Writing

In school, whenever I saw some literature or philosophy book lying around, I brought in the topic of how boring the writers are. I always argued about the fact that they don’t have anything to do except to sit quietly in a desolated corner under some tree thinking about how unfair this world has been to them. Despite all that, I couldn't deny the importance of this scenario because I loved science and it was that similar kind of environment that led Newton to think about the laws of motion and gravitation.

For me, it was still a total waste of time. I believed in finishing my homework, preparing for the next quiz and then doing something fun like playing video games or chatting with some friend on the phone about some cool stuff that was just released in the market.

Three years after graduation, sitting in my apartment, I am writing. I could never imagine that one day I would be doing what I hated most. Now I realize that most of the writers don’t write for a living, rather they do it for fun. Writing about your past brings you back into the good old times when there was just work, rest and play. It eases your mind by taking you away from your present life into some wonder land of your own. I don’t have a wonder land of my own, but I do have plenty of stuff to talk about, things that I have learnt in the past and want to share with others, things that make conversation quite boring but writing quite interesting.

The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say

It takes a good mathematician and an artist to write something interesting. One has to grammatically choose the correct words yet be aesthetic at the same time to produce an elegant piece of writing that allures the mind. The first part is quite easy nowadays with Microsoft Word doing all the lexical analysis for us. We just need to focus on the aesthetics, just like visual studio does everything with intellisense. All we have to do is focus on the algorithm. I know I have ruined my writing by introducing the techie talk in the end, but I can’t help myself. I work at Microsoft.

Free Will or Fate

You are holding a glass in your hand. Someone tells you that if you open your hand, the glass will fall on the ground and break into pieces. You open your hand and the same thing happens. How did he know all that? Was he from the future? No. He could tell that based on his knowledge. Because of gravity there was potential energy in the glass. When you opened your hand, that energy was converted into kinetic energy and the glass moved towards the ground. When it hit the ground, as a reaction it was broken because of the force applied on it by the ground. It appears to be a simple event but when analyzed, became more complicated. It is still very simple for the physicists who can make it sound like a complex nuclear explosion, filling the entire black board with equations. So, don’t mess with them.

God has created everything. His knowledge about His creation is complete. Because of that He knows all the schemes that we are planning in our mind while deciding about our next move. This doesn’t mean that He made us do that move. We decided every action of ours, ourselves. When something bad happens as a consequence of our actions, we tend to affiliate it to fate, even though we were the ones to decide and execute it. So I agree with the saying that man is the architect of his future up to some extent. There is some fate involved. How? Let’s see.

I was born in Pakistan. Even if I wished to be born somewhere else, I couldn’t make it happen. This was already decided by God. Some people have been assigned to me with different roles, making them my family. Again, I have no choice in changing these roles or denying them. God chose them for me and I have to accept that. That is why good parents, brothers and sisters are a blessing (and I consider myself to be among the luckiest people on earth because of that). This is fate.

Fate also plays a role in our career. It is shaped through our free will, but eventually it is fate that dictates it. That is why out of all the people, few are chosen to do something big (good or bad) like Einstein, whom the world knows for his theories in science. This had to be done by someone in order for science to move to the next phase. Fate chose Einstein. Why? That is known to the Writer only. God has not revealed that to us. However we as humans can do some study on Einstein’s life to try to find some points that support this decision. So, God has given us a situation. What we have to do is act wisely.

Life is not about playing a good hand but playing a bad hand well

As far as simple tasks are concerned like doing some worship or sin, I believe that that is purely free will. So there is no excuse for committing a crime and saying that it was fate that chose me to accomplish that.

In the End, we will not be accountable for failing to become Einstein, but for failing to do justice to the Role, that we were assigned.

The Reason

He was a hidden treasure that loved to be known.

What is the first thing that comes to your mind if you somehow discover that you have special powers like the super heroes have? Go and fight with the bad guys? I doubt about that. Be famous, dude. Everybody wants to be known, special and loved, especially with some special powers others don’t have. But what if there is nobody around to impress. What if you have everything but are all alone. It would take all the fun out of your pocket.

This is reason enough to believe why God created the universe and all the living and non-living things in it. If He were alone, there wouldn’t be anyone there to praise and worship Him. Nobody would plead Him for forgiveness to which He could show His mercy. We as His creation should worship Him and thank Him for all that He has given to us without our asking. I think being The Omnipotent, He deserves at least that much from us, if not more.

He has created the universe and the human race in it. He has taught us how to live in it through His religion, just like software has an instructions manual on how to use it to get the benefit out of it. It is our job to find out the most up-to-date one, since new manuals are shipped with every version that is released. Moreover, there is a moral instinct within us that helps us in determining the right path.

Being the creator, only God should know about the right path. So, He should be the one to introduce us to the right path. That is what happens in the opening Surah of the Qur’an, which is a prayer in which man seeks guidance from Allah to go to the righteous path. The path of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad (May peace be upon all of them). May Allah guide us all to the path of righteousness. Amin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Fatiha

The Beginning...

The time has come to reveal thyself to others... Catchy, isn't it. One given Sunday, sitting in my living room, alone, having nothing to do after resolving the bugs for Ops Mgr SP2, i have finally decided to create my own blog. I would like to start with the Beginning.

What is the Beginning? It is the start.

The start of what? Well, the start of time.

But has anyone thought about what might be before time? In order to look at that, we have to answer another question. What is time? If we take time as the sequence of events happening then we need another variable, space at which that event occurred. So, we can define any event in terms of the time (not our time but some other measurement which started at the Beginning) at which it happened and the space (some place within the infinite universe of matter) at which it took place. According to Einstein's theory, if matter travels at the speed of light, then time becomes constant and mass is converted into energy. Energy does not occupy space. So, we can say that before time, there was no space, just energy. Hence, time and space are things of post-Beginning.

What does the Qur'an say about that? It says that God is there since infinity and will be there for infinity (which means for ever in scientific language). He is like nobody i.e. He cannot be compared to anything (in its literal meaning). He cannot fit into our small mind, so we cannot think about Him (in terms of visualization). But we can say that He is all powerful i.e. (in scientific language) an infinite source of energy (Noor in arabic).

So, we can conclude that before time there was just God and His knowledge.