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A few days back, I was waiting for IBA point in the morning. It was the exact same place I waited everyday. Everything around me was same. I was looking around me and right in front of me was a tree. It is a completely bent tree. I had known and seen the tree since I was a child. And yet, until that day I had not realized or thought upon the fact that how was the tree so bent, yet so firm in its place?  Of course the answer immediately popped up that it is the roots must be spread in such a way in the ground that it supported its lean.

But then I thought, what about the leaning tower of pisa? Just because it is a leaning man made structure, it is considered to be an object of awe and absolute beauty. What about that tree in front of me? Was the bent and the lean of tree any less beautfiul? Man has given credit to himself for one extraordinary leaning object he has been able to create. What about thousands and thousands of such leaning trees made by God?

That day, I looked at my surroundings  and found so many trees like that, I almost felt ashamed of myself of not being able to see the ultimate reflection of God in them.

Sometimes I feel  that my surroundings have so much to offer me,  yet I have managed to take everything for granted. My philosophy teacher said in one class that children ask very basic questions like why is the sky blue or what is life etc but most of these questions end up dying because of "tall structure of answers" Maybe, this is the reason why our questions and our amazement die out and then we end up taking everything for granted. Likewise, sometimes science gives us such answers that our amazement dies out. A few days back when I was reading a verse from Quran which was regarding how Allah SWT causes rain, I realized that an automatic scientific explanation came to my mind of water vapour rising and forming clouds, condensing and thus causing rain. I was upset about the fact that instead of being mesmerized by how wonderful  the system of Allah SWT is, I was subconsciously referring it to "natural scientific phenomena", failing to go to next question automatically that who was behind this natural phenomena. I had to pull myself from out of the scientific realms into the ones to feel the amazement of the whole process.

However, I have realized that most of us don't even question. We just dont think. Socrates said "An unexamined life is not worth living". Petty things just take away so much of our time that we just dont think beyond them. Like they say "beauty lies in the eyes of beholder", it is for the eyes to search for beauty because beauty is all around us. So, if the eyes are closed, we might continue to live in a delusion of an ugly world. Something I learnt recently from my MBR book that "the real voyage of discovery lies not in  seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes"

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Some months back, my friend Marium told me a story. If I remember correctly, there was a man who was sent by a shoe making company to a place to find out whether a market existed in that place or not. When the man reached the place, he saw that no one was wearing shoes over there. He came back and informed the company that " There is no market, no one is wearing shoes there"

In another company, another man was sent to the same place to find out whether there is a market for shoes over there or not. The man went there and saw no one wearing shoes. When he came back, he informed the company " There is a huge market, no one is wearing shoes over there"

I just hope that we wake up from khwaab-e-gaflat kee neend(my favourite word in Urdu which means to be unaware of surroundings and unaware of everything happening around), and also hope that life gives us one more reason to smile and  thank our Creator everyday. It is about time we decompose our questions and answers and start feeling the joy of true admiration.