Think about it for a second: the clock and its units are the
measurements of time, not the time itself; much like how an inch measures
matter but isn’t itself the matter. But unlike matter, time itself doesn’t
exist and you cannot apportion time as you can apportion matter. Such a
realization baffles me, albeit momentarily, about how merged the idea of clock
and time have become, yet how totally different they actually are. Time
definitely influences us, but we posses no will against its influence. While
matter and space maybe malleable at the hands of man, time remains ever so
elusive, so uncorruptable. What Ruth Ozeki said: “Forget the clock. It has no
power over time.”
In spur of the moment, as most of my routine is set lately,
I was presented the name of Benjamin Labatut. It was during one of those
random, yet almost necessitating sessions of navigating the vast and unending
world inside my phone. A chain reaction ensued. My brain poured all that I
know, and most importantly feel, about this author in split of a second. My
‘monkey brain’ in equally as short a time, imagined and immediately subscribed
to the activity of reading Labatut’s ‘The Maniac’ which I had with me. And what
started as yet another short trip to the fluctuating world inside my phone
ended up as an impulsive intent of reading a book which wasn’t really on my
mind at all.
Ever since I realized the mutual joy of the act of reading
on one hand, and on the other the accumulating desire for a foundational
knowledge, subjects distasteful to me before have become insurmountably
interesting and important. Physics, and inseparably, mathematics are prime and
recent examples. But these mutual joys often take root through a few defining
books and authors. Benjamin Labatut and his first book translated into English
‘When We Cease to Understand the World’ are foundational for me in this case.
They left enough of an imprint on me to be continuously interested and ponder
about the twin subjects of Physics and Mathematics – and their central role in
teasing the mystery of the universe.
‘The Problem of Fastest Descent’ is a Physics experiment
where the shortest time is calculated for an object rolling down from a higher
point A to a lower point B. The common answer would be a straight diagonal line
which is false; however a more observant answer might point toward a circular
bend. The accurate answered found later was the arc of a wheel – a bent path,
not circular but almost. The difficulty I’m facing in writing these paragraphs
proves that my bubbling interest isn’t convincing enough for me to actually
study fundamental Physics. Rather, it is a literary one; one in aid of my own
‘theory of everything’, or as Stephen Hawking’s beautifully put ‘to know the
mind of God.’
And what better place to start knowing God than knowing
yourself. And what better way to know yourself than when you are utterly
hopeless and shattered. What Ali ibn Abi Talib said: “I came to know God
through the unbecoming of my own will and intentions.” During 2025, I once
again came face to face with ‘the nothingness’ that is depression, a darkness
so dense it terrifies you, a restlessness so relentless that mere existing
becomes a Sisyphean exercise. And I wouldn’t be exaggerating beyond measure if
I say that it crushed me to my lowest self-esteem and filled me with such guilt
that even a self-conscious criminal wouldn’t feel. In short, 2025 was the year
of my ‘fastest descent’.
Here's a reflection on the calendar year 2025 – a
measurement of that fastest descent.
Winter – weekend of the calendar months
Autumn announces the coming of the winter; November opens
the door. By December, one is already in its midst and trying to tune to the
shorter days and the chilled air. The sunrays of winter, its calm almost filmic
afternoons, the long nights and the cheap coziness of blankets – winter is life
trying to appear more beautiful by being melancholic. Compared to the hot and
endlessly long days of summer, where life is unmistakably harsh and merciless,
in winter life becomes apologetic almost and retreats, allowing for some much
needed rest and some time for reflection.
The world, alas, doesn’t give a shit. Corporations have to
finalize their accounts, audit high season begins, lists pour from magazines to
YouTube creators, ‘best books and films and songs’, marketing people kick with
their ‘sales’ that almost forces you to spend your money, and of course the
meme engine gets churning even faster. In our capitalist world, winters instead
of being the opportunity for rest and disengagement has become an altogether
faster world. With the sun departing sooner and sooner, one is left gasping for
time and some calm.
