How to Overcome Anguish?

Ratan Singh (b. 1927) was a famous Urdu novelist. During a conversation, his interviewer, Rehana Sultana, asked him which of his stories he considered as his representative story. He replied, “I am yet to write my representative story”.

In his famous book Gitanjali, the Bengali poet-writer Rabindranath Tagore said this about himself: “I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”

This feeling is found among almost every litterateur. What is the reason for this? The reason is that a human being is by nature an idealist. A person seeks to express his feelings in words in an ideal way. But this isn’t possible. This is because the words he has are less than ideal for the purpose.

On account of this sort of contradiction—between a person’s nature as an idealist and the non-ideal reality of this world—most people live in a sort of anguish, and they also die in that state.

The only place for a person to quench this thirst, to get over this anguish, is Paradise. If a person is a true seeker and seriously contemplates this issue, he will certainly discover this fact. He will understand what he should make the goal of his search.

By birth every human being is a seeker of Paradise, the ideal world of his dreams. A human being is the seeker, and Paradise is what he seeks. A person’s success lies in knowing this truth and making Paradise his goal.