One of my class fellows was really tensed, when asked the reason, he was really tensed over his future. It is a true fact that most of us despite a very good education remain uncertain of our future. Especially in a country like Pakistan where there is no job security whatsoever it may be, people are disillusioned. What we look for in a life? Financial security, professional stability, a good family life and for people of substance, peace of mind (certainly not supposed to be read as a piece of mind). All of us have our insecurities and in majority of cases, we spend our entire life dealing with our insecurities. Some would spend their entire life looking for love without knowing what it really is. Some of us spend their entire life just to earn money for at least two generations, we revert to God. However, majority of us live, rather they are forced to live a life without any direction totally aimless life where they accept whatever comes their way and are least concerned about living a better life. And probably that is why very few people would come up with a proper answer to the question. We hardly ever have time or energy to think about some thing as fickle as life. In fact we give in ourselves to our fate to such an extent that we refuse to bring any change in our life even if is well within our control. Its not that we cannot do anything to come out of the mess. Its just that we dont want to.

Personally speaking, for me, perhaps material prosperity and mental satisfaction is more in any life. However both are contrary in nature, because if I have to earn a reasonable living, I cannot do that by spending my time to picnic resorts and recreational parks. Peace of mind is perhaps the first casualty in the process of earning good money. So does that mean that we have just one option to ourselves either be mentally satisfied but miserable. May be there is no such thing as ideal living in the first place. You are born and you die and in between you struggle and suffer. What is so ideal about that?

Life might not be that perfect, but somehow we make such an issue out of the bad things in life that it seems as if there is nothing worthwhile in life. We talk about all the bad things in life that it seems as if there is nothing worthwhile in life. We talk about all the bad things in life heat, dust, misery, and death! We talk about how grim the state of affairs are corruption, injustice, poverty and most oft-repeated tale of insincere and incompetent leadership. In short, the general perception is that nothing is going in the right direction and an extremely dark future awaits all of us, just because we belong to the part of the world where every thing is bad and nothing is good. Is all this pessimism justified? Are we really that desperate where we cant dream? Dreams are the very essence of life we live by them and we strive to make them come true. And thats what life is all about running after shadows and dreaming about the unattainable some times losing and sometimes winning.

Pick up any newspaper at random and you will come across countless reports of terrorism, crime, violation of rights, economics bankruptcy and the life goes on and on. Talk to any body on the streets and he will give you a detailed analysis of the flaws in our system. Nothing appears to be going in a right direction for us. What type of culture are we developing for the generations to come who are brought up in this BMW environment? (Bitching, Moaning and Whining)? We tell them about the dark future that awaits them. We inculcate a sense of fear in them that if they dont study well (learn their lessons by heart would be more appropriate), they will end up no where in the job market which has little or no opportunities at all. How can we expect any sort of positivity coming out of a child who is so scared that he cant even dream? Where would his creativity go when he is not allowed to even step out of the house for the fear of being abducted? By stopping these children into becoming their real selves, we are certainly committing a great crime against humanity! And the worst part of the story is that we dont even know about it.

Life is beautiful no matter how much man destroys it, the beauty of it remains. We just have to come out of our shell of pessimism to see it, but while ugliness is easy to see, beauty can only be seen with deliberate effort. And this deliberate effort can only be made with a positive frame of mind, which is very rare keeping in view the insanity prevailing around us. A major chunk of this insanity is labeled as realism-seeing things the way they are. So much so that if any one dares talk about the positive signs, he is immediately labeled as person who does not know what he is talking about and just trying to paint a rosy picture. And in this spell of realism, what we fail to realize is that fact that reality does not in any way prevent happiness or force us to look towards the dark side of the aspect. Its just a state of mind. We see reality the way we would like to see it, and not the way we would like to see it, and not the way it actually is. So, perhaps making peace with ones self can help us see the reality objectively.