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“This Too Shall Pass”

"This Too Shall Pass"

 

 

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

I brought the question to him on a day when things felt particularly heavy. Not because anything catastrophic had happened, but because life had become difficult enough that I could not see beyond it, the way a single loud sound can drown out everything else in a room.

He listened quietly, as he always did, letting me finish before he spoke. Then he smiled. “Have you heard the story about Alexander the Great?”

I shook my head.

“According to a famous story, Alexander once asked one of his advisors for a piece of wisdom that would help him in both times of happiness and times of sorrow.”

“What kind of wisdom?”

“Something that would comfort him during hardship and keep him grounded in success.”

“And what did the advisor tell him?”

He paused, the way he did when he wanted a line to land with full weight. Then he replied, “This too shall pass.”

For a moment, I was disappointed. It sounded too simple. Surely the great conqueror of the world deserved something more profound than that, some elaborate secret rather than a phrase you might find stitched on a cushion.

He must have sensed my reaction, because he laughed. “You don’t seem impressed.”

“Honestly,” I admitted, “it sounds obvious.”

“It is obvious,” he replied. “The problem is that we rarely live as though it is true.”

I thought about that for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“When we are suffering, we unconsciously act as if the suffering is permanent.”

That resonated with me immediately because whenever I am anxious, disappointed, embarrassed, or hurt, the feeling never announces itself as temporary. It feels endless, as though the walls of the moment extend infinitely in every direction.

He continued. “Think about the last major difficulty you faced.” I immediately thought of several: a professional setback that had felt like the end of something, a misunderstanding in a relationship that had cost me sleep, and a long period of uncertainty when nothing seemed to move forward. At the time, each had felt overwhelming, the kind of thing that reorganizes your whole sense of what the future holds.

“Do those things affect you today in the same way?” he asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because time passed.”

He smiled. “Exactly.” Then he leaned back and said something I found genuinely interesting. “The strange thing is that people usually understand this lesson intellectually, but they struggle to remember it emotionally.”

I asked him to explain. “When you’re anxious, your mind acts as if this moment will last forever,” he said. “When you’re sad, it feels permanent. When you’re worried, it feels permanent. When you’re embarrassed, it feels permanent. But none of those things are permanent.”

I remembered something from years ago. I had once been deeply upset over a professional issue, the kind that occupies every idle minute. For weeks, it dominated my thoughts. I replayed conversations I had already gone over a dozen times. I imagined consequences that never arrived. I lost sleep over decisions that, in hindsight, mattered far less than they seemed to at three in the morning. And yet years later, I could barely remember the details, only the vague shape of having once been very upset about something at that job.

When I told him this, he laughed. “Exactly. Most of the things that dominate our minds today will barely occupy them a few years from now.”

Then he surprised me. “You know, the phrase is just as important in success.”

I had never thought about that. “I understand why it helps in hardship,” I said. “But why in success?”

“Because success creates a different illusion.”

“What illusion?”

“The illusion that good things will stay forever.”

I sat quietly because that was true too. When life is going well, we quietly begin to assume it will continue indefinitely: the job, the health, the relationships, the recognition, the comfort, the stability. Without ever deciding to, we begin treating temporary gifts as permanent possessions, as if a person might forget that a rented house is not actually theirs to keep.

He nodded as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. “That is why the phrase is so powerful. It comforts you in difficulty and humbles you in success.”

I remembered an elderly man I once knew who had suffered enormous financial losses. At the time, he believed his life had been ruined and that everything he had built was gone for good. Years later, when speaking about that same period, he described it very differently. “Looking back,” he told me, “that was one of the best things that ever happened to me.” When I asked why, he smiled and said simply, “It forced me to become a different person.”

I shared the story with him. He nodded. “You see? At the time, he could only see the pain. Later, he could see the growth.” Then he said something I found myself returning to long after the conversation ended. “The present moment is a terrible place to judge the entire story.”

I laughed. “That sounds true.”

“When you’re standing inside a chapter, you can’t see the whole book.”

We sat in silence for a moment. Then I asked, “If everything goes as planned, doesn’t that make life less meaningful?”

He shook his head immediately. “No. It makes life more meaningful.”

“How?”

He pointed toward the window. “Imagine a sunset.”

“Okay.”

“Would it be as beautiful if it lasted forever?”

I thought about it. Probably not. A sky that stayed gold and pink all day, every day, would eventually become wallpaper, something the eye no longer registered.

“The fact that it ends is part of what makes it precious,” he continued. “A child is small for only a few years. A conversation happens only once, exactly this way, with exactly these people, never to be repeated in quite the same form. A season comes and goes. The very fact that these things pass is what gives them much of their value.”

I had never considered impermanence from that angle before. We usually treat permanence as the thing worth wanting, the goal underlying most of our other goals. Yet so much of what we cherish draws its beauty from being temporary in the first place.

“Then maybe,” I said, “the problem is not that things pass.”

“The problem is that we keep expecting them not to.” He smiled. “I think that’s a big part of it.”

As the conversation drew to a close, I asked him one final question. “What should I do when I’m overwhelmed?”

He paused for a moment. “Ask yourself a simple question.”

“What question?”

“Will this feel as important a year from now?”

I laughed. “That would ease many of my worries.”

“Probably.”

“And if it still matters a year from now?”

“Then deal with it, but remember that even this chapter is not the whole story.”

As I left that day, I kept hearing those words in my mind. “This too shall pass.” Not as an invitation to indifference. Not as an excuse to avoid responsibility. Not as a reason to care less. But as a reminder to keep perspective.

The difficult moments will pass. The joyful moments will pass. The praise will pass. The criticism will pass. The success will pass. The failure will pass. Perhaps wisdom lies in learning to walk through both triumph and trial with the same quiet awareness: “This too shall pass.”

Points for Reflection

  • Name the last thing that felt permanent. Recall a difficulty from a few years ago that once felt unbearable. Notice how much of its weight remains today, and what that tells you about the one you’re carrying now.
  • Ask the one-year question. For whatever is overwhelming you right now, ask honestly: will this feel exactly this important a year from now? Let the answer change how much of today you give to it.
  • Check what you’re treating as permanent. Where in your life, right now, during a season that is going well, are you quietly assuming the good will simply continue? What would it mean to hold it a little more loosely?
  • Remember the chapter is not the book. The next time a single moment feels like it defines everything, ask what you might be unable to see simply because you are standing inside it rather than looking back at it.
  • Let impermanence add rather than subtract. Choose one thing you love precisely because it does not last, a season, a stage of a child’s life, an ordinary evening, and let that temporariness deepen your attention to it rather than your anxiety about losing it.