And so the bridging months ’24 and ’25 passed, in such an
ecstatic hurry that it feels impossible to even recall them. Happiness and pace
is hardly ever a good combination. December 2024 and January 2025 continued to
bask in the warmth and light of the wedding, and February with its 28 days was
spent in folly and residual joy. The weekend whiplash of calendar months was
over. Then came March…
ACCA – a promise of relief and a reality of inadequacy
If October knocks on the door of winter and November opens
it, then March shuts close this door and simultaneously opens the door to
summer. Although I can recall glimpses of the blooming spring and its soft
showers, the season of flowers has had little stay and place in my life to get
a mention. From winter, for me, it’s a direct arrival into the long, long
summer.
Premonition (n.): a strong feeling that something is about
to happen, especially something ‘unpleasant’. The wedding craze and joy had
been fully cashed in, the hypomanic state was taking its leave as well – and I
could almost sense the arrival, the slow march, and the fearful anticipation of
the ‘unpleasant’ noonday demon.
The few weeks leading up to the March exam were spent in
stress and unmanaged fear. Try as I might, I just couldn’t calm myself enough
to study for 50/50 chance at passing the papers. After the second of my two
papers, I remember being in that gloomy state. I went to Sea View and walked
along the sea shore alone. It was a few hours to Maghrib and iftar. It was the
month of Ramadan. The lights were dimming inside me. I could feel it, but boy
did I have no clue what was waiting for me.
On 14th of April, I woke early to the sound of
alarm bell and without checking my phone I went to for a walk. The results had
been announced, my fate had already been realized, what was left for me was to
face it. People often discuss the possibility of fate alongside its
improbability – after all free will is granted given in today liberal world –
but rarely do people assess their own resolutions regarding fate should it be
the actual cause of life and its events.
If fate exists, then your free will and decisions become the
driving force of fate itself. Your decisions perform the fatalistic events set
since the birth of the universe, while fate directs your free will to those
decisions in the first place. The events of future – bound to happen – forms
your path toward them like a magnet that attracts metal its way. Fate exists;
your free will does not. How liberating and humiliating at the same time; that’s
the irony of fate. Then only one question remains: can you accept your fate
gracefully?
I couldn’t that morning. I had failed both my papers. “Oh,
fuck no. This is so bad.” I kept saying to myself repeatedly. I took a long
walk of shame toward home. I kept predicting its effect of my immediate life,
but I could think of nothing but shame and humiliation. “Fate asta zoi” said my
friend Ali when I confided into him. I replied: “Fate doesn’t exist. ‘I’ have
failed. It is my mistake. I need to be punished. It shouldn’t have happened.”
ACCA is a constant reminder of my own inadequacy. My
mild-manner, uncertain, and ‘defeated-old-self’ is against a relentless
competition who are fierce and ready. Their LinkedIn profiles exuberate
confidence and material success. They aspire to the corporate world and its
challenges. And most importantly, they believe in the dignity of their
profession and resonate with it. My stance is one of confusion. I know well
enough to disassociate with this hypocrite capitalist world; yet I am in dire
need of the career path it can offer me. I don’t want to commit myself to its
culture and goals, yet my desolate LinkedIn profile remains a sore source of my
low self-esteem. ACCA is a promise of relief from my current narrative of
failure and doom, yet in its present reality it’s a magnifier to all my
failings as an unemployed and unsuccessful male individual.
A year of departures
“Australia, you far away land, so cherished and much desired
- how many loved ones would you still snatch away from me? Don't you feel how
lonely I'm becoming here? I know - the people you take away, never truly come
back. I know.” This sentimental remark I wrote on the night of our final
goodbye to our excessively nice and dear friend Juma. From there, a year of
departures ensued.
My sweet friend Ali Haider texted me one day recently asking
if I were in Quetta. I said I am not, and enquired how was he there? Didn’t you
have a job in Islamabad? I asked. He said he had quit his job and that he was
leaving for Sweden in a week’s time. His visa had arrived, and he was departing
to finally start life with his wife in a cold, foreign land. I couldn’t even
say an in-person goodbye to him.
Saqlain, and then Arif, they both got their visas for
Germany and it gradually dawned on me that an international separation of
friendship is taking place. After finishing high school, our friend circle
began to separate and spread, but only to different cities within Pakistan.
While sad and demoralizing, in due time it proved to be a blessing in disguise
as each of us discovered more about themselves and about the importance and
requirement of friendship in life. It also helped us explore different cities and
cultures of Pakistan, helping us expand our wings.
