“The darkest hour is just before the dawn”

Time has walked down the lane of life before we came to this plan­et. It bore wit­ness to some of the most incred­i­ble inci­dents that hap­pened here.

Time walked on when Noah’s ark was set