 

 

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Where Trust Lives

Where Trust Lives

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

I once shared a frustration with him that I suspect many people carry quietly. “It feels like nothing is in my control,” I said. I began listing what was bothering me: people making decisions I disagreed with, family members behaving differently than I wished, friends not responding as I expected, situations unfolding contrary to my plans, the economy, the news, the future. By the time I finished, I felt even more overwhelmed than when I had started, as though naming the list had only made it heavier.

He listened patiently, then asked a simple question. “Of all the things you mentioned, how many are actually under your direct control?”

The answer was uncomfortable. Very few. He walked me through a couple of them to make the point concrete. The news, for instance. I did not control what happened in the world, only whether I chose to watch it at midnight and let it follow me into sleep. Even a family member’s behavior, the thing that felt most personal and urgent, was not something I could reach into and adjust. I could only control how I responded, what I said, and what I did next. Item by item, the list I had recited so easily began to look different. Almost none of it belonged to me.

That question has followed me since, because it revealed something I had never fully appreciated. Many of us spend enormous emotional energy trying to manage things outside our control. We worry about them. We obsess over them. We argue about them. We lose sleep over them. Yet despite all that effort, they remain stubbornly beyond our reach.

He explained that this is one of the most common struggles he encounters when speaking with people. On the surface, the complaints often sound different, but their root is usually the same. My spouse won’t change. My children don’t listen. My colleagues don’t understand. My family doesn’t support me. My circumstances aren’t improving. The words differ, but the pain beneath is always the same: something is out of control, and it hurts to admit it.

The surprising part came next. “Your self is under your control,” he said, “and so are your relationships.”

I paused. Relationships? I had expected him to say that only my thoughts and actions were under my control, the usual answer, the one I already half knew. But relationships? He explained what he meant. We cannot control other people, but we can invest in our relationships with them, and that investment often creates something far more powerful than control. Influence.

Most people secretly want influence, but they pursue control instead, and control almost always damages the very relationships in which influence grows.

I thought of a father I once knew who desperately wanted his son to follow a particular path in life, the one he himself had never been able to walk. He pushed hard: strict rules about how the boy spent his evenings, constant comparisons to other children, and long lectures whenever the son showed interest in anything else. The harder the father pushed, the more resistance grew. Arguments increased. Distance grew. Conversations that used to happen easily over dinner became short and guarded. The father worked as hard as he could, yet he lost influence with every passing month instead of gaining it.

Now imagine a different approach. The parent continues to guide, advise, and set boundaries where appropriate. But also invests deeply in the relationship itself: listening, understanding, showing respect, building trust, and creating emotional safety. Years later, when the child faces a difficult decision, whose voice is most likely to matter? The voice of the person who controlled them, or the voice of the person they trust? Influence grows where trust exists. Control rarely produces trust.

This is why he emphasized something many people find difficult. Learn to live with disagreement.

At first, that may sound almost passive. Shouldn’t we try to convince people? Shouldn’t we correct them? Shouldn’t we argue for what we believe is right? Sometimes, yes. But the problem isn’t disagreement itself. It is the inability to tolerate it.

Many relationships break down not because people disagree, but because one or both parties conclude that disagreement makes the relationship unsafe. A husband and wife disagree on how to raise their children, and instead of treating it as one more thing two people are working through together, they treat it as evidence that something is wrong between them. Friends disagree politically, and the friendship quietly shrinks around the topic until there is less and less room to talk at all. Siblings disagree about how to care for an aging parent, and years of closeness give way to tension neither of them quite knows how to name. In each case, the disagreement was survivable. What was not survivable was the fear beneath it, the sense that being different from someone meant losing them.

Healthy relationships require a different skill: the ability to say, “I disagree with you, but I still value you.” That sentence may be one of the most important foundations of mature relationships.

I remember a friend who kept an unusually close relationship with his father despite real differences between them, the kind that in most families would have hardened into permanent distance. One day I asked him how they managed it. He smiled. “We stopped trying to win.” I asked what he meant. “We realized that preserving the relationship mattered more to both of us than winning every argument.” That did not mean they abandoned their convictions or pretended to agree when they didn’t. It meant they learned to place the relationship above the need to dominate the conversation, so that being right and being close no longer competed with each other.

That conversation reminded me of something he emphasized repeatedly. Invest in relationships. Not occasionally, not when convenient, but regularly and intentionally.

The word investment is important because investments rarely yield immediate returns. You invest time. You invest attention. You invest patience. You invest understanding, sometimes for years, and it can feel as if nothing is happening at all. Then one day a crisis comes, a conflict emerges, a difficult conversation becomes necessary, and suddenly the trust you built over years is available exactly when you need it.

Trust functions like a savings account. Small deposits accumulate over time: listening when you could have interrupted, being honest when dishonesty would have been easier, keeping commitments, admitting mistakes, showing reliability, and demonstrating goodwill. Each of these is a deposit, made quietly and often without any visible return. I think of the elderly couples who seem able to weather almost anything together, and how their steadiness is rarely the result of a single dramatic act of love. It is usually the result of thousands of small deposits made over decades, most of them too ordinary to remember individually, all of them adding up to a kind of trust that can absorb a real crisis without breaking. Eventually, those deposits become influence.

He made another important point. Not only should we build trust in others, but we should also build trustworthiness within ourselves. That distinction matters. Many people want to be trusted, yet fewer focus on becoming trustworthy. Trustworthiness is built through consistency. Do your actions match your words? Do you keep your promises? Do you act with integrity when no one is watching? Can people rely on you? These questions determine influence far more than intelligence, authority, or charisma ever could.

I once worked with someone who had no formal leadership position, title, or special authority. Yet everyone, including those well above him in rank, quietly sought his opinion before making difficult decisions. Why? Because over the years he had developed a reputation for fairness, honesty, and consistency. He said the same thing to your face as he did behind your back. He admitted when he was wrong just as readily as he pointed out when others were. People trusted him, and that trust became a kind of authority no title could have given him.

This is one of life’s great paradoxes. The more desperately we try to control people, the less influence we often wield. The more we focus on building trust and relationships, the greater our influence tends to be.

Many people believe their influence grows when they become louder, more forceful, more persuasive, and more argumentative. Yet influence often grows through quieter qualities: patience, reliability, empathy, consistency, humility, and trust. This does not mean becoming passive. It does not mean abandoning principles or accepting everything without question. It simply means recognizing where genuine influence comes from. Not coercion. Connection.

