Chapter 1 – Existence

“Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”

-Helen Keller

What does it mean to exist? To be alive? To breathe?

How strange is it that we are all just, here. In the midst of current world strife, agony, destruction, and pain. Our lives seem to mean so much, when in fact it all seems so meaningless.

We wake up every day going through the same routine, over and over again. We take showers, brush our teeth, do our hair, eat cereal, grab that coffee, and head out the door to our jobs, our schools, and our lives.

We argue with one another, fight with one another, and cry with one another on a small blue planet that is made perfectly habitable for our survival.

We’re in the middle of nowhere. In a desolate plane of matter, we are the only ones within hundreds of thousands of miles within this place we call the universe.

The sad part is, we already know this. The thought has crossed our minds once or twice during our lives, yet we continue to argue with one another, fight with one another, and cry with one another.

The problem is in our heads. We chase desire rather than purpose. We let our feelings overtake us and numb our thought process. We battle each other for recognition, fame, and power. We strive for the very evil we condemn.

And at the end of it all, at the end of all things, we are left only with ourselves, alone. We are dropped six feet in the ground, only leaving behind the memory of our existence in minds of the people and our contributions to the world.

In this life, we start out as a consciousness, and end as a memory. Plain and simple.

So then, why exist? Why breathe? Why struggle? Why continue to wither away day by day? Why fight? Why learn? Why understand? Why comprehend? Why become angry? Why become sad? Why hate? Why love?

Why?

Wake up. Death is staring you in the face, yet you’ve become too blind to see it.

Do you really believe you were created without reason? Without purpose? Is all the struggle for nothing? If death is guaranteed for us all, is there even a meaning to life?

Open your eyes.

I don’t remember anything from my first years in this world. Apparently my parents didn’t even have a video camera, so I don’t have any videos I could have watched of myself as a baby.

Obviously no one remembers the details of how they were born or what happened when they were a few months old. The only reason we know those things is either because we’ve seen it via pictures or some type of visual media, or we’ve been told how we used to be.

For example, my parents told me that when I was born, the doctors thought I was a girl because of my eyelashes. Funny and scary at the same time. I’m glad they didn’t label me as a female on my birth certificate, or I would have had some serious issues.

I was born Raheel Nusratullah. The middle name, Syed, was never legally on my birth certificate, but it does run through my family. My very blood can be traced back through the depths of time as being directly related to the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), a great honor. I even have a family tree in my house naming all the ancestors before me, all the way back through the bloodline.

The name Raheel Nusratullah can be translated into two different ways. “Raheel” literally means “journey.” Some other interpretations I’ve heard are “to depart,” or “one who shows the way.” It can also be translated as “fearless” or “brave.” Nusratullah has two parts combined into one word. “Nusrat” goes back to the root of “Nasr” which means help, and “Ullah” literally means “of Allah” or “of God.” So in this sense, Nusratullah means “the help of God.”

While my parents chose my first name with the latter interpretation of “one who shows the way,” sometimes I like to joke around and use the alternate meaning. In that case, my name would literally mean “to depart from the help of God,” which wouldn’t be a very wise name, now would it?

I was born on June 27, 1989 at 10:15 PM in Houston, Texas. I was born of Pakistani origin, where both of my parents originated from. Three of my grandparents were from Pakistan and India, while my grandmother on my father’s side was Iranian. My mother’s grandparents were one of the first doctors to have a clinic in Karachi, Pakistan. They traveled around the world getting education from many different institutions. It is for this reason my mother was actually born in Tabuk in Saudi Arabia, where my grandparents stayed for a few years before moving back to Pakistan.

My father’s parents owned some kind of farm or ranch in Pakistan, where he lived out most of his young life. It surprised me a bit when I first learned that there were actually farms in Pakistan. To this day, I have never visited the country my parents were from, so my understanding of the culture was not very strong. My grandparents had a total of 7 children. 4 of which were girls, and 3 of which were boys, whom included my father. All 7 siblings are all spread out in the United States now, each with their own families, which is why I have an extreme amount of cousins.

My parents tell me I was a trouble making kid, and I would always want to get myself into some form of danger. I would never listen to my parents, throw around random objects, refuse to do things, and just be a little jerk. Little did I know that would get me into some bad positions later in life. As I passed through my first years into pre-teen life, I started to shape into the person I would eventually become.

Public school was where everything began.

I remember in 1st grade I had learned about sticking up the middle finger from somewhere. Of course I was a child at the time so I had no idea what it meant or what it represented. It was recess and a small girl who I sat in front of in my class was playing on one of those wooden contraptions they have on the playground. For one reason or another, I decided it’d be a great idea to try out the finger at that specific point in time, so I gave her a double helping of both my middle fingers, straight up at her, jumping up and down, laughing hysterically as I did it.

I laugh even now just thinking about it and how hilarious it must have looked to a random passerby, but my victim thought otherwise. Her eyes widened and she eventually ran like a rabbit on crack to our teacher, who called me over and asked me if I knew what sticking up the middle finger meant. I said I had no idea, and she sent me to time out for the entire recess.

As a kid I was pissed. Who wouldn’t be? It was then I learned that the middle finger must have meant something bad. Why would I get time out for a finger? I never understood it, but it felt strange. It actually felt kind of fun. I sat in timeout staring at my hands and sticking my middle finger out over and over for the next 20 minutes, trying to understand the concept.

