The world as i see it!

Change…….what a funny little bugger!

myintrospection — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:43:50 +0000

Change doesn’t come overnight………..is a myth. I have as a matter of fact seen and felt myself changing within moments or overnight, I can probably pinpoint most of them. I can recollect moments, conversations, experiences and situations that have changed some element of my personality. They’ve been moments where I’ve been humbled, situations that have made me more confident, experiences that have made me stronger, and yes I know which did which.

Now, I’m not talking about a huge change that will manifest itself in your day to day interactions and everyone will notice something’s different, that hasn’t been the case each time but it’s a change that can be felt and that can be held on to in a certain way. The process can make you smile, make you feel gutted or it can make you go Aha! It’s like someone’s put a sticky note on your wall or maybe re-varnished it, it doesn’t significantly change the room or the feel of it but it’s still something not there before.

And it’s slightly weird how I always feel slightly good when I have a moment like this, it makes me feel like I’m growing, I’m not stuck in a rut, something’s changing, something’s happening, something that can help me move forward or let go or survive, whichever it is. So, my advice would be this, keep your hearts and minds open in order to identify moments and experiences like these and maybe they’ll give you hope like they do to me.

Happy exploring!

Adios!

Hor vi neevan ho …..

myintrospection — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 19:24:25 +0000

A month and a half ago I did what I dreamt of doing, I jumped out of my comfort zone into unknown waters, and accompanying that jump was this storm of feelings, emotions, and thoughts that I was battling with and trying to comprehend. Among all this craziness, I, in a moment, had that humbling experience that silenced everything. Death crossed my mind. Death with it’s apprehensions, fear and helplessness had crossed my mind multiple times before, especially when I read about young people dying for various reasons, but it had never had the impact it had today.
I was both scared and depressed. Scared becasue I knew it was reality and depressed becasue it brutally burst my bubble. The bubble in the center of which I resided, surrounded by all that makes me who I am. but it burst, becasue it all seemed insignificant, unimportant in the magnanimity of death. Death is like a full stop. It sometimes comes in the end of a beautifull sentence with all it’s cohesion, errors, emotions and structure, a life well spent, or more than often comes in the end of an incomplete sentence, a life never lived. Nevertheless, we all die, but time and this world keeps moving on, we just vanish, leaving behind unquantifiable memories, maybe. but we vanish, and all that we had protected and taken care of, our thoughts, ideas, opinions, goals, ambitions vanish with us, making not an iota of a difference in the natural order of things. A mere sentence in a book of uncountable pages.
It’s all pretty depressing but it also brings a moment of clarity. We all have goals, expectations of how life should turn out, but in the end we have very little control. We believe that, as muslims we all do, but believing in it and living by that belief are two different things. If we believe and live by that belief, it is freedom but if we believe and do not live by that belief, it is tension/friction. Cause, when we live by that belief that everything is in Allah’s hands and we have only some control, we pay attention to the finer details, to all the right things in life, we pay attention to relations, we pay attention to the good we do, we pay attention to our contribution in this world and then we thank Allah, we thank Allah for what we have, what we’ve become and what we’ve achieved because at the end of the day we are in far better place then alot of other people and that is not the least because we’re more important. because, remember, at the end of the day we’re all trying to construct a readable sentence before the full stop is placed.

This for me is the song of the moment, don’t forget to switch on the translation,

Peace and may God bless all!

Alot of small miracles!

myintrospection — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:56:29 +0000

I have this one favourite tv series called numb3rs, the series officially ended early this year but I’ve decided to go through all of the episodes once again, crazy?! I know! but that is not the point. The point is that yesterday I was watching one of it’s episode where when a victim’s computer code is broken it is discovered that the victim has progressed in making a software that can statistically predict the chances of a person’s success according to his/her geographical location, the math was similar to ‘sabermetrics’ which is a technique that uses baseball statistics to answer objective questions.