As I reflected on our conversation, I realized something uncomfortable. Much of my frustration stemmed from investing heavily in things I could not control while neglecting those I could. I worried about changing people, but spent less time strengthening relationships. I worried about gaining influence, but spent less time becoming trustworthy. I worried about being understood, but spent less time understanding others.

Perhaps that is why his advice felt so practical. If you want greater influence, invest in relationships. If you want stronger relationships, build trust. If you want trust, become trustworthy. None of this guarantees that people will agree with you, that others will change, or that outcomes will be perfect. But it does place your energy where it can make a difference.

And perhaps that is one of the wisest shifts a person can make. Stop trying to control people. Start investing in relationships. Because in the end, influence grows where trust lives.

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What Is Mine to Do

What Is Mine to Do

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

The Hardest Part in the Serenity Prayer

I brought the question to him one day because it had been troubling me for a long time. “There’s something about the Serenity Prayer I don’t fully understand,” I said. He looked up, interested. “What is it?”

“I think most people focus on the first two parts,” I replied. “The serenity to accept what cannot be changed and the courage to change what can be changed. But the part that seems most difficult to me is the last one: the wisdom to know the difference. How do we actually know? How do we decide whether something is within our control?”

He smiled. “That is probably the hardest part.” For a moment, he remained silent, then continued. “The difficulty is that we are not always objective when evaluating situations.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our emotional state shapes how we perceive our ability to influence things,” he said. “When we feel strong, confident, and empowered, we often overestimate our control. We think we can fix everything, change people, solve every problem, and overcome every obstacle. And when we feel weak, we do the opposite. We underestimate our ability and convince ourselves that nothing can be changed, even things that are actually within our reach.”

I laughed. “Sometimes we think we control everything, and other times we think we control nothing.”

“Exactly,” he said, leaning forward slightly. “Let’s start with something simple. There are certain things that are directly within your control.”

“Such as?”

“Your thoughts. Your responses. Your decisions. Your actions. Your words. Your effort.”

“That sounds obvious.”

“It sounds obvious,” he replied, “but most people spend surprisingly little time focusing on these things.” He paused. “Now let’s talk about something else. Other people.”

I smiled. “That’s where life gets complicated.”

He laughed. “Yes. That’s where confusion usually begins. People often assume they have more control over others than they actually do.” He paused, then offered an example. “Children. Parents often believe they control their children. But do they really?”

“At least while the children are young,” I said.

“Not exactly,” he replied. “What they control are actions. A child eats because the parent insists. Sleeps because the parent decides. Follows rules because consequences exist. But that is only control of behavior, not of thoughts.” He let that sentence sit for a moment. “Think about it. Even when your child was five years old, you could not control what he believed, what he felt, or what he thought. You could influence those things, but you could never directly control them.”

I sat with that quietly, because it was true. He went on. “As children grow older, this reality becomes more obvious. Suddenly they disagree. They make their own choices. They form their own opinions. And parents become frustrated, because it feels to them as though something has changed, as though the child who once listened without question has somehow slipped out of their hands.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “But nothing has actually changed. The disagreement, the independence, the private opinions, all of it was there long before it became visible. A small child does not lack a will of his own. He only lacks the strength, the words, and the confidence to make that will known. What grows with age is not the child’s independence. It is only the ability to express what was always there. So, when a parent senses that something has shifted, they are usually right that something looks different. But the underlying truth has not changed at all. It has simply come into view, the way a shape becomes visible once the fog around it clears.” He let that settle for a moment before finishing his thought. “That is when parents discover something that was always true. They were influencing all along, not controlling.”

I thought about several relationships in my life. “Then much of our frustration comes from confusing influence with control.”

He nodded. “A great deal of it.” Then he said something that changed how I thought about responsibility. “Your real circle of control is quite small.”

“That sounds discouraging.”

“It only sounds discouraging because you believe control creates power.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Not necessarily. You control yourself. Your thoughts, responses, and decisions. Everything else is influence.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s already a lot,” he said. “It will feel like a lot once you start using it.”

He drew an imaginary circle with his hand. “Most people spend their lives in the outer circle—the circle of concerns—what people think, what other people should do, what the economy should do, and what family members should do.”

I laughed. “That sounds familiar.”

“It sounds familiar because that’s where most of us live.” He drew a smaller circle inside the larger one. “But when you focus on what you actually control—your actions, your habits, your responses—something interesting happens. Your influence grows.”

That seemed backward to me. “If my circle of control is smaller, why would my influence be larger?”

He smiled. “People are influenced by character. Think about the people who have influenced you most. Were they constantly trying to control you?”

“No,” I said, and I thought immediately of several names.

“What made them influential, then?”

I thought for a moment. “Their integrity. Their consistency. Their example.”

“Exactly. The more responsibility you take for your conduct, the more credible you become, and credibility creates influence. The irony is that people who spend all their time trying to control others usually lose influence, while those who focus on controlling themselves often gain it.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then I asked another question. “How do I know whether something belongs in my circle of control or my circle of influence?”

He smiled. “Ask yourself a simple question. Can I directly decide this? If the answer is yes, it belongs in your circle of control. If the answer is no, it belongs at best in your circle of influence.”

“That sounds simple.”

“It is simple.”

“Then why is it so difficult?”

He smiled again. “Because, emotionally, we don’t like the answer.” We both laughed. “Think about it,” he continued. “You want someone to appreciate you. Can you make them appreciate you directly?”

“No. I can only influence them.”

“You want your child to make wise choices. Can you make those choices for them?”

“No. I can only guide.”

“Exactly.” He grew thoughtful. “Much of our anxiety stems from trying to carry responsibilities that do not belong to us. We want certainty. We want guarantees. We want complete control over outcomes. We want people to respond exactly as we hope. But life doesn’t work that way.”

“No,” I said quietly. “It doesn’t.”

He nodded. “We are responsible for effort, not outcomes.” That line reminded me of so many spiritual teachings I had encountered over the years. “God never gave us control over everything,” he continued. “He gave us responsibility.” The distinction felt profound, and I sat with it for a while.

As our conversation ended, I found myself thinking again about the Serenity Prayer. For years, I had assumed that serenity and courage were the difficult parts. Now I understood why wisdom sits between them, because without it, we try to change what cannot be changed or surrender what should be changed. Perhaps wisdom begins when we stop asking how to control this situation and start asking instead what is mine to do here. That question quietly returns us to reality.

