes. I yelled in passive pain and cold fury but somehow my screams tumbled back like unshed tears into my heart, into those empty silences they left in their wake. I can’t help hearing accusations from my conscience in the returning echoes of those screams that this second blindness which I faced alone is a bitter fruit of my own folly. For none of those dear souls consciously agreed to shoulder the burden of my expectations in being my sight and to be my grip over the beauty of my life.
So far it would seem that perhaps I have stopped believing in the beauty of my life. However, I don’t wish u to take this wrong impression from my musings. Every life is indeed beautiful. It’s just that sometimes in the evolution of our characters and their respective beauty we need our friends and those we love deeply to be the unadorned iron-rod of truth to break open our too comfortably beautiful cages of fantasy. For beauty is a belief and when belief loses its conviction all that remains is a hollowed fantasy, a mirage in the deserts of our life, a wishful thinking and nothing more. True beauty, on the other hand, is in our enduring the trial of such realizations and in never giving up on our faith in the goodness of humanity. I understand that such a steadfast endurance require an unbelievable strength to which our logic stricken hearts are often blind. For it can only be found in Him and Him alone. None other than He, The Most Loving has the capacity to create and sustain, then subsequently, honor and value the beauty of our lives.
The real beauty of life to feel the emotions and withstand the test of luck, never giving up the belief that a possible win is always around the corner. This requires incredible strength of spirit, which often defies logic, but lives in the ardor of feelings. That’s why many players find this unwavering resilience in gambling, where every spin of the slot machine or spin of the roulette wheel can hide a win that can change everything. And this beauty of risk that we have in the game constantly attracts to this world of excitement and attempts.
In essence, it was essential for me to experience my eyes being gouged out and my fingers broken by my friends to realize that the soul of every life’s beauty is his love and nothing else. The bonds we cherish are merely different manifestations of the same love He has for each and every one of us individually. Let us believe in His all healing love! Let it heal all our wounds, may they be of a physical loss like my sight and hands, or an emotional turmoil like being bereft of a once dear friend! Let all our sufferings dissolve into the warmth of His love, the beauty of all existence!
“My servant continues to draw near to Me with Nawafal so that I shall love him. When I love him I am his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he holds and his foot with which he walks. Were he to ask [something] of Me, I would surely give it to him, and were he to ask Me for refuge, I would surely grant him it. I do not hesitate about anything as much as I hesitate about [seizing] the soul of My faithful servant: he hates death and I hate hurting him.”
Related by Al-Bukhari
Oh Allah we implore you for your love, and the love of those who love you, and those deeds which teach your love, oh Allah make your love dearer to us than our lives, all our family and friends, our wealth and possessions, dearer even than cold water in the barren heat of a desert land, Amin.