Bill James, one of it’s pioneers, defined sabermetrics as “the search for objective knowledge about baseball.” Thus, sabermetrics attempts to answer objective questions about baseball, such as “which player on the Red Sox contributed the most to the team’s offense?” or “How many home runs will Ken Griffey hit next year?” It cannot deal with the subjective judgments which are also important to the game, such as “Who is your favorite player?” or “That was a great game.” (wikipedia)

The episode got me thinking. Can we really quantify human potential? Can we scientifically explain human spirit? And if we can what would that mean for our future generation, would they fail to look at human emotions as alot of small miracles. I mean to say that when I feel love for a particular person, feel that joy or heart wrenching sorrow while watching a cricket match, feel that patriotism inside of me, feel the warmth inside when surrounded by the people that care about you and see a mother’s love it intensifies my belief in God.

Because each emotion is unexplainable yet fascinating! Why do I meet so many people but develop strong friendships with only a few of them? The question makes me wonder but at the same time this phenomenon amazes me! However, if we start defining these emotions as the result of a series of reactions by our neurons will they make the same impact! Will scientific defination of these emotions keep that awe alive?

Just a thought I might build upon later but till then look around you and open you eyes to God’s grace everywhere!

Adios!

Dear Pakistan…….

myintrospection — Wed, 25 May 2011 21:39:44 +0000

Dear Pakistan,

The time has finally arrived, I am packing away my room and making the final preparations. I have, for a couple of years now, been imagining this scenario, and every year this urge of breaking free from this place has been getting stronger. However, something in this time and space is different from what I imagined.

In my imagination this moment was accompanied by a strong sense of happiness, and why wouldn’t it be, I was finally coming home, to you, to my homeland and as cliché as it may sound, my dream of building MY life in MY land was becoming a reality.

But a different kind of reality was drowning the voice of passion in my head. The voices say MY land isn’t mine anymore, terrorists have taken over. They say I am no more free there than I am here in the land of Saudis and Audis. They say you feel trapped in this land of the foreigners wait till you get there, the land of the stereotypes. You can’t go there unless you are an extremist, a fascist, a liberal, a democratic, a fanatic, an activist or an expert. They say you can’t go there to make a life, learn lessons or grasp oppurtunities because MY land has been hijacked, and who I want to blame is purely my choice.

Now I’m thinking, I am thinking hard. I am thinking of what to do of this heart? What to do of all that I feel? The liberating feeling of belonging, that overwhelms me when I step on your soil, the feeling that I am exactly where I should be, the feeling of being whole again, not torn between the comfort of where I am and the images of my homeland on television, and most of all what do I do of this feeling of HOPE, that maybe when I am in MY land, I can learn, I can discover, I can be the best that I am capable of, and maybe, just maybe, I can be part of a generation that will reclaim what was lost and rebuild what was destroyed.

But I am not naïve, I know what the voices tell me has some truth in it, but if I let the FEAR overcome the HOPE, then I will truly be oppressed forever, and that I’m not yet prepared to be.

However, I have a favour to ask of you, Pakistan, when I step on you soil, could you please reveal those little secrets you have, can you make me grasp how our forefathers migrated on a wing and prayer, penniless but fearless, can you give me a glimpse of the wisdom those early day thinkers had, can you help me understand what your poets and writers so deeply expressed in their work, can you indulge me in your art and architecture, can you explain to me the strength your soldiers have to this day and can you lead my finger so I can pinpoint exactly where your heartbeat lies so I can fathom how your inhabitants, my fellow countrymen, not only endure, survive, live on but also inspire all those who come with an open mind? Because, Pakistan this is all I seek.

Yours truly,

Sameen.

Ps: Your sportsmen keep defying all odds, don’t they?!!

silence no more

myintrospection — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 17:49:05 +0000

On August 15^th 2010, the nation witnessed a heart wrenching video of two brothers being brutally murdered, everyone was shocked and angry, a reaction was seen and protests took place in various parts of the country. A mere two and a half months after the incidence there is, silence! Most of us have again reacted, vented out and than gone back to our daily lives, we have stopped wanting to know how much justice has been served, what happened to those who were arrested, how the family is coping and how the case is progressing. There were swift arrests, remands and bails the case being taken up by the supreme court, but now a long wait. There have been various accounts of the story told, however there has been a lack of fervor in the general public. We fail to understand that if we do not continually persist with action, fight for the justice required and care about the result, this case of inhumanity will come and go, a permanent black spot on the morality of our society, but six months from now, god forbid, someone else might again take the law into their own hands, domestically or publicly, and this cycle of violence might never break, we might never feel safe and this will be our fault, every 17 crore of us.