My thoughts are mine. My actions are mine. My responses are mine. My effort is mine. Other people are not. Outcomes are not. The future is not. Strangely, the clearer we see those boundaries, the lighter life becomes. Not because problems disappear, but because we stop carrying burdens that were never ours to begin with.

 

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Why Comfort Is Not Enough

Why Comfort Is Not Enough

 

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

I once asked him a question that had quietly bothered me for years: “Why do people who seem to have everything still feel empty?”

He looked at me for a moment and said, “What do you mean by everything?”

“Comfort, I suppose. Money. Status. Security. Entertainment. The freedom to do almost whatever they want.”

“And none of those seem sufficient?”

“Not always.”

I thought of several people I had known over the years. Some had achieved much of what others spend their lives pursuing. Their careers were successful. Their finances were stable. Their lives appeared comfortable from the outside. Yet whenever I spent enough time with them, I sensed a restlessness that those achievements hadn’t resolved. At the same time, I had known people whose circumstances were objectively more difficult. They carried burdens others did not. Yet they often had an aliveness that seemed strangely absent in people with easier lives.

He nodded and said, “So perhaps comfort and meaning are not the same thing.”

I expected a more satisfying answer. I asked, “Isn’t comfort part of a good life?”

“Of course it is. Rest matters. Pleasure matters. Security matters. There is nothing admirable about making life unnecessarily difficult.”

He paused for some time, and then added, “But suppose every discomfort disappeared. Would that automatically answer the question, What is my life for?”

I thought about it. “No,” I finally said.

He smiled faintly and said, “Then perhaps comfort solves one kind of human problem without solving another.”

That distinction stayed with me.

For much of my life, I assumed dissatisfaction meant something was missing from a person’s circumstances. More success. More recognition. More freedom. More enjoyable experiences. If enough problems could be removed and enough pleasures added, fulfillment would surely follow. Yet experience kept complicating that theory. A person could possess comfort and still wonder why any of it mattered.

After a few moments, he asked, “Have you ever been busy and yet strangely empty?”

I laughed and said, “More than once.”

“What was missing?”

The question immediately brought a particular period of my life to mind. My days were full. Meetings, responsibilities, deadlines, projects. From the outside, it looked productive. In fact, if someone had asked me whether I was accomplishing things, I would have said yes. Yet there was a question quietly following me through all of it. Why does any of this matter? I wasn’t asking it consciously every day. But I could feel its presence. Eventually I said, “I think I lost sight of why I was doing any of it.”

He nodded. “That is different from being tired.”

I thought about it for a moment and then said, “I was tired too. But this felt deeper.”

“Perhaps you were not only short of energy,” he said. “Perhaps you were short of meaning.”

That was the first time the word came up in our conversation.

After a pause, he asked, “Have you read Viktor Frankl?”

“Only a little.”

He nodded. “Frankl developed what became known as logotherapy around a deceptively simple idea: human beings do not merely seek pleasure, power, or the reduction of discomfort. We also need to experience life as meaningful.”

I had heard that idea before. Yet hearing it beside the discussion of comfort made it feel more concrete.

“So meaning was the main thing he thought people were looking for?” I asked.

“He described the search for meaning as a central human motivation.”

Then he added a qualification I appreciated. “That doesn’t mean meaning explains everything. Human beings are more complicated than that.”

I nodded.

He continued: “Depression, anxiety, trauma, grief, and many other forms of suffering can arise from numerous causes. Meaning is not a replacement for treatment. It is not a cure-all.”

“Then why is it so important?”

“Because even when you understand symptoms, habits, and emotions, something important may remain unexplored if you never ask what a person’s life is oriented toward.”

He paused. “What are they living for?”

That question felt larger than I expected. We often ask people what they want. What career do you want? What kind of house? What income? What lifestyle? What experiences? But what are you living for? belonged to an entirely different category.

It forced me to think not merely about what I hoped to obtain, but about what made obtaining anything worthwhile in the first place.

Seeing my expression, he offered an example: “Imagine two people doing equally demanding work.”

I nodded.

“Same hours. Same effort. Same salary.” He said. “One experiences the work as something to endure until payday. The other believes the work contributes to something deeply important. Wouldn’t both still become tired?”

“Of course.”

“So what changes?”

He smiled. “Not necessarily the exhaustion. The meaning of the exhaustion.”

I understood immediately. Meaning did not remove the cost. It changed the relationship to the cost. I thought about parents caring for a sick child. The sleepless nights are real. The exhaustion is real. Love doesn’t magically eliminate any of that. Yet most parents wouldn’t experience those sacrifices the same way they would meaningless deprivation.

“They know what the tiredness is for,” I said.

“Exactly,” he said. “A burden can remain heavy and still become worth carrying.”

He later spoke about Frankl’s experiences during the Holocaust and the ideas that eventually emerged in Man’s Search for Meaning. But he was careful. “People sometimes turn Frankl into a slogan.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“They hear his story and conclude that meaning allows people to overcome anything.”

I nodded.

“But that isn’t a careful conclusion. Extreme suffering can overwhelm people. Trauma is real. Human resilience varies.”

“So what’s the more accurate lesson?”

He thought for a moment and then said, “Meaning can give a person something to orient toward even when suffering cannot immediately be removed.” Something to live for. I found that formulation both humbler and more profound. It didn’t romanticize suffering. It simply refused to assume suffering had the final word.

I asked another question, “Did Frankl think meaning had to come from some grand achievement?”

“No,” He said, smiling. “And that may be one of the most liberating parts of his thought.”

I leaned forward slightly. “How so?”

“Because meaning can be found in many places.” He began counting examples. “It may emerge through work that contributes something worthwhile. Through creativity. Through service.”

I nodded.

He continued, “Meaning can also emerge through experience. Love. Friendship. Beauty. Nature. Genuine encounters with other people.” Then he paused for a while and added, “And sometimes, when suffering truly cannot be removed, meaning may emerge through the way a person chooses to meet that suffering.”

I frowned slightly. “That sounds dangerous.”

“In what way?”

“It could sound as though suffering itself is good.”

He nodded immediately. “That’s why we have to be careful.”

I appreciated the answer. There was no romanticizing pain. “If suffering can be prevented, treated, corrected, reduced, or resisted,” he continued, “then responsibility may require exactly that. There is no virtue in preserving avoidable suffering simply because it might be meaningful.”

