John Banville writes in his novel ‘The Sea’ that how do we
decide where life begins, since life has already, always, begun before. A
similar thing could be said about its opposite: how do we know when something
has, for certain, ended? How we decide when something has ended, since it lives
on as long as we do. The recent Nobel prize winner of literature, Louise Gluck,
has a short yet pointing poem about endings too, which ends with these lines:
‘perhaps once one begins/ there are only endings…’ She is right. From the
moment of our birth, a series of endings ensue. All of our life is spent in
ending one thing and then moving onto another one. But if this perspective
sounds too pessimistic for you, then we could flip the coin and see from
another viewpoint as well, that is, every end has its beginning too.
Nevertheless, since everything has to end, including the beginning, then it is
the end that has the last say. But the question remains, how we know when
something has ended? Perhaps the answer is: when you can feel a sufficient
distance between you and the thing that is now in your past; a distance between
you and the thing that has now become a part of your past. A detachment. An
end. A no more stringed relation. Separate. Apart. Away. As Soren Kierkegaard
said about life that ‘life can only be understood backwards but must be lives
forwards.’ Perhaps it is that ability to be able to look backwards, and even to
a desirable state, of being able to judge it. Or to be able to ‘connect the
dots’ which Steve Jobs talks about in a commencement speech: ‘you can only
connect the dots looking backwards.’ Perhaps, then, something has ended when it
is a dot or series of dots which you can look back upon. And desirably, connect
to understand. For only through understanding could we become able to truly
forgive. Although in the luxury of the past, that is to be able to relive it
without being caught up in its intensity and present-ness, there’s ground
enough for one to forgive, yet in understanding, therein lies a true
opportunity to forgive with reason and completeness. Finally, as far as how can
a ‘history’ or ‘the history’ can end, that I wouldn’t know. It is just one of
those excellent titles that I am always on the hunt for. It comes from Francis
Fukuyama’s book ‘The End of History and The Last Man’. Yet it felt, on the New
Year’s Eve, that some history might have ended for me too, therefore in this
journal I am going to write about a particular history in my life and its end.
It is a rather sad-sounding title for my first journal of
2022, but since we know ourselves too well, sadness shouldn’t shame or surprise
us anymore. We need only to accept it by this point; we are past reckoning with
it. But just like sunsets which show us how endings can be beautiful too, the
end of history which I want to talk about might also be beautiful in its own
way. A sweet sadness that is, like sitting back on the sand, watching the sun
getting dimmer and taking on bright orange and red colors, being un-hurting-ly
visible to the naked eyes; something so beautiful yet also sad for its about to
leave, abandon us… yet its beauty plays a softening magic of the sharpness of
pain, and tears tend to well up in our eyes, as we realize how fleeting the
nature of life can be, how everything is always marching towards an end and we
have no power to change it. And how in our limited lives, we are loved,
intimated, and known, in a truer sense, a very handful of times only – how
unbearably lonely we can be… but for an instance only, made bearable by the
beauty of a setting sun.