I had the entire curse word dictionary memorized by the end of the 3rd grade, and it became a very frequent alternative. Classmates would always discuss the different kinds of curse words and what they meant, trying to decipher their meanings. The opposite sex started to become an issue as well. “Cooties” became a phenomenon throughout the 3rd and 4th graders. I still felt that girls were stupid and that it was retarded even having the thought of liking them.

Sex was also attempted to be deciphered in 4th grade. Many kids, specifically males (as usual) spent entire class days trying to figure out what it was, and I was just an innocent little boy being influenced by it all. Some of their theories went from just kissing, which was seen as completely disgusting in my eyes, to just hugging, which was even more putrid. I never contemplated much on girls as the other boys did, it seemed to me like they watched too many bad shows or something and that’s all they could think about. Even though we all hated girls, it was obvious most of us were genuinely curious during that age. It is human instinct after all.

In 5th grade, I even accused one of my classmates for raping his girlfriend. I had no idea what the word rape meant, I only knew it was bad, so I might as well use it. I learned it the exact same day a few hours before when random class talk would go around. At first I thought the word was pronounced “rake,” so I passed that around until someone actually told me I was saying it wrong. Of course, once again this was all within the circle of boys in the class. If any of the girls found out about it, it would be obvious they would hate the living guts of the person who mentioned it.

And so me, being the smart two-faced kid I was, decided to ask the accused girl’s best friend about it. Just as before, this girl’s eyes widened as well and of course, she went to the teacher. My teacher called me over privately and asked me if I knew what it meant. I cunningly denied any sort of knowledge. She explained to me not to ever use it again, and that was the end of that.

So the cycle continued, and I became a master in the art of using bad words to their extremes without care. My parents would never find out, I would be sure of that much. At home everything was a completely different world. I would do my schoolwork, watch T.V. sparingly, and sleep on time. Disney movies were my supreme entertainment at that time period. Hits like “Aladdin” and “The Lion King” were my favorites. I would watch them continuously every day, rewinding them over and over just to watch them again. I had memorized the lines of almost every popular Disney movie out at the time. It was one of the biggest obsessions during my youth. That, and Power Rangers.

Another obsession was music. My parents were fans of a Pakistani band at the time named “Vital Signs.” In case some people don’t know, it is how the singer (and now very religious) Junaid Jamshed became famous. We owned almost all of their CD’s and would constantly play their songs throughout the house. Even to this day, I can probably sing the melodies of every one of their songs. I used to sing and dance around the house to the CD’s almost every day. Even my cousins still remember which songs were my favorite, and how I would pretend I was a singer on stage while belting my annoying voice as loud as possible, doing the most ridiculous dance moves ever invented.

I had begun to pray only Maghrib (the evening prayer) out of the 5 daily prayers with my father. I had no idea what I was doing, but I sure had fun falling to the floor on my face whenever I had to go into prostration. My parents felt that as a kid, if I continued with one prayer, the rest of the four would follow in time. Prayer was seldom on my mind, it was never looked upon by me as something I should have been doing.

The word “Allah” was almost everywhere in my home in some form of calligraphy, along with different words in Arabic on carpets and rugs. There were paintings my mother had done when she was in college, and even different pictures of hieroglyphics and Egyptian art around the house. Though these things were all around me, I still never quite understood them, they just became background objects, never really getting any of my attention.

My parents and teachers thought of me as a good kid. I would never get bad behavior marks, never have any problems with grades, and never posed a threat to the goodwill of my class. Little did they know, deep inside, I was different. A chain of events in slowly learning this new American culture had already begun, and it led me to wanting more and more of it. I had never had an identity before in my life. I didn’t know that I was born Muslim at all. I didn’t know what or who “Allah” was, I didn’t really understand why I prayed, and I didn’t know what Islam was.

All I cared about was going to school, doing my work, watching cartoons, Disney movies, and learning all of these new ideas and concepts, bad words being one of them. My parents had no idea what really happened in school, it was all a part of going to school in itself. The idea of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas became implemented into school. School’s priority was obviously to educate primarily, but the biggest thing that was taken out of it for me was the social experience, which is a huge part in a child’s early life.

Since I knew these things were bad, I never questioned my parents about them at all. When my parents asked me what happened at school, the usual answer became “nothing,” as I dragged myself into the living room to switch on the television.

The spark started to ignite after all the proper ingredients had been added. My friends at school who I could identify with, the cartoons on T.V. and the movies I would watch, all subconsciously melding my mind into what would become acceptable and what kind of person I should be.

It was fun being bad until you got caught. I learned that early on, and I knew if I wanted to say a bad word in school I’d have to watch my back, and even watch out for some of the kids who would betray me and turn me in. Even then, I knew how to get away with it by playing the nice boy externally. I’d learned the system like it was written on the back of my hand. I had already created a duel personality within myself at such a young age as well; a personality that would grow and blossom in my upcoming years.

Many of the things I had begun to learn would serve as the backdrop for my metamorphosis. A combination of these experiences and many more began to form me into the entity. The persona I would live out until the end of my high school life.

But it wasn’t until I discovered the feeling of love; that warmth inside, the passion, the romance, the energy that draws souls together, that I began to crumble.

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~ by Ænima on December 2, 2008.