However, a group of us has waken up and are now a beacon for hope for the family of those two children, Justice for Mughees and Muneeb, a face book group has done their duty and much more, from arranging the protests, identifying the criminals, to forming a journal, and writing to amnesty international. The administrators have brilliantly used face book’s platform to update their members on how the case is progressing and also constantly posting the feelings of all those that have been jolted by the events of August 15, having translators aboard for anyone who in unable to communicate in English. I was amazed at the resolve of these administrators therefore I mailed to ask them what kept them going, why didn’t they go back to their daily lives like all of us. Following is the transcript of our conversation.

Q: What strikes me most is the fact that even when the society has unfortunately steamed out against the incident and even the activity on your wall has decreased, the spirit and vigor of your admins does not diminish, where does the strength come from?

A: The strength comes from conviction and team work, we have a very strong team who are bound together with the fact that thy want change and justice. This very fact covers them and they all have different tasks and all of them are professionals and organized people so they know how to pull up when others are down. Also the important thing is that we support each other at down times and share the success accordingly.

Q: What is the group currently doing to help the cause and the family?

A: We are doing quite a lot of things most of them on the page and a lot of them off the page. The amnesty appeal was a quick step but our core focus is the Journal as this will draw our efforts to a next and historic level. We have ambitious plans for that.

Q: How has the response been to your pleas for people to write to Amnesty international on the issue? And what was the purpose behind these letters to amnesty?

A: The amnesty response was slow in the beginning but it picked up but not as much as we thought it would be. Our aim is to highlight the issue to save tomorrow’s Mughees and Muneeb. The case in the court is one part of the process however, as the family and specially the boys grand father said, the bigger cause is to save the future.

Q: You have constantly been in touch with the family how are they coping almost two and a half months after the incident, what are there thoughts on the situation?

A: They have a great heart and they are coping very well with it, but the down times and political mud sliding saddens them a bit, but they get stronger by every passing day to change the things for better.

Q: How do you, the admins and the family take news like ‘the bail of DPO Waqar chauhan’ and ‘Dr Firdous Aashiq awaan supporting a rally in favour of the criminals of the lynching’. what is your take on it?

A: Allah is the only Munsif and the greater one, so these small incidents of few ill advised people who presume they are strong enough to stand against Allah does not bother us at all. By us I mean the family and ourselves.

Q: In the end I would just like to commend you on behalf of all the sane Pakistanis for fighting this fight to uphold the morality of this nation and would like to ask if you have any message for the people reading this, what can fellow Pakistanis do in this situation for justice to be delivered?

A: The Pakistanis need to start acting, they should not stand and watch but make efforts to stop if they see anything happening. The fact that everyone is innocent until proven guilty they should let the system take its course rather than act like God and deliver mob justice. People should try to calm things up rather than stand there and watch, if we can make this one thing happen we would believe we have brought a revolution.

Thank you for your appreciation and we are nothing without those many restless souls who are with us throughout this process and we salute them.

(written on 31st october)

what is going on up there?

myintrospection — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 20:42:01 +0000

Individuality, behaviour and people in general have always fascinated me. That’s the reason i’ve often thought of taking psychology as a subject somtime in the future, i might not be able to take it as a major now but i might take it later on for a master’s degree. Who knows? but meanwhile there is alot of research and information available on the internet at my disposal. but again why psychology?

I have this philophy, which is still pretty young, that i should explore the world as much as i can by experiencing differernt situations, travelling to different places and throwing my self in various experiences and use this process to find myself and re-enforce my belief. However I feel such a journey is incomplete unless I don’t bring myself to learn about people living in this world, how they think, how they are effected by different situations, different environments and how we are all truly unique. This is one reason I like biographies so much because this gives me a chance to learn about one complex yet beautiful individual, look at his experiences, and feel his emotions, in the process satisfying my hunger to explore.