It’s been a full-on busy year for the 50 days that it’s been
here. While the early parts of January were overlapped by the ‘wintering’ we
were engaged in, the latter part of it kicked off a series of engagements that
seems to continue still. Of course our convocation ceremony happened, and while
there was a lot of ifs and buts leading up to it, the event day itself smoothed
out every prior crease that had been left behind. It was a warming, beautiful,
happy, and serene day. To quote Wordsworth ‘bliss was in that dawn to be alive/
but to be young was very heaven!’ Spiderman 3, new apartment sorting, rereading
favorite books, tests for scholarships and jobs resumed, the iPad situation
finally conquered, the new phone of course Pixel4, and most recently, the
arrival of some newly made friends here and the tireless and robust trips
around Karachi, day after day. Tomorrow morning, the test we had been waiting
and mildly preparing for would be here: the screening test for CSS. And eight
days after that, March would begin and so would our first official
internship/training, a 9-5 experience, with, merrily, a modest 25k salary. I’m
both nervous, worried, and excited about it… Only when we shall start it, could
we report on how it is. It’d continue for six months, meaning it would end in
August. March would a getting used to month, April Ramadan, May Eid and hot and
CSS (*if), June monsoon, July big Eid and monsoon, and August possibly
rainfalls. It would be our first real occupation since the end of university,
even possibly since the start of corona virus and online classes. So, we would
see how nothing goes…
The internship aside, our chances have significantly faded
for studying abroad. Scholarships have withered away under our non-serious
preparations and of direct admissions we know nothing and know not what to
except at the current moment. I hope for this year to be a happening one, and
by that I don’t necessarily mean ‘successful’, but rather a mix of failure and
success, which should ultimately propel me into a state from where I arrive on
a clarity and course of action, or preferably be already in one by the end of
this year. Yet to be witnessed…
But I guess I’m writing this journal a few weeks too late, since
what I have talked about yet hasn’t significantly featured any ending of
history or anything else. Life has moved on and entered into new beginnings. However,
for what it’s worth, looking back, here are a few things that have ended, and
with them a shared history, too: university. I still have to collect my
thoughts on my graduation journey, which I’ve considered to write in parts. It
did end, finally, despite however it was and with it has ended a history of
university life, one which everyone frets so much about. I couldn’t go through
the properness of its end due to the covid and start of online classes.
University ended for me a couple of years too soon. 2021 ended also and with
it, my awful relation thereto as well. Last year was significantly challenging;
a year of continuing suffering that didn’t necessarily brought any positive
changes, or any changes in me at all. I would look back on it, despite it
shining moments which efforted to rescue in our last journal of 2021 where
reviewed each month of 2021, with a sad feeling inside my head. And finally, an
already plentiful relationship with prior ends, yet still once more, ended too:
I hesitate to call it an end, for it still lives. Perhaps those who truly love
never really believe in it ever ending, despite the crippling relationship and
its nasty breakups. And I also hesitate to call it an end of my history with my
ex for I suffered from the unsavoring revivals of this relationship in the past,
despite our final sounding breakups, or at least attempts. What she finally,
and very coldly ended, was a meandering, undecided, and dangling string which
somehow gave us the sense that we were still connected and obliged to each
other. It wasn’t a relationship. We were too hurt and uncertain of our own
commitments to ever call it that. Yet every end, no matter how futile it may
come to seem, hurts. And that last breakup, which ended a history that still
remains ended, hurt so much because I realized how little we lived, shared, and
cherished that relationship between us – how so pathetically little. ‘To die is
nothing,’ says some philosopher, ‘but to not live, now that is a tragedy.’ And
I don’t think we lived it as nearly enough as we loved each other. While it may
continue to live and cause us intense temptations to contact or hurt ourselves
by not doing so, it remains ended as long as I choose it to be so. De-tach was,
after all, a 2022 resolution. Let the past become so that we could at least
know how that it is in comparison to our painful attempts of un-ending every
end. Let the past become, we’ll worry about later, later. I miss her. Her
voice, her face, the earnest conversations, the probing questions whether I
still love her. It hurts me not to know where she is, how she is doing, if she
misses me equally as painfully too, what she thinks about, what she thinks
about us. I want to ask her if she has given up hope, or is she unable to do
so, like me. I see her in my dreams, it hurts when she rejects me in some
dreams and it buoys me to joyous heights when I finally receive her email in
others… The theatre of hurt feelings continues, but the history remains ended!
The weather is nice. It has complimented us immensely in our
continuing trips. The new apartment has also grown on me. It feels home now.
Reading has been good. Watching too. Tests, news of internship, friends
arriving – so far, the year has been treating me well. And deservedly so, too. I
know I’ve suffered to be able to enjoy the continuation of this life, and its
reviving goodnesses. What we should always remember, and most importantly in
the darker times, is that life changes – for better or worse – but life
changes. Tomorrow will always surprise you; maybe not the immediate tomorrows,
but the eventual ones for sure.
From the midst of busyness, promising eventualities, and
hopeful prayers with earnest eyes – and at times a lonely, aching heart: you
from February of 2022. Adios.