That felt balanced. “Then attitude becomes important when the situation genuinely cannot be changed.”

“Precisely.”

I thought about losses people carry. A loved one who cannot be returned. A diagnosis that cannot be erased. A limitation that must be lived with. An irreversible chapter of life. “What then?” I asked.

He looked at me quietly. “Then the question becomes: How will I meet what I cannot remove?”

I found myself thinking about several people I knew. One had lost much of the independence they once enjoyed because of illness. Another had suffered a loss that permanently altered the shape of their life. Neither person seemed happy about what had happened. Nor should they have been. Yet both possessed a dignity that did not depend on pretending the suffering was good. Perhaps meaning, in those moments, was not found in the circumstance itself. Perhaps it was found in the way they carried it. “Meaning is larger than usefulness,” I said.

“Much larger.”

That distinction felt especially important. We live in a culture that often measures worth through productivity. What have you built? What have you produced? How much have you accomplished? Those questions matter. But if they become the only questions, what happens when productivity becomes impossible? What happens during illness? Disability? Old age? Dependence? Would meaningfulness disappear simply because output decreased? Frankl’s vision suggested otherwise. A person can create something meaningful. A person can love meaningfully. A person can receive beauty meaningfully. A person can endure suffering meaningfully. The possibilities were larger than productivity alone. I found that reassuring. It meant meaning was not postponed until some future day when I finally accomplished something impressive. It might be present in an ordinary afternoon. A sincere conversation. A responsibility handled well. A moment of honesty. A difficult choice made faithfully. A beautiful sunset actually noticed rather than rushed past.

He seemed to sense the direction of my thoughts. “Why do you think people postpone meaning?” He asked.

I smiled. “Because we associate it with something big.”

“Go on.”

“One day I’ll discover my purpose. One day my work will matter. One day I’ll do something important.”

He nodded. “And what happens to today?”

I laughed. “It becomes something to get through.”

That answer felt a little too familiar. For years I had treated the present as preparation for some future significance. Perhaps meaning was always waiting somewhere beyond the next milestone. Frankl’s perspective challenged that assumption. Instead of asking only, What do I want from life?, it invited another question: What is life asking of me right now?

When I asked how that worked in practice, he offered examples: “If someone needs to be heard, meaning may lie in listening well.”

I nodded.

“If a piece of work requires integrity, meaning may lie in doing it honestly.”

“Yes.”

“If you’re witnessing something beautiful, meaning may lie in being present enough to receive it.”

I smiled and asked, “And if I’m facing something I cannot change?”

“Meaning may lie in the kind of person you choose to remain while carrying it.”

The idea had become surprisingly concrete. Meaning was no longer a distant mission statement. It was this person. This responsibility. This situation. This response.

Eventually I asked him something else: “If meaning matters so much, why do we choose comfort instead?”

He smiled and said, “Because comfort usually asks less of us.”

The answer was immediately understandable. Distraction is often easier than reflection. Entertainment is often easier than contribution. Scrolling is often easier than learning. Avoiding a difficult conversation is often easier than having one. Comfort is immediate. Meaning usually asks for participation.

“But comfort isn’t the enemy,” he added.

“No?”

“Of course not. A meaningful life can include rest, pleasure, laughter, friendship, leisure, and joy,” he said. “The problem arises when ease becomes the standard by which everything is judged.”

That felt true. Many meaningful parts of life are not easy. Parenting can be exhausting. Learning can be frustrating. Keeping promises can be inconvenient. Creating something worthwhile can require years of effort. Yet afterward these experiences often leave behind a kind of fullness that passive comfort rarely provides.

“Not easier,” I said. “But fuller.”

He nodded.

I remembered a man I once knew who changed careers. The new work paid less, involved more uncertainty, and demanded more effort. When I asked why he seemed happier, he replied with a sentence I never forgot: “For the first time, I feel useful.”

I shared that story.

He smiled and said, “That may have been one source of meaning for him.”

“Not the only one?”

“No. People are not machines whose worth depends on output.”

Again, the idea widened. A human life could matter without becoming impressive. A person could matter during seasons of giving and seasons of receiving. Presence mattered. Love mattered. Gratitude mattered. Dignity mattered. The way joy was received mattered. The way suffering was carried mattered.

As I reflected on my own life, I noticed something. Some days filled with entertainment left almost no lasting impression. They were enjoyable enough, but strangely thin. Other days contained very little excitement, yet remained memorable because of a meaningful conversation, a period of concentrated learning, an act of service, a moment of beauty, or a responsibility taken seriously. Those days were not always happier. But they felt more inhabited. I had participated in them rather than merely consumed them.

As our conversation drew to a close, I returned to my original question. “So why do people who seem to have everything still feel empty?”

He thought for a while before answering. “Sometimes because what they have answers questions the human heart was never ultimately asking.”

I waited.

“Money answers, ‘What can I afford?’ Comfort answers, ‘How can I reduce inconvenience?’ Status answers, ‘How am I regarded?’ Pleasure answers, ‘What feels good right now?'” Then he added quietly: “But none of them necessarily answers, ‘What is worth giving myself to?'”

That seemed to bring the entire conversation together. The problem was never pleasure. Or comfort. Or success. Or wealth. The problem was expecting them to carry a weight they were never designed to carry.

Later, I reflected on our conversation. When restlessness appears, perhaps the first question should not always be: How can I feel better? Sometimes another question deserves to stand beside it: What am I living for right now? What matters in this moment? What is being asked of me here? Is there something worth loving, serving, creating, receiving, or enduring that I have stopped noticing?

Meaning does not eliminate pain. It does not guarantee happiness. It does not replace treatment when treatment is needed. But it can provide direction where comfort alone cannot. Perhaps human beings need more than a pleasant life. We need a life that points somewhere. Something worth loving. Something worth serving. Something worth creating. Something worth receiving with gratitude. And when suffering truly cannot be removed, some way of meeting it that allows us to remain human rather than be defined entirely by what has happened.

Comfort can make life easier. Meaning helps us understand what makes the living worthwhile.

 

/by

The Trap of Waiting for Certainty

The Trap of Waiting for Certainty

 

 

 

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

“I keep going in circles,” I told him.

He waited.

“I can’t seem to make a decision with peace. Every time I think I’ve arrived at an answer, another thought appears.”

“What kind of thought?” He asked.

“The usual kind. What if this is wrong? What if I missed something? What if I regret it later? What if this affects other people in ways I can’t foresee?”

“And then?”