This was all my personal view, but nevertheless the potential of psychology as a subject is very much underestimated in our society, what psychologist can do for a society and it’s people is staggering. A few examples are as follows,

Criminal psychology is defined in wikipedia as Criminal psychology is the study of the wills, thoughts, intentions and reactions of criminals. It is related to the field of criminal anthropology. The study goes deeply into what makes someone commit crime, but also the reactions after the crime, on the run or in court. Now just imagine the scope, especially in these trying times for our country, we can turn to psychologists with this speciality and understand the mind of a terrorist giving us the oppurtunity to identify it, manipulate it, predict it’s next act and also prevent other people in developing a terrorist’s thinking.

Furthermore, child psychology as in about.com focuses on the mind and behavior of children from prenatal development through adolescence. Child psychology deals not only with how children grow physically, but with their mental, emotional and social development as well. Child psychologist are a priceless asset in an education sector of a country, using their knowledge to teach parents and teachers on how to teach, discipline and nurture for a child in the most efficient way possible.

Lastly another interesting branch of psychology is social psychology, which again according to wikipedia is the study of how humans think about each other and how they relate to each other. Social psychologists study such topics as the influence of others on an individual’s behavior (e.g. conformity, persuasion), and the formation of beliefs, attitudes, and stereotypes about other people. This can no doubt allow more understanding and tolerance within a society.

This was a very short entry that was an attempt to share my fascination with the subject and there might be more to come if god wills but for now i end this entry by asking everyone to embrace this knowledge and try to dwell in it once in a while, so that we can all benefit one way or another by this wonderfull and intriguing subject.

Help required urgently…..

myintrospection — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:00:00 +0000

On October 8^th 2005 a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit Pakistan, leaving behind a lot of devastation and dead bodies. There was an immediate response by the government, civil society, doctors, international community etc. The relief effort was very spirited, the rehabilitation phase my not so informed self doesn’t know about.

Around August 11^th 2010 a massive flood washed away thousands of villages in all four provinces. The devastation was 7-8 times worse but the response slower. So slow it seemed the nation would remain spectators until the water didn’t pass over their head but fortunately after a lot media reports, witnessing personal tragedies and celebrity pleas the nation has woken up and relief is being provided though it is on a scale not even close to the damage done.

Initially people had trust issues with the government and were reluctant in donating. The government itself initially didn’t seem to comprehend the seriousness of the calamity but now as a lot of funds have been set up people have a wide variety of organisations to choose from including the Army Welfare Trust which is doing a splendid job. However only thinking of it as a responsibility and sending some stuff isn’t enough. This is not a devastation that will just go away after a few donations, we can’t forget about all those people after just one donation. We need to keep them in mind everyday and keep donating untill these settlements aren’t rebuilt because that is till these people will require assistance and our donations.

Consider it an opportunity, an opportunity to be of service to mankind. There are so many times we feel helpless, we feel like there is nothing we can do that will turn our country around, this is exactly our time. No matter how big or small the donation is, it will help. Anything we can do, create awareness, send food, send clothes or money it will help. Remember, this is not only a test for them but a test for us too!

finally……

myintrospection — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 20:21:03 +0000

ok, now i do feel a bit guilty for not have written regularly since i was on my holidays, but what’s done is done. Now i am done with my A’levels and now i have made my mind to say farewell to science as a whole and take up a career in mass comunication. It’s a huge leap but it’s a leap of faith and I plan to make it. I still have a lot of decisions to make, but if I want to make a career in writing I will have to work real hard!

Therefore from now on I will churn out at least one entry per week inshAllah, and will try to make it as well thought out as it can be. This blog entry was therefore a promise of more to come.

keep praying

My comeback!!

myintrospection — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:13:24 +0000

Hey ya’ all! I’M BACK! and hopefully with a BANG! I’ve been away because i’ve been trying to get rid of my A’levels and if i did try to write anything during that time it would probably be a piece consisting of me whining about all that is not right. The last year of school has been tough very very tough but I feel I’ve come out sane and maybe a bit more wiser and stronger.

