So why are you afraid?

Because I am a subjective object self aware and thrown into an abyss of meaninglessness, with a countdown tied to my heart.

But you are not different.

Yes I am! I am not special. But by all means I am different. My experience crafted me, your experience crafted you. There are no two raindrops perfectly identical when they hit the ground, mainly because of the dust they pick up on their way down. So it is with us humans, we pick up bits of stardust which makes us become more than different: unique.

But you are not the only one breaking, falling, splitting.

This doesn’t make it any easier, nor does it change the intimate way breaking, falling and splitting happen for humans. Suffering comes from awareness, Umair. Suffering is not because of lack of empathy, these are bad thoughts to inflict on others. Suffering is worth of the consideration a wise and powerful enemy should get, it is not some side effect of a personality defect or character flaw, which can be cast away by personal development.

All the empathy stuffed in you will make you suffer even more, for you will become aware thousandfold for every other’s suffering, more anticipation.

You call all this suffering. But it is better to just call it becoming.

You live, you learn. But by simply calling it becoming, it will not take the pain away. Oh, and clarity comes only once the pain succumbs.

The love in you is mightier still.

Why is love better than, say, compassion? Or wisdom? Or equilibrium? Or continence? Who made the chart? Isn’t it a bit mistaken to teach the supremacy of love in a world where people are controlled by anger? I wonder a lot if love really emancipates the human being. Its irrationality and downward direction are giving me the doubts.

Stop asking. Just start seeing. The answer of answers is right there before you.

Oh no! Do not stop asking. Questions are the arrows pointing to answers. Without questions answers are embedded in reality with such fine stitches that you can never spot them among everything else. And behold, patches of wrong answers lurk in the dark, waiting for you to take them in, while you’re vulnerable missing the sharp tip of good questions asked.

Now you have empathy. You have seen into the heart of the truest thing in all creation. The mighty river of love.

If it were that easy, I can bet on ten thousand years of work towards switching on the empathy button in children to have worked. The swarm of priests would have done a better job, with raving reviews. The books and songs of humanity would have moved us all towards peace and common prosperity. If it were that easy, inequality would have been an unknown concept considering the good intentions we’ve started with.

It is not umair haque.