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"Real" is such a subjective word. What is real to you may not be real to me and vice versa. In my own life, I have been taught different meanings of what "real" is.

When I was in Lyceum, my accounts teacher in my A1, before revising on the concepts of double entry told us in a jovial manner " back in the 90's, coke was considered to be the real thing"
Just so that you know, you can view it here







But then later on, my teacher added " In accounting, debit is the real thing!" All the students, including myself, were perplexed as to how could debit be the real thing. It was his style to make learning easy and fun for students so then he said " R=Receiver , E= Expenses, A=Assets, L= Losses ... you debit all these things"
( If you have studied Accounting in your life, you can add this to your Accounting Literacy) 
 Debit suddenly became the real thing!


Last year, I was watching Matrix after my cousin insisted that it is an excellent movie and that I have missed so much if I hadn't watched Matrix. So, in the middle of that movie, a very famous dialogue came and real according to the movie meant coming out of the MATRIX. Morpheus says this to NEO and here is the clip:


This semester, i took a course in Philosophy, Logic & Ethics. In one of the lectures, my teacher asked the students "where is IBA?" Everyone answered "In Karachi". Then she asked "Where is Karachi?" and everyone answered " In Sindh" Then she asked, "Where is Sindh?" Everyone answered "In Pakistan". Then she questioned, "where is Pakistan?" and everyone answered " In the world". Then she questioned, "where is the world?"
Half of the class had already stopped answering since it seemed a series of never ending questions so then she said
"if the world is in milky way, and the milky way is in the universe, then where exactly is the universe? We know that there are millions of universes out there, then, do all these universes lie in "nothingness" ? The world that we live in feels so real. But if all of this is in nothingness, then, is nothingness real?"(this is what I understood)

My version of real is different. Yesterday I went to Sunday Bazaar. There were shoes, bags, clothes, jewelery, books, magazines, photo frames, showpieces, electronic items, food... you name it! But yet, it felt so unreal. For four hours, I hadn't bought anything. My eyes were literally aching with so much around me that I had to look at the ground often to put myself at peace. Many a times I wanted to buy books but never ended up buying only because the feeling of satisfaction in those things were missing. Finally, I gave up and went to sit on a bench nearby, thinking why I had even decided to come there. Only then, a lady with two little kids came and sat beside me on the bench. She gave them a bottle of milk but then suddenly it fell on the ground. She tried picking it up but since she couldn't I offered her my help. And when I picked it from the ground and gave it back to her, suddenly, I realized I had found something REAL. That act gave me the satisfaction I had been searching on in the things for so long.Without purchasing anything "seemingly real" I was extremely happy. I knew it then and there that belief in One and Only God is the asal [real] & that anything that pleases Him has to be real since our Hereafter is the real life.

 They say that only dead fish follow the current.We have a choice of being a dead fish, following the current to whichever shore it takes us to, or have a choice of fighting against the current towards the oceans of knowledge in front of us and searching for the answers ourselves.