Whats your Zahir?

"Zahir - visible, present, incapable of going unnoticed. It is someone or something which, once we have come into contact with them or it, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either a state of holiness or of madness. "

The Zahir by Paulo Coelho is an engaging book. He pulls you into his world right from the onset by describing the sudden disappearance of his wife. It is unclear whether she has run away or was kidnapped or simply walked out on him because their marriage was falling apart. The story revolves around his obsession (his Zahir) of finding her and rediscovering the love that once was his marriage, his life. While the storyline is simple, and perhaps all too familiar, the messages he brings across are quite thought-provoking.

When I started reading The Zahir, I did it because this book meant something special to my girlfriend. And I was keen on finding out what that was. Now I know that the ideas of freedom and love that the book brings forth touched her deeply, and I am glad, because they touched me too.

But there is something beyond that, something which is more fundamental and stirring about the Zahir. And that is our idea about ourselves, and about what we want from life. Allow me to quote from the book:

"I went to a train station today and learned that the distance between railway tracks is always 143.5 centimetres or 4 feet 8 and a half inches. Why this absurd measurement? I asked my girlfriend to find out and this is what she discovered. When they built the first train carriages, they used the same tools as they had for building horse-drawn carriages. And why the distance between the wheels on carriages? Because that was the width of old roads along which the carriages had to travel. And who decided the roads should be that width? Well suddenly we are plunged back into the distant past. It was the Romans, the first great road-builders, who decided to make their roads that width. And why? Because their war chariots were pulled by two horses, and when places side by side, the horses they used at the time took up 143.5 centimetres.
So the distance between the tracks I saw today, used by our state-of-the-art high-speed trains, was determined by the Romans."

We all undergo 16 to 18 years of education, get into fine jobs, get married, have children and spend the next 20 years of our lives ensuring that our children live comfortable lives, then work for our retirement, and if our partner is still around (be it physically or emotionally) spend the last years of our lives in relative bliss (hopefully), always ensuring that the railway tracks remain 143.5 centimetres apart, because thats how the Romans lived their lives centuries ago.

We each have our 'purpose', but thats been pre-defined as well. You have a few choices:

1. Make lots of money/earn fame and adulation
2. Be a good husband/wife or family man/woman
3. Build an organization
4. Be charitable
5. Travel
6. Enter the realms of spirituality

Form any combination of 2 or 3 of these choices and you have your purpose in life defined. Any of them may become your Zahir, your obsession, your sole ambition and desire.

Do each of us find a purpose in our life because thats how we want to live our life or do we try and find some purpose because thats we have been told to do? Because the Romans and Aryans and Chinese all those thousands of years ago decided that for society to survive we each need to carry out certain roles, and we each need to find our purpose?

Animals in the wild seem to have no greater purpose in life than to survive, to mate, to reproduce and to pass on when their time comes. Is it simply our ego as human beings that pushes us to believe that we need a higher purpose or is that how nature deemed it to be?

I may be coming across as someone who would like mankind to go back to the wild, to the days of tribes and nomads, where we are free to chart our own paths. That however is not my point.

My point is this - without sounding holier than thou - its important that each of us do find our purpose in life, find that special someone, and maintain our relationships, but not because society dictates that we do so. We need'nt struggle with our souls in order to find our purpose. We need'nt struggle to keep our relationships alive simply because society and civilization have defined them for us. Let us not allow finding a purpose or maintaining and forming relationships become our Zahir as much as the writer in 'The Zahir' allowed his failed marriage to become his.

Instead if we each do what we want, what we desire, follow our gut, and most importantly give others around us the freedom and the space to follow theirs, we may find that railway tracks need not always remain 143.5 centimetres apart.....with any luck, your track and mine may converge.