Rose-Coloured Spectacles
On 30thMay, 1981, the former president of BangIadesh, Ziaur Rahman (1936-1981) paid a visit to Chittagong. That night, as he lay asleep in the official rest house, he was attacked and murdered by one of his own officers, Major General Manzoor. The latter hoped that by eliminating President Ziaur Rahman, he himself would be able to take over the reins of the government. But he had made a fatal miscalculation. With the exception of one loyal Squadron, the common soldiers did not extend their support to him, and just two days later, on 2nd June, he was shot dead by his enemies.
General Manzoor met the same fate which is eventually to be that of all mankind. Some are carried away, when their time has come, by the angels of death, while others have the misfortune to meet violent and untimely ends. Death is inevitable, but no one learns a lesson from this. No ‘General Manzoor’ thinks that after having done away with his enemy, he too will be done to death the very next day; that after casting others down into the pit of death, he will meet an identical fate.
This world is a formidable testing ground. Everyone has been given a free hand in the sphere allotted to him so that he may either prove his mettle or reveal himself for the unworthy person that he actually is. But, sad to say, life is full of cruelty and irresponsibility. And ironically, those who are the guiltiest of these lapses are the very ones who complain of others’ misdemeanour. Everyone is a ‘General Manzoor’–engaged in the annihilation or oppression of others. Everyone wants to set himself up on the ashes of other men. Everyone wrongly supposes that by destroying others, he will be able to step into their shoes. He ignores the fact that what awaits him is not the high and splendid positions of this world, but his own dreary grave.
Woe betide those who perpetually see themselves through rose-colored spectacles, for life will ultimately force them to look directly at the plain, unvarnished bleakness of their own moral failures. No one stops to give thought to this aspect of the future, so engrossed is he in the present. Everyone is fully conversant with what is happening today but is oblivious of the blows that will fall tomorrow.
What man must finally come to terms with is not the ‘here and now’ but all eternity.
