“From the moment of your birth. A ladder was placed before you. To help you escape.”
Rumi
Isn’t it amazing how a tiny, fragile, lifeless object like a seed grows into a large tree, a smiling flower and food bearing plant? How a small roe develops into mighty whales. How microscopic sperm transforms into a pharaoh. How an egg begins to fly. The event of birth is complex yet brief. On the other hand, the process of growing up is long and hard. It takes years, storms, long nights, harsh days, and weathers of all kinds to become something as important as a life, especially in its prime. Life is temporary and it ends at any given point. Living under the constant shadow of death is the essence of living. Life knows that across the Sahara of existence dwells death yet it goes through the desert on the back of the camel of hope, oasis of faith, and dunes of determination. The umbrella of science and technology comes handy under the scorching sun. Growing up in itself is a journey. A travel in time, an intergalactic spiritual voyage. The travel of life is non stop and it ends in a valley of the unknown.
Today I am on the move, going to an intercontinental destination. Each path has its charms and perils. Nowadays the fear of the pandemic is presiding and most passengers are abiding by COVID-19 protocols. So are the personnel working at the airports. However the presence of an imminent threat to life is increasingly dominant than usual. Air travel already is a freaky experience and flying during pandemic makes it even worse. Lahore is a city that is known for its dense fog, if not for smog, especially in the month of December. However Mother Earth does provide variety in weather & time. Fog usually disturbs flight schedules at Lahore airport. Even most veteren pilots don’t trust fog in Lahore; they wait for better visibility. Lahorites eat a lot of meat that why vultures rule skies in this town. They actually use blasts to scare them away from runway areas on normal days. Today my flight is having the same experiment.
I am continually growing up sitting in a passenger lounge at this airport. People in masks look like some other species. I am familiar with the building and flight delays at this airport but this is a new kind of journey with new kinds of passengers. Other than their faces people do look like us humans. I wonder when humans mature a bit more in science and technology, would the travel to other planets be the same. I know one thing for sure that cross universal passengers will cover their faces in some kind of hi-tech masks. The masks that we are wearing today may be the trailer of such future journeys and living on other planets.
It is not only life that ends, time also expires. The ongoing year will enter the dead pages of history soon and a new year will ask life to follow another calendar. The new cycle of the days, months and quarters shall bring renewed hopes again. In the freezing cold around most of the globe one year is buried and another begins.
Maturing, aging, and developing makes life wear out at a certain stage. Sweating at the gym and struggling at school is one kind of growth. Fumbling under the influence and staying behind bars is another. One is a respectable way of rising up, the latter is a mess though both are travels of their own kinds. The Inmate's future suffers for the deeds of his past whereas the druggie drains his present for the hallucinations about the future. Like spacecrafts, life needs ignition in order to launch itself like a rocket in the cosmos of existence.
Life surely has a short span but collectively it is as eternal as anything else. This is the only phenomenon in the entire universe that knows how to renew and refresh itself. A dead star becomes dust, sometimes gas and stays so but life keeps reappearing. A flower blooms each season. A crop grows again and again. Life is a great factory of recycling. Before death approaches, life breeds more life thus the cycle continues. The wheel of life rotates regularly but the wind of death only cleanses the rotten part. Well, if you sit for a while next to a blooming rose, near a ripe apple, in the company of a red tomato, you will realize that the immense beauty of such calibre can only exist briefly. Fruit ripes to be eaten, flower blooms to shed scent, the vegetable grows to feed. Simultaneously they all come to life to recycle the plant they grow on. They exist to ensure the eternity of their species. Can something else be more beautiful than this? How it ripes to be reborn. How it guarantees life, its existence, through death. Life hibernates inside a seed while earth celebrates its death. And love is the veil that life wears to cover it’s return. The metamorphosis of life is the real language of rhymes of love that nature composes.
“What hurts you blesses you.”
Rumi
What a flight it is. What a journey life disembarks on. All of us live on, in the lap of mortality yet celebrate our being. We all are grateful to nature for receiving this miraculous gift, though briefly. I came into being. I existed. I lived. I played golf. I ate, saw, spoke, laughed, cried, and had offsprings. My children and their offspring are my way of living eternally. That’s how I defeat death.
Credits
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By
Ahsan Jamil
Golfer, Blogger, Entrepreneur, Author, Poet, Wanderer, photographer
Email: Golfaij@gmail.com
Website: Golfaij.com