Significance

Significance

There are moments in life that make our existence seem insignificant, like everything we’ve done so far doesn’t really matter...……..

                  My vacations had started and all I had been doing was spend hours on Facebook doing nothing meaningful. Over the years, the status updates and stuff published in newsfeed has had little effect on me, after giving a cursory glance there was usually very little to grab my attention.  It was all the same; people published newsfeed about the quizzes they took, the games played, pictures, videos etc.

      However, that particular day I saw a newsfeed about a friend joining a group dedicated to a martyred soldier.  For someone living in Pakistan, that shouldn’t be anything new.  Our country is currently fighting a war in Swat against the terrorists who have truly wreaked havoc in our homeland. People dying in bomb blasts has become so common a phenomenon that even when media displays pictures of blood-coated pavements, there’s very little affect it has on our hearts.  It’s amazing how the grief washes away just like the blood on those pavements.

      What grabbed my attention was the display photo for that particular group. It was the photo of the martyred Captain standing with his arms folded and smiling. It was probably one of the most adorable smile I’ve ever seen, I’m not even sure if adorable is the right word. The smile simply made the onlooker smile as well! Going through the group, I got to see his other photos. They consisted of him with his friends, of his posting at Ivory Coast and various other photos of his military career.

      I know it sounds very cliché and dramatic but it broke your heart to see someone with so much life and knowing that he was no longer there. The face with the smile haunted me. It made me cry, it made me pray for all the soldiers who were fighting out there.  He was in his twenties and yet took a rocket to his chest and here we are scared of cockroaches and lizards! While going to sleep, it made me realize how insignificant my problems and my life were as a whole. Here I was lying in a comfortable bed and wondering what the soldiers out there were doing ---not sleeping at least.

      A lot of soldiers have lost their lives in this Swat Operation. Every now and then I’ve come across people joining groups on Facebook dedicated to these soldiers but none of them left a haunting impression on me as that particular soldier’s pictures did.  Maybe, it was the fact that the other pictures were of stern-faced soldiers with serious expressions like no one except God could deter them from the path and this particular was smiling heartily in almost every picture.  Pictures of him playing drums with the people in Ivory Coast, just hanging out with friends and in the end dying such a brave death, I felt so disgusted with my life. I certainly don’t want to sound ungrateful for the life God has given me but I so wish that I could leave an impression like that for my country which needs so much to get through and survive……..



May all those martyred soldiers get the highest possible place Heaven and may our country Pakistan live to see happier and peaceful days. Here is a famous poem by Melinda Sue Pach dedicated to the troops who have embraced martyrdom:

    ‘Did Not Die’



Do not stand at my grave and forever weep.

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn’s rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and forever cry.

I am not there. I did not die.



Melinda Sue Pacho