This international season of separation has proved to be
more solemn and grave. A serious and tragic event wrapped in the thin sheets of
laughter, hope, and optimism. I realize now and again, how old we’ve become,
how tired, how hopeless, and how small – all in a span of a few years. Life
hasn’t been easy since mid-twenties, but our response to its challenges has
been awful and alarming. There’s no due disaster happening in our external,
material lives, but in our little hot heads a chaos breeds day in and out of
such exaggerated proportions that it has effectively destroyed our any chance
at a stable, happy, and successful life in future.
Ali is next, and then we’ll be too few to be called a
circle. The question now remains, when – or if – this dismembered group of
friends would find itself together again? And how would we judge life then?
Meanwhile, what Dickinson said: “Let Months dissolve in further Months - / And
Years – exhale in Years“
The Noonday Demon: ‘Depression is a nothingness’
My favorite movie from 2024 eventually proved to be “Memoir
of a Snail”. A quirky animated movie, about a pitiful life of a shy snail told
in a poignant, beautifully simple manner. It’s a shame I have to watch movies
deep into the new year to be able to form a list of my favorite movies. The
problem is by that time the appeal for ‘year-end-lists’ has already faded and
one is too involved in the new calendar year that recalling last year seems
ridiculous. Anyways, there’s a line in the movie that innocently and yet so
aptly describes the elusive and giant disease that is depression. The snail
says, “Depression is a nothingness.”
Before delving into my own experience of my recent episode
of depression, I’ll borrow another insight from Jennifer Jelinkova, a
BookTuber, where she describes how her depression during her mid-thirties,
post-graduate unemployment period was not due to low self-esteem or self-guilt.
She unassumingly says that (and I’m paraphrasing here) ‘she is too old and
knows too well to fall into these common narratives of depression; that she
knows she is capable and that she is certain of abilities. And yet she remains
depressed.’
Depression might form based on external causes of mishaps in
life, but once it’s fully formed and active, it morphs into a life entirely of
its own. It gets so large, so loud, so terrorizing that to reason with it is a
lost cause. It’s all the worst things about you, yes, but amplified to such
exaggerated and cruel limits that it no longer remains confined to you. It expands
to the human condition, to man’s existential angst of being conscious in a
world which it doesn’t understand and about its own eminent and inevitable
death.
My failed papers, the end of my hypomanic state, my
uncertain place in life – together they might have softly nudged and lulled
into the hands of the noonday demon, but my experience of depression this time
around was more nuanced than just the guilt of personal shortcomings. If I could
manage a few moments of introspection from all the noise of anxiety and guilt,
I could glimpse at the pure existential nature of being in a state of
depression. I could stare into the that ‘nothingness’, a dense and concentrated
darkness, where hope – with its grand promises of distant future and its aid in
living day to day – is consumed to naught. I could sense my system of default
existence, which is so attached to human nature that it’s oblivious, become
dysfunctional and all my life become a living hell.
Ernest Becker’s ‘The Denial of Death’ helped me perceive
this existential side of depression by placing it in the stark narrative of man
being both animal and conscious. That is, an animal aware of its own fact of
death. Moreover, my epiphany of rediscovering an old park and starting a new
activity of jogging presented me with a new way of dealing with this disease. I
became and remained functional while it lingered in the background. It’s a
tasteless and bleak reality, where you go about your life with a dark cloud,
fully active, looming about your head all the time. My studies became that ‘one
vital activity’ that kept me afloat, even if it failed to cure me altogether.
Medicine, once decided upon and sustained with respectable consistency, proved
itself to be of actual help. ‘The Departure’ score from HBO’s The Leftovers
captured my depression in a musical form and I couldn’t stop listening to it
and humming it to myself.
All in all, my fresh recollections of my 2025 wrestle with
the noonday demon shows that depression is a cerebral as well as emotional
experience. And combined, they create an experience and memory so acutely rare
that not only words, but thoughts and understanding themselves fail to make a
definitive account of it. What remains is a haunting and alienated experience
living entirely inside your head that cannot be communicated to any other human
being. Its reminders send shivers down your spine and realizing that one has
survived and escaped that nothingness is repeating source of reassurance and
gratefulness.
