“Like a shadow,
I am and I am not.”
Rumi
Light creates shadows and trees love to provide them. A fusion of light and darkness makes our world come alive. Not all shadows are made by the light, some grow in our own minds without any light. A few shadows are smaller than the object and others are taller. It’s all a game of here-and-there by the sun. Some shadows make history, others keep the land barren. Some shadows are merely mirages while others become the shelters to new realities. Some shadows are cast on minds, others keep souls from the sun. Some shed blessings and a few become inauspicious. The true magic springs when we climb out of our shadows and rival the sun although it is easier said than done.
I have seen people whose own shadow refuses to follow them. And those who are smaller than their own images. Today, at the second green, I met my own shadow that was way taller than I was. It captured my imagination with hilarious hounds of hallucinations. I was blissfully scared, and I skillfully concealed it. Just like a hand covers the eyes in the sun. Perhaps, I had no reason to fear as it was nothing but an expression of my silent spear. Everything I am and could be, visualized as a mystery.
In the shadow of research, scientists have discovered a lot about the human brain and body as a whole. Surgical advances are miraculously astonishing. Singularity is almost at hand. Yet man’s moral character is deteriorating. We are getting smaller, even compared to our shadows. And our rapacity has already climbed over the capacity. The Information Age further fuels the craving of wealth and riches. The flow of media and availability of citizen journalism deeply explores the lifestyle and eroded personalities of the celebrities and leaders in different walks of life. Our outlooks are perfumed and branded, but our inner sanctums are punctured and disoriented by greed and selfishness. Such is the deluded nature of man, nothing but a nice sheet over a piece of ice. The opulence becomes the only criteria of success. Our desires and methods of grubbing money finds its validity in Niccolò Machiavelli’s words, “the end justifies the means”. We should try to focus on the journey before the destination as it is a hurry where we find damnation while mercy is where we find emancipation.
Nice attire, designer homes, branded phones, high end cars are supposed to make a person ‘great’. Truthfulness, honesty, bravery, etc are of no value if you are poor.
Shadow of the affluence is much longer than the dents in character. The shade of money covers the blades of tyranny. The closet full of gold hides most misdeeds. In the shadow of progress, people wage wars for diamond mines and oil wells that make millions homeless. In the shadow of the aid, the same war mongers simultaneously fund peace rallies and support humanitarian organizations that work for victims of such wars. What a great moralistic world. In the vale of public interest companies vacate centuries old villages to put up modern housing plazas. In the shadow of progress the aim is profit, homes or homeless don’t matter. In the shadow of the government of the people, by the people and for the people, we elect people who raise millions for election campaigns. While thousands homeless sleep on the streets of the same cities.
Among all the shadows, the shade of ignorance & illiteracy are the darkest ones. The combination of hunger and poverty breeds helplessness and ignored and ignorant invent slavery. That’s what we are becoming every day. Slaves to our own pursuits for more, if not to anyone else.
“A shadow cannot ignore the sun that all day creates and moves it.”
Rumi
Credits
Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurzweil
PAF Skyview GCC
By
Ahsan Jamil
Golfer, Blogger, Entrepreneur, Author, Poet, Wanderer, photographer, Rebel.
Email: Golfaij@gmail.com
Website: Golfaij.com
YouTube: Morning with Golf