When Heart began to despair...

There are moments in life when nothing changes around us, yet something quietly changes within us.

The world remains the same, our responsibilities remain the same, but the heart begins to look at everything through a different lens. Things that once inspired us now feel heavy. The future that once seemed full of possibilities begins to appear uncertain. We continue working, speaking, and fulfilling our responsibilities, but somewhere deep inside, hope begins to fade.

Over the past few weeks, I found myself standing at such a place.

I have always considered myself an introvert. Yet, strangely, I have also believed that the only way to protect myself from negativity is to remain useful. To teach. To build. To contribute. To invest in young minds. Activism, in the broadest sense, has never been about politics or public recognition for me—it has been my way of resisting despair.

Perhaps that is why I chose to remain in public service.

Working in the Education Department has never been merely a job. It has always been a small opportunity to contribute towards something much larger than myself—the education of children who may one day shape this country better than we have.

But sincerity has a cost.

When one genuinely cares about an institution, one also feels its pain. One cannot ignore the culture where personal interest often overshadows public good, where systems struggle, and where people sometimes appear to have stopped believing that change is even possible.

This Independence Day, for the first time in many years, I realized I was not feeling celebration.

I was grieving.

Perhaps it was the accumulation of many things—the injustices we witness around us, the Mir Raza Ali case, the deteriorating condition of Karachi, endless electricity and gas shortages, broken infrastructure, and the exhausting reality that so much of our intellectual energy is spent solving problems that should have disappeared decades ago.

Karachi was once proudly called the City of Lights.

Today, many of us spend our days calculating electricity schedules, water shortages, gas timings, traffic routes and survival strategies. Sometimes I wonder how many brilliant minds have slowly lowered their aspirations simply because daily life leaves so little room for higher thinking.

Many of my fellow students and scholars live elsewhere in Pakistan. Listening to their conversations, I sometimes find myself wondering whether we in Karachi have become so occupied with basic necessities that we have forgotten how to dream.

It is a frightening thought.

Because hopelessness is contagious.

And once the heart begins to lose hope, everything else begins to lose colour with it.

Whenever such thoughts arise, my instinct is always the same.

I return to Allama Iqbal.

Not because he ignored reality.

But because he looked directly into some of the darkest periods of Muslim decline and still found reasons to hope.

Last weekend I attended a program dedicated to Iqbal with only one purpose: I wanted to rediscover how a man living amidst colonial domination, intellectual decline and civilizational collapse could still write as though dawn was already visible on the horizon.

How could he say:

"آسماں ہوگا سحر کے نور سے آئینہ پوش
اور ظلمت رات کی سیماب پا ہو جائے گی"

Or speak with such certainty that the sky itself was announcing the arrival of spring.

That is the state I long for.

Not optimism born out of comfort.

But hope born out of conviction.

A heart that can still hear "آسمان بہار کی خبر دے رہا ہے" even while standing in the middle of winter.

Yet another thought unsettled me.

While revisiting Iblees Ki Majlis-e-Shura, I paused over Iqbal's criticism of nationalism and artificial borders. His poetry reopened questions I had settled years ago.

For a long time I have believed that if Allah placed me in Pakistan, then my responsibility is not merely to complain about its condition but to contribute towards improving it.

Whenever opportunities appeared to settle abroad, I chose to stay.

Not because life here is easier.

But because I believed serving one's own people carried a responsibility that comfort alone could never replace.

Yet recently I have begun questioning myself.

When my own daughter asks why we never left when we had opportunities, I cannot dismiss the question lightly.

Have I confused responsibility with attachment?

Or is remaining steadfast itself an act of hope?

I do not yet know.

Perhaps what troubles me most is this:

Soon I will be speaking to young girls on the theme "Youth ka Pakistan."

How do we speak about hope when our own hearts are searching for it?

How do we invite others to build a nation if we ourselves are struggling to believe in its future?

Then another realization quietly emerges.

Maybe hope is not something we first possess before serving.

Maybe hope is something Allah grants through service.

Perhaps activism is not the result of hope.

Perhaps activism is one of the ways hope is created.

When we teach one child...

Guide one student...

Solve one genuine problem...

Speak one truthful word...

Plant one seed...

We quietly refuse to surrender to despair.

Maybe that itself is an act of worship.

The Qur'an repeatedly reminds us that Allah brings life from what appears lifeless.

Spring emerges after winter.

Light follows darkness.

Nations rise after decline.

Hearts are revived after becoming hard.

Perhaps societies are no different.

Perhaps what appears to us as decline is simply a chapter whose ending only Allah knows.

Today I am not writing because I have found all the answers.

I am writing because I suspect many others silently carry the same questions.

How do we continue loving our country without becoming blind to its faults?

How do we remain truthful about injustice without surrendering to cynicism?

How do we continue working sincerely inside broken systems?

And perhaps the most important question—

How did people like Iqbal continue hearing the footsteps of spring while everyone else could only see winter?

I am still searching for that answer.

Because I, too, want my heart to become the kind of heart that can look at the darkest night and still whisper with certainty:

The sky is already carrying the news of dawn!