Interlude
(This piece has stretched too far. I’m already uncomfortable
writing if further. I hope I don’t hate it by the time I finish it; or worse,
hating it so much I can’t finish it. Like my piece from August “The sadness of
the seventh fall.” It’s my self-undermining tendency. What is actually a
biological signal of chemical imbalance, becomes a reason to hate myself. What
were the trio of efforts for being happy? Emotions, intellect, and will. You
miss the first step, becoming aware of your mood and its influences, and you
cannot be happy. For an overthinker who self-sabotages, ignorance is hardly a
bliss.)
What year?! – time passes in an unfortunate way
My 28th birthday this year coincided with my
Audit and Assurance paper, so I had to leave for Karachi. My niece, aware of
this, planned a surprise party for me on the eve of my departure. Being too
excited, she couldn’t hold it in and that afternoon when I picked her up from
school, she made me promise I’m home that evening. From then onwards, up to her
waking me from my dreadful afternoon nap – I dreaded it. I couldn’t accept
being the center of a party, of being cared for. I was depressed and unable to
show gratitude or genuine joy. With great courage, I changed into my new
clothes and sat there while they played songs and danced. I blew on the
candles, cut the cake, and then received those painfully beautiful gifts. A
self-hatred so dominant that love becomes a cause of unbearable pain.
The Islamic year of 1447 started with Muharram in July. It
was peak melancholia for me in those days. After 16 hours of medicated sleep,
my waking hours consisted in compulsive consumption of movies and shows. My
only meal was an early dinner of meatless biryani, followed by half a cup of
tea and a few smokes. I can picture myself now, so shrunk and collapsed within
myself, terrorized by my ruthless consciousness. While the darkness was dense and
dry, the restlessness set it all ablaze and my head along with my soul kept
burning. There was no moment of respite other than sleep. But I had to wake. I
had to wake.
Of the meek temperament that I’m made of, I had surrendered
myself for another year long episode of depression. From May of 2023 to April
of 2024 – that was my longest courtship with the demon, and I was afraid it was
here to stay another year. What Andrew Solomon said: “Willfulness and pride may
allow one person to get through a depression that would fell another whose
personality is more gentle and acquiescent.” I don’t fight back, I submit –
even to my own detriment.
But this time, I did fight back. Even if it only consisted
of a shove; a desperate plea for some room to breathe and move. The result was
a Frankenstein of functionality and dread. Yet under spell of nostalgia and
‘having been through’, those couple months of crisp, numb, and
reduced-to-minimum living appear almost desirable to my current state of
dispersion and lostness. By the end of September, the skin of numbness began to
peel away and the exposed flesh of my consciousness found itself unable to
adjust to a life taking pace. It’s mid-December now, and I keep assessing where
did it all go? The assurances of spring, the long summer, that nothingness, the
novelty of winter, the time, the people, myself? Nowhere, I guess. It all
continues. Time is unidirectional and flows one way. For the calendar. It is
ruthless measurement and nothing more.
A year of dust and hair
“There’s dust on this table. Also strands of hair, small and
medium.” This was the opening line of my birthday journal. And rightly so: if
there’s been anything consistent throughout 2025, it’s the stubborn and
reappearing layer of dust on everything and the disgusting visible strands of
fallen hair, everywhere. While it neatly aligns with my mournful narrative of
an unfortunate year, it remains an objective issue. Perhaps it’s not the
recurrent need to clean, since many of our daily tasks are of a recurrent
nature yet we don’t complain, but the sadness and disgust of having a visible
sheet of dust and an unending trail of hair. In order words, perhaps it’s our
own futility that’s disturbing us. As Jelinkova says in her video, “People want
to believe that if they just had the right plans, they could win the war
against entropy.
Proustian snapshots – the shards of memory
In one of those excruciating spells, there I sat on the
roof, The Departure playing, smoking three cigarettes in one go, gazing into
the darkening sky and the lights of the billboards turning on.
Reaching for my phone to ask ChatGPT another obsessive
question about my medications, only to find the email containing my result: 58
Pass.
Sitting under the tree at Metro’s parking, with Malouf’s
‘Samarkand’ beside me, I took notice of the softness I felt; numb to what was
going inside my head, guessing to myself ‘perhaps it is okay’. Then the moment
passed.