“And then I start over.”

I revisited the same options, reanalyzed the same facts, and reconsidered the same fears. Sometimes I spent so much time evaluating a decision that I lost sight of what I was trying to decide in the first place. I wasn’t moving forward. I was simply circling the same territory, hoping that one more round of thinking would finally produce certainty.

For a few moments, he said nothing. Then he asked, “What are you hoping to find at the end of all that thinking?”

“The right answer.”

He smiled slightly and said, “The right answer, or certainty?”

I wanted to answer immediately. Instead, I found myself hesitating. Because the more I thought about it, the more I realized he had touched something important. I wasn’t merely trying to make a good decision. I was trying to find a decision that came with guarantees. No regret. No loss. No unintended consequences. No possibility of discovering later that I should have chosen differently. In other words, I wanted something life had never promised.

He seemed to notice where my thoughts had gone. “You are expecting something from decisions that decisions were never meant to provide.” He said.

“What?”

“Certainty.”

I found myself thinking about several decisions I had delayed over the years. One involved changing direction in a professional project. For months, I moved between different options, filling notebooks with considerations, advantages, risks, and contingency plans. Every time I reached a conclusion, I found a new possibility that needed to be examined. At first, I called it thoroughness. Looking back, it was mostly fear. Not fear of making a bad decision. Fear of making a human one. Because a human decision always contains uncertainty.

“No human decision can be absolute,” he said.

The statement sounded obvious. Yet emotionally, I had never accepted it. Part of me still believed that if I thought long enough, gathered enough information, and consulted enough people, I would eventually arrive at a perfect choice. A choice so clearly correct that all doubt would disappear. But every important decision I had ever faced seemed to resist that fantasy.

He leaned back and said something I would return to many times afterward. “Decisions are not about certainty.” He said, “They are about sincerity, humility, and movement.”

The word that stayed with me was movement. Because anxiety rarely moves. It analyzes. It rehearses. It predicts. It revisits. It stands at the crossroads, imagining every possible road while refusing to walk any of them.

I remembered a friend who once spent nearly a year deciding whether to relocate for an opportunity that genuinely excited him. Every few weeks he discovered a new concern. A new variable. A new risk. Eventually, someone asked him a simple question: “If every concern disappeared, would you move tomorrow?” After a long silence, he admitted that another concern would probably replace the ones that had already been resolved. The problem was not a lack of information. The problem was expecting certainty to arrive eventually. I understood him because I had often done the same thing.

“What kinds of decisions trouble you most?” he asked.

“The ones that affect other people.”

He nodded.

“Tell me more.”

I thought about my answer. “Family decisions. Decisions that affect parents, children, or people who depend on me. Those are the hardest.”

“Because you don’t want to harm them.”

“Exactly.”

“What do you do when faced with those decisions?”

“I try to think through every possible outcome.”

“And then?”

“I try to think through the outcomes of those outcomes.”

He laughed quietly and said, “So you attempt to see the future.”

I smiled. “When you put it that way, it sounds impossible.”

“Because it is.”

There was no criticism in his voice. Only clarity. He continued. “When decisions affect other people, include them.”

That sounded simpler than I expected. Seeing my expression, he elaborated. “When decisions affect others, their perspectives matter. Not because they possess certainty, but because they see things you do not.”

That reminded me of a conversation I had once had with a family member while wrestling with an important decision. I had become so focused on what could go wrong that I completely overlooked a potential benefit that seemed obvious to her. It wasn’t that she was wiser than I was. She was simply standing in a different place and therefore seeing a different part of the landscape.

Perhaps that is why consultation matters. Not because it produces certainty. But because it expands vision. Then he said something else. “We do not possess God’s vision.”

The statement immediately softened something in me. So much anxiety comes from unconsciously expecting ourselves to see everything. Every consequence. Every possibility. Every future outcome. We want complete visibility before moving forward. Yet no human being has ever possessed that kind of vision.

Wisdom is not knowing everything. Wisdom begins by accepting that we cannot. I admitted something that had often frustrated me. “Sometimes people don’t really tell me what they think.”

“What do you mean?”

“They leave the decision entirely to me.”

He smiled. “Have you told them that?”

The question surprised me. “No.”

“Why not?”

I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I had assumed their silence meant they had nothing to contribute. But he pointed out something I had never considered before. People often hesitate for reasons hidden from us. They may fear being blamed if things go badly. They may fear conflict. They may worry about disappointing someone. Sometimes they remain vague not because they don’t care, but because they are afraid. That shifted the entire conversation. The issue was no longer simply making the right decision. It was creating enough trust for honest dialogue.

A few moments later, he said something I desperately needed to hear. “You will make mistakes.” There was no hesitation in his voice. Not you might. You will.

At first, I resisted the idea. I realized how much of my decision paralysis rested on the hope that careful thinking could somehow exempt me from mistakes. Yet when I looked back over my life, many of the lessons I valued most came from decisions that didn’t unfold according to plan. A project I was certain would succeed ended in disappointment. At the time, I considered it a failure. Yet the experience exposed weaknesses in my approach that success would have hidden. Another decision led to a difficult season I never would have chosen. Yet that season taught patience, resilience, and humility in ways comfort never could. Growth and perfection rarely seemed to travel together.

He continued. “Some mistakes can be corrected.”

That brought relief.

“And some cannot.”

That brought humility.

“But even those can become teachers if you are willing to learn.”

I sat quietly. The longer I reflected on it, the more I saw how often I treated life as though it were a single examination where one incorrect answer ruined everything. But life is not a single test. It is a long journey. Most decisions do not permanently close the story. They become part of the story.

Eventually our discussion returned to the deeper source of paralysis. “The thought that traps people is usually simple,” he said.

“What thought?”

“What if something goes wrong?”

I nodded immediately. That thought had accompanied countless decisions.

“The question appears responsible,” he said. “But repeated endlessly, it becomes a prison.”

I understood exactly what he meant. At some point, caution stops serving wisdom. It starts serving fear. The mind stops evaluating possibilities and begins worshipping safety. Then he said something that reminded me of our earlier conversations about anxiety. “Do not become the servant of your thoughts.”

I sat with that for a while. Because it described what often happened during difficult decisions. A fearful thought appeared. Then another. Then another. Soon I stopped evaluating them. I was obeying them. He described it as allowing thoughts to go out of bounds.