I’m taking a gap year and plan to make it count. I need to make a lot of decisions so I needed plenty of time. The year has started and i’m looking around for jobs as well as trying to do a lot of reading, some novel reading and some about more serious topics like apartheid or Pakistan’s history etc. I’ve felt for the last couple of years that at school we tend to get trapped in this rat race where we’re trying to hop from one class to another, and all the information we get is in majority in the form of boring textbooks and boring lectures where the knowledge seems more like a burden I personally just wanted to get rid of. That is why out of boredom I started taking interest in world events and now that I have ample time has led me to a whole new place, this pool of knowledge, facts, experiences, stories I never knew existed. I knew that very long ago black people were treated inhumanely but why it happened I never knew, so when I watched invictus i got interested and spent two hours trying to take in all the information from a single wikipedia article. Similarly I’d always heard about the New World Order but always shrugged it off as a very paranoid conspiracy theory but now I think that you can only believe or reject an idea only if we have ample information about it.

The point is that I feel like our generation is a bit selfish, we spend our lives running behind our whims and desires without even giving a shadow of a thought to humanity at large. This isn’t a far fetched idea, animals are actually creatures who spend their time fending for themselves and their family and just simply surviving, what differentiates us from animals is our humanity. If we don’t think or act responsibly, thinking of the repercussions our actions will have to our society in general, the world will remain as cold and cruel as we perceive it. I believe that if we radiate some degree of warmth from our actions, remain aware of the problem and challenges people all around the world or even we are facing, and then also take the bold step of being part of the solution our lives will feel and be more worthwhile. We’ll all wake up with a sense of purpose and go to sleep with a small sense of satisfaction that no matter what at least we tried to make the world a better place.

Think about it, it’s not such an over the top idea. It’s natural to fell disgusted looking at a mess but it takes a huge conscious effort to clean it up. A lot of the mess has a direct impact on our lives but we just do not want to get our hands dirty!

Adios people!

Happy thinking

Expectations????

myintrospection — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:38:27 +0000

Today i was just thinking about expectations. Expectations in general, expectations we have from ourselves. from our surroundings and more importantly from other people. I just couldn’t decide if these expectations are a necessity or a self-imposed menace. However, again if we do not expect from ourselves or the surroundings how will we get the dedication to work towards our own idea of perfection. (perfection and if it can be achieved is another debate i might write about it later!) We expect ourselves to catch every ball that comes our way we work towards doing that, we expect ourselves to ace a test we work toward it, similarly if we expect our country to be something we can boast about, we should work on it, and some of us do too. Nevertheless, we can sometimes tend to expect too much from ourselves and make ourselves miserable if we do not fulfill those expectations, for that i think whatever happens at the end of the day we should be able to say Ah well what the heck! at least I gave it my all!

so it’s obvious when we work to fulfill expectations from ourselves or from our surroundings we have something in our control but is it the same case when we expect something from others! I’ve been a full advocate of just fulfilling your own expectations and letting others be and i’m not giving in, however on the flip side i’ve realized these expectations don’t always have to be conscious you are equally likely to unconsciously expect something or another from another human being. It’s like you see a Baskin Robbins and you expect a mouth-licking ice-cream. So what do you do when your subconscious expectations of an unsuspecting human being aren’t fulfilled?

It all comes up to were the expectations justified in the first place? Should we ask someone to change according to our needs or is that too demanding? but I believe we can confront someone if all we expect from the other is certain basic rights that fulfill a relationship, for example if our neighbours throw garbage on our side of the fence we can ask them to pick it up because we expect them to act as civilised educated people but asking them to stop inviting guests after 10pm because the noise disturbs us would be a wee bit more imposing. Don’t you think?

At the end the same cliché line an excess of everything is bad! If we keep a balance and all these expectations are for the harmony within ourselves and with those people surrounding us it can’t be that bad! can it!

ok i’m done with my rambling or introspecting if you like and it’s now time to get back to work because i expect myself to finish one biology chapter before I hit the bed!

sighning off,

sameen