Unfolding

This question seems to garners similar replies. When asked, people tend to start talking about their profession, "I am a doctor, I am a lawyer, I am an engineer, I am a psychiatrist." But that particular answer might be incorrect. It only tells us what you do for a living but it doesn't tell us who you are.

Some may say they are Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. But is that really who they are? Merely products of their God and nothing else? Is your religion your only identity?

Who you bow down before is who you believe in and for some, it becomes their entire identity. They dress a certain way and look a certain way. No harm in that. Each to their own.

But sometimes, you can learn a lot about someone from where they're headed in life or what their goals in life are.

Some may be working towards a great discovery; some might be prophesying with their pen, and some might just be surviving.

Interestingly, the holy Quran also poses this rhetorical question, it asks 'So, where are you going?' (81:26)

A piece of advice. Hang this verse in front of your work desk and each time you begin to think too much, read it again and again until things start falling in place. Where are you headed?

But my philosophically futile question remains. Who are you? And to add to the misery, where are you going?

This allows for a moment of self-reflection. You don't have to be of a certain religion to self-reflect. You have to be human. Each time you find yourself in a fix, ask yourself who you are and what your destination is? Sometimes the most difficult questions have the simplest of answers. You're just seeking them in the wrong place.

Who am I, you ask? Here's the answer to the question you probably did not inquire into.

I don't know, yet.

I am as oblivious, unfounded and incomplete as you are.

I've spent some time here on what they call the earth and where they say humans allegedly reside. But so far, I haven't come across any humanity. Maybe little pockets of kindness here and there but the rest has been a terrible ride, to put it mildly.

But who am I? I am still on the journey where I seek an answer to this question. I have travelled a handful of countries but I did not find myself there.

I wandered the battered streets of Rome; did as the Romans do. I trotted along the Freedom Trail of Boston, Massachusetts. I strolled along the West 42nd and Broadway Street in New York City, and amongst the chaos, I found only silence and its accompanying stillness.

On a damp, snowy night in the woods of Northeast America, what did I find? The abyss.

In the deepest jungles of Balochistan, camping around the fire, I found myself feeling quite small under the vast sky full of stars. I found something else too. The eerie leisure of nothingness. Oh, the longing to attain nirvana.

When was the last time you sat down quietly in a room and ruminated over these things? When was the last time you wrote your thoughts down to answer questions which you just could not answer?

As Bulleh Shah said in his poem, "I am neither a believer in the mosque nor do I follow the way of the infidels. I am not Adam or Eve, nor do I carry any name given to me, neither water, nor air, neither earth nor fire. Bulla, who am I?".

I am a believer, Bulla. That's all I am. As disappointing as that may sound. I might be different from the one you believed in, but hey, they all wanted us to be kind human beings, right?

No one's better or worse, Bulla.

Bulla, you yourself said, "Nor am I in the argument of pure or impure".

Then why should I be?