Retain hope

At the age of 40, Franz Kafka, who never married and had no children, walked through the park in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favourite doll. She and Kafka searched for the doll unsuccessfully. Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would come back to look for her. The next day, when they had not yet found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll saying “please don’t cry. I took a trip to see the world. I will write to you about my adventures.” Thus began a story which continued until the end of Kafka’s life. During their meetings, Kafka read the letters of the doll carefully written with adventures and conversations that the girl found adorable. Finally, Kafka brought back the doll (she bought one) that had returned to Berlin. “It doesn’t look like my doll at all,” said the girl. Kafka handed her another letter in which the doll wrote: “My travels have changed me.” the little girl hugged the new doll and brought her home, a year later Kafka died. Many years later, the now-adult girl found a letter inside the doll. In the tiny letter signed by Kafka, it was written: “Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.” This is Kafka’s truth, but our truth is that what we lose is never regained, not even in any other form.

Even today, we are searching for happiness, prosperity, success, authority, and rights. Searching for them from place to place, but nothing comes to hand. We are tired of working hard and are getting old, but despite this, we are not blessed with bread. Happiness, pleasures, love are things far away innocent little wishes have been stolen from us. Life is ending on promises and hopes. No one loves us, no one has time to think for us. We are humiliated human beings. We have seen hatred for ourselves in the eyes of powerful and those in authority, we don’t understand what kind of sins have been committed by us that God has been angry with us for years. He neither hears our prayers nor accepts our worship.

The award-winning biographical novel Forrest Gump revolves around the life of an ordinary person, Forrest Gump, a loving and rewarding boy who was unable to walk on his legs from a young age. Then with God given health, he became a football hero at his university and surprised everyone by becoming a world-class table tennis player. Eventually, he ended up as a soldier in the Vietnam War, then went on to work at NASA, became an astronomer and finally became a big businessman. Throughout his journey, there was always a little kid inside him who loved his schoolmate, Jenny. The same child continued to look in wonder at every turn and change in life. The loving heart of a child who did not grow up, with him, who uses to listen to his mother’s words while going to school, continues to repeat him even when he is old. In 1994, Paramount Picture made a film based on the novel, which won 6 Academy Awards.

Today, millions of people in Pakistan have become Forrest Gump, only their names are different. They have not been as prosperous as him. But one thing they and Forrest Gump have in common is that they all still remember their mother’s words. Memories of their mother’s words are safe havens for them, where they forget the bitterness and pains that life has given them. Arundhati Roy writes: “The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead, to love, to be loved, to never forget your own insignificance, to never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of the life around you, to seek joy in the saddest places, to pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power, above all to watch, to try and understand, to never look away and never, never to forget.”

Published in The Express Tribune, July 5^th, 2023.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.