The Way

This song gives me the chills. I guess I end up reading too much into it like I do with everything else. I sit here, day in day out, listening to MCR singing their hearts out (Sing by My Chemical Romance is currently my new favourite song even though it's an old tune), closer to comprehending what it is about life that's evading me, only to forget about it the next instant. And I can't help feeling like I-make that we-have lost our way. 

We surround ourselves with smooth metallic machinery, existing on the reliability of coffee and/or tea (depending on which continent we belong to) and branded things, believing only what we want to believe and tuning everything else out. I know it takes a lot of different people to make a world work, and that good and evil are inseparable, and anyway, most of us lie somewhere in the shady middle-ground between the two as it is, but what was this life really about before iPhones and iPads existed and there was no such thing as the internet? 

I know the progress mankind has made is incredible. Seriously, what a wondrous world we live in. Last summer my dad took us all to the PIA Planetarium here in Karachi. It wasn't as sophisticated as all the other science centers out there, but the experience was enough to get me thinking. There's just one tiny planet in this humongous universe that supports life (that we know of, in any case) and we're on it. A beautiful marble of swirling blue and white and green to the casual space-observer's eye, but if they were to look closer, they'd see the remnants of years and years of the human race, the accumulation of roughly half a million years of human history. All the wars, broken relationships, and broken hearts-all the coarseness that comes from being human, the push and pull of our lives. Glorious machines and power lines sprung from our minds. It's overwhelming to be a part of the human legacy. I was brought up to believe in the goodness of humanity; that if you're more privileged than people around you, you're supposed to be generous and giving, that even if somebody works for you, you're to treat them as your equal, that you always pick up after yourselves, and that you never ever lie or deceive. But you know what, I'm beginning to think all of it is too idealistic for the complex world we live in. There'll always be somebody out there who doesn't give a damn. 

So what's life really about? We are born out of nothing, we grow old, learn to do the same things our parents and grandparents did, get jobs, have kids and fade away. 

And suddenly, with a flash of clarity, I remember God, and I realize with relief that life can be no cosmic accident. 

I BELIEVE!