My head bent down, walking toward the tea hotel for my
routine cup of tea. The waiter brought me the cut upon noticing that my
wordless presence had arrived. Why am I not feeling okay? I have been jogging
consistently for the past month!
So removed from the world that word of passing of Karar’s
mother reached me indirectly, and was the only news I had received in a long
time. I imagined him, his carefree and light treading on earth, how he’ll be
laughing soon enough. That people can be carefree, happy, successful, live
their dreams, be maddeningly beautiful, enjoy life – the very existence of such
impossible things are sometimes consolation enough for my desolate existence.
1am. Myself and Rizwan were having another round of tea,
sitting on the under-development road of the Metro Line. I reached for my phone
and played the cover song ‘Apki Nazron Ne Samjha’ – a desire to listen to some
music felt like an unexpected shower on a drought-stricken land.
‘Azra asty?’ I asked the teenage boy at a mart at Clifton.
Yes, he replied. He is an hazara born here, and lives in the apartments above
the store. Beside the surprise, what stayed with me from that small encounter
was the ‘source of exuberant life’ that I felt beaming from him. For a moment,
I wanted to suck it out of him.
The knee-jerk waking from a nap, in the long afternoons of
hot June weather, and terrified of finding yourself alone. It lies. It’s okay.
You survive. You get used to it, you scoundrel.
I’m trying to think of a beautiful snapshot… the solitude of
sitting beside a breezing tree in the dark and taking that sigh of relief;
skipping in joy while jogging and happily completing seven rounds of the trail
in one go.
Closing remarks – the principle of least action
The theory behind the solution of the problem of fastest
descent that I mentioned above is called ‘The Principle of Least Action’.
Beautifully explain in the Veritasium video ‘The Closest We’ve Come to The
Theory of Everything’, it is proved that nature follows the optimization
principle, choosing the most efficient way of doing things. “The action is the
true expense of Nature, which she manages to make as small as possible” says an
excerpt.
All that I’ve written so far leads here to my narcissistic
attempt at linking my temporary superficial knowledge about the astonishing
discoveries of physics to my self-proclaimed year of toil and ruin. It’s
anything but effortless; it is a presumptuous go at trying to sound witty and
profound – perhaps like the author I’m currently reading, Benjamin Labatut. But
this is the narrative I’ve worked toward.
2025 wouldn’t particularly stand out amongst the years of my
life. It would rather appear as a natural progression of an unruliness and
disorder that began in 2020 with the pandemic. Unless, that is, I frame it into
a narrative. Nothing I faced this year was new: failure, depression,
unemployment, loneliness, self-hatred, isolation. But I keep insisting that my
depression this year, combined with my stark failure at being behind in life,
deeply damaged any sense of self dignity and identity that I had left. While my
life since high school has been a tango between buoyed expectations and
debilitating inadequacy, I would like to think that during 2025 the latter
narrative proved to be the defining story.
Writing this, here today, I am aware and familiar of how
I’ve messed up so far and how urgent the demands of adulthood have become.
Somewhere in my life, I was devoid of the process that it takes to grow up and
find your place in life. I have remained a naïve child, unaccepting of the
harsh realities of life, and thereby being utterly ill-equipped and lacking.
Yet not enjoying the bliss of ignorance either. I was raised a prudent boy, and
together with my shy nature, I have aggressively steered away from that
sinfully carefree approach to life and its abundance. Instead, I’ve been a sad
person whose story is a sum of internal and external pain. So dominant is this
narrative, that the true joys of life seem but a cheating distraction. I can no
longer distinguish between my life (the parts) and my narrative (the whole).
The protagonist and the author have become one: the former lives what the
latter envisions.
At this end of history, where the battle between the yin and
yang, between hopeful change and Sisyphean reality has ended, a clear
perspective has emerged: that of my fastest descent.
Nevertheless, if nature follows the principle of least
action, then the fastest descent is by definition a fatalistic event. It
wouldn’t be too sweet to imagine that my painful disillusionment this year was
but nature – or fate – taking the efficient path to what is waiting for me. I
don’t know what exactly my fate entails but only that whatever has happened
before, including this year, is the determined and preceding path toward it.
Ah fate, my savior against the guilt of free will and the
horrors of fucking up!
December 13, 2025 – 5:36 PM