Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness–that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what–at last–I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
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Of all the public places in the world, why there are more emotions and memories attached to airports than any other place? I couldn’t have any clue. And yet, I have felt I could be so depressingly low and numb for several hours after leaving Jinnah Terminal. And yet, Jinnah Terminal is the world’s most beautiful airports. And yet, it gives me such a sad feeling everytime I come here to see off someone or leave myself. It will only be second time ever in two months when I come here to receive someone, my sweeto sister and parents. May be that’d be a refreshing change. Else, it has been painful. Truly.
It’s not really much related to how or what I feel except that it’s about leaving for or from Airport/long journey and that it’s freaking heart-breaking to listen to Chantal Kreviazuk’s Leaving on a Jet Plane. Written and composed by John Denver and included in the movie Armageddon, this is probably one of the most sublime song to grace the leaving part of human life etc etc.
The lyrics go something like this:
All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go
I’m standing here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breaking ,it’s early morning
The taxi’s waiting. He’s blowing his horn
Already I’m so lonesome I could die
* So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you’ll wait for me
Hold me like you’ll never let me go
I’m leaving on a jet plane
Don’t know when I’ll be back again
Oh! Babe, I hate to go *
There’s so many times I’ve let you down
So many times I’ve played around
I tell you now they don’t mean a thing
Every place O go I’ll think of you
Every song I sing I’ll sing for you
When I come back, I’ll wear your wedding ring
(Repeat *)
Now the time has come to leave you
One more time let me kiss you
Close your eyes, I’ll be on my way
Dream about the days to come
When I won’t have to leave alone
About the times I won’t have to say
For people with even more subtle sensitivities, can listen to or download “Leaving on a Jet Plane”.
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