I liked the image immediately. Most anxious thinking begins with something legitimate. A reasonable concern. A genuine possibility. But then the mind keeps expanding it beyond proportion. A concern becomes a scenario. The scenario becomes a prediction. The prediction becomes an emotional certainty. And before long, we react to imagined futures rather than present realities.

“So what should I do when that happens?” I asked.

He thought for a moment. Then he said, “Ask yourself a simple question.”

“What question?”

“Is this thought helping me decide, or is it helping me avoid discomfort?”

I found myself returning to that question often. Because many thoughts disguise themselves as wisdom. In reality, they are attempts to escape uncertainty. The more honest I became with myself, the more often I recognized the pattern. I wasn’t always seeking clarity. Often, I was seeking emotional immunity. I wanted a decision that would protect me from regret, criticism, uncertainty, and pain. But no such decision exists.

Some months later, I finally made a choice I had postponed for a very long time. Not because every question was answered. Not because certainty arrived. But because I accepted that certainty was never coming. I had reflected carefully. I had sought advice. I had listened honestly. I had prayed, considered the available information, and examined my motives as best I could. And then I moved.

That was the most important part. I moved. Was the decision perfect?

No.

Did everything unfold exactly as I expected?

Of course not. Some parts went better than anticipated. Others brought challenges I had never foreseen. But something surprising happened. I survived the uncertainty. And more importantly, I learned from it.

That was the moment I finally understood what he had been trying to show me all along. A decision is not the end of the journey. It is part of the journey.

Many of us suffer because we treat every choice as though it must permanently secure the future. We want today’s decision to guarantee tomorrow’s outcome. But life is more fluid than that. You learn. You adjust. You correct. You grow.

Looking back, the greatest gift he gave me was not a formula for making flawless decisions. It was freedom from the illusion that flawless decisions exist. Once that illusion begins to fade, something else becomes possible. You consult honestly. You reflect carefully. You remain open to correction. And then you move forward, not because certainty has finally arrived, but because you have accepted that learning matters more than certainty ever could.

And perhaps real maturity begins there: not when a person finds the perfect decision, but when a person stops demanding guarantees from life and becomes willing to walk forward with humility, sincerity, and the courage to learn from whatever comes next.

/by

The Patience of Influence

The Patience of Influence

 

 

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

Finally, one day, I asked him, “If I have done everything I reasonably can, what do I do when nothing seems to change?”

He looked at me thoughtfully. “How do you know they haven’t?”

I smiled. “I think I would know.”

“Would you?”

His question caught me by surprise.

He continued: “When you speak to someone today, when do you expect the change to happen?”

I thought about it. “Now,” I admitted.

He smiled and said, “Most of us do.” Then he leaned back in his chair. “But human beings rarely change that way.”

I asked him what he meant.

“Think about your own life,” he said. “How many of your deepest convictions were formed the very first time you heard them?”

I searched my memory. Very few. Most of the ideas that had shaped my life had returned again and again over the years. Sometimes they appeared in conversations. Sometimes in books. Sometimes through painful experiences. Often I didn’t appreciate their significance until much later.

He seemed to read my thoughts. “Influence usually works quietly,” he said. “It settles before it grows.”

That explained something I had never understood. I had been treating every important conversation as though it were a final examination. If nothing changed immediately, I assumed the conversation had failed. Perhaps that was never a fair expectation.

He smiled as though remembering something. “Many years ago,” he said, “someone gave me advice that I completely ignored.”

“What happened?”

“I repeated the same mistake for years.”

“And then?”

“One day I found myself remembering his words almost exactly.”

“What had changed?”

“I had.”

The simplicity of the answer stayed with me.

The words had been waiting long before I was ready to receive them. Perhaps that is true more often than we realize. Sometimes we are planting thoughts in ground that has not yet been prepared. That does not mean the seed is wasted. It simply means it has not yet found its season.

He must have noticed the image forming in my mind. “Think of a farmer,” he said. “He prepares the soil. He plants the seed. He waters it. He protects it from weeds.” He looked at me. “Does he then stand over the field demanding that the seed grow before sunset?”

I laughed and said, “Of course not.”

“Why not?”

“Because growth doesn’t happen that way.”

He nodded. “Then why do we expect people to?”

I had never connected the two. A farmer works faithfully because he understands that growth follows its own rhythm. He cannot manufacture life. He can only create the conditions in which life may flourish.

Perhaps influence works the same way. We prepare the soil with kindness. We plant truth with sincerity. We water it with patience. We protect the relationship with respect. But the growth itself comes from a place beyond our control.

That realization transformed the way I looked at time. Every sincere conversation no longer had to produce an immediate result. Every act of kindness no longer had to receive an immediate response. No longer did every piece of advice have to be accepted before I could consider it worthwhile. Some seeds germinate quickly. Others remain hidden for years. Yet both are still seeds.

Before we left, he said something I doubt I will ever forget. “You are not called to manufacture change.” He paused, and then added, “You are called to remain faithful in your influence.”

As I walked home, I realized that hope looks different now. It is no longer the anxious hope that insists on immediate results. It is the quieter hope that trusts sincere effort is never wasted, even when its fruit remains invisible.

Now, whenever I find myself becoming impatient with someone I care about, I picture the farmer. He is not idle. He works diligently. But he also knows when to stop striving and simply wait. Perhaps that is what patient influence looks like. We prepare. We plant. We nurture. And then we entrust the growth to the One who alone can bring it forth.

There is great peace in becoming a faithful farmer of souls instead of trying to become their maker.

/by

The Boundary of Responsibility

The Boundary of Responsibility

 

 

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

The conversation stayed with me long after we had parted. I understood, at least in principle, that my role was to influence rather than to control. There was relief in that realization. Yet another question kept returning to my mind. If I am not responsible for changing another person, then what am I responsible for? The next time we met, I asked him exactly that. “If their decisions are ultimately theirs,” I said, “then where does my responsibility end?”

He did not answer immediately. Instead, he asked, “When you speak to someone you care about, what do you believe your duty is?”

I began listing the obvious things. “To be honest.”

He nodded.

“To be kind.”

Another nod.

“To explain clearly.”

“Good.”

“To remain patient.”

Again he nodded. As I continued thinking, I realized something. Everything I had mentioned described my own actions. None of them described the other person’s response.

He seemed pleased that I had noticed. “Your responsibility,” he said quietly, “always lies within your own conduct.”

The simplicity of the statement concealed how easily I had forgotten it. “So whether they listen…”

“…is not yours.”

“Whether they agree…”

“…is not yours.”

“Whether they change…”

He smiled and said, “…is certainly not yours.”

I sat quietly, allowing the thought to settle. For years I had allowed my sense of responsibility to expand far beyond my own actions. Every time someone ignored good advice, I instinctively felt I had not explained it well enough. Every time they repeated the same mistake, I assumed I needed to become more persuasive. It never occurred to me that I had crossed a boundary.

He drew an imaginary line on the table with his finger. “On this side,” he said, “is everything entrusted to you.”

I waited.

“Your intention. Your sincerity. Your wisdom. Your words. Your patience. Your character.”

Then he moved his finger to the other side. “And here…,” He paused for a moment, and then added, “…begins another person’s freedom.”

The image stayed with me. It was such a simple boundary, yet I had crossed it countless times without realizing it.

He then shared something personal. “There was a time,” he said, “when I lost my temper with a close friend.”

That surprised me.

“I had spoken to him several times about a decision that was harming him. I explained my concerns carefully. I listened to his perspective. I prayed for him. Yet nothing changed.”

“What happened?”

“One day he repeated the same mistake, and I became angry.” He looked down for a moment before continuing. “I wasn’t angry because he had made another mistake.” He paused, and then said, “I was angry because I had quietly begun expecting that my words should produce change.”

I recognized the feeling immediately. Not the situation. The expectation. How many times had I done the same thing? I had mistaken sincere effort for guaranteed results. He looked at me and said something I have remembered ever since: “Your responsibility does not grow simply because another person’s resistance grows.”

That sentence exposed a habit I had never questioned. Whenever someone failed to respond, I assumed I had to do more. Explain again. Persuade again. Push a little harder. As though another person’s reluctance automatically increased my obligation.

But it doesn’t. My responsibility remains what it always was: to act with sincerity, wisdom and respect. Nothing less. But also nothing more.

“But isn’t that difficult?” I asked. “How do you care deeply without feeling responsible for the outcome?”

He smiled. “You keep caring.” I waited. I knew something more was coming. Then, he said, “You simply stop carrying what was never yours.”

There was an extraordinary freedom in that distinction. He wasn’t asking me to become detached. He wasn’t telling me to stop advising, encouraging, or supporting. He was asking me to stop measuring my faithfulness by another person’s response.

As I reflected on countless conversations from my own life, I realized how often I had evaluated myself by outcomes I could never control. If they listened, I felt successful. If they ignored me, I felt defeated. Both judgments rested on the same mistake. I had allowed someone else’s choices to become the measure of my own responsibility. Now the boundary seemed much clearer. My task is to speak truthfully. To listen carefully. To choose my words wisely. To remain respectful. To be patient. To pray. Beyond that, another person’s journey belongs to them.

As we finished our conversation, he left me with one final thought: “The clearer this boundary becomes,” he said, “the more peacefully you will be able to love people.”

I didn’t fully understand the sentence then. But I knew another question had begun to form. If my responsibility ends with sincere effort…

What happens when that effort seems to accomplish nothing?

/1 Comment/by

Death as a Master Reminder

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

There are moments in life that wake us up more than any lecture, book, or conversation ever could. Few reminders hit as hard as death. One evening, a neighbor chats casually, and the next morning, news spreads that he slipped, fell, and never got up again. A friend shares dinner with you one day and is gone the next week. These sudden departures strike like lightning—brief, blinding, unforgettable.

The Illusion of Permanence

Most of us live as if tomorrow is guaranteed. We plan vacations months in advance, delay apologies, and postpone what truly matters. Death interrupts this illusion and reminds us that the future is not ours to promise. The only certainty is the present moment.

We see life as if it extends infinitely ahead, but in reality, each moment passes irreversibly. However, every moment is not lost—it becomes eternal. How we spend it will resonate forever. Every decision we make—whether in kindness or cruelty, gratitude or ingratitude—leads to a lasting consequence.

Everyday Encounters with Mortality

The reminder of death occurs not only during major events but also in everyday experiences.

  • Watching a funeral procession pass by.
  • Hearing about the sudden illness of a colleague.
  • Reading news of an accident involving someone your own age.

Each event whispers: “You too are temporary. But what you do now will last forever. How will you use your time?”

Death and Perspective

When death confronts us, many things lose their significance. Resentments suddenly seem trivial. The quest for recognition feels empty. Even material success, though not meaningless, no longer defines the value of life.

What grows sharper instead are questions of legacy:

  • Did I love sincerely?
  • Did I use my abilities to serve, or only to hoard?
  • If I leave tomorrow, what will endure from my choices today?

Death, like a stern teacher, refuses to let us hide behind distractions.

A Master Reminder, Not a Morbid Obsession

Some worry that thinking about death too often makes life feel heavy and joyless. But in reality, it can do the opposite. By reminding us that our time is limited, death encourages us to enjoy life more fully. A meal with loved ones tastes sweeter when we know such moments are temporary. An evening walk feels more valuable when we realize we might not have endless evenings left.

The reminder is not meant to paralyze but to prioritize. Death does not ask us to stop living; it asks us to live more deliberately—knowing that every breath is shaping eternity.

The Inner Dialogue Death Awakens

Encounters with death trigger a change in our self-talk. The complaint, “Why is life unfair?” often shifts to “What can I do with the life I still have?” Instead of endlessly delaying growth, we start to take action. Instead of holding onto bitterness, we forgive. Instead of fearing the end, we prepare for it by cherishing our present moments.

The Three Choices Before Us

If every moment is pushing us toward our unavoidable end, we cannot escape the need to choose how to face it. In reality, there are only three options:

  1. Ignore it: We can live in denial, distracting ourselves until the inevitable overtakes us. But ignorance does not protect us from reality; it only guarantees we arrive unprepared.
  2. Fret about it: We can become paralyzed by fear, and resent life’s impermanence, as if despair could slow the train rushing us forward. But this only wastes the time we do have.
  3. Eternalize it: We can give each moment meaning—through acts of compassion, words of truth, and efforts of integrity—so that when destiny arrives, it finds us ready, even eager, to face it.

The third choice is the only one that transforms inevitability into hope.

Conclusion

Death is not an end; it is a master reminder. It exposes life’s fragility, dissolves illusions, and brings into focus what truly matters. Though life is impermanent, every passing moment is becoming eternal.

We cannot change the train of time racing toward its destination, but we can choose how we ride it. We can ignore it, fret about it, or fill the journey with meaning. The last choice transforms the inevitability of death into the triumph of a life lived with depth, honesty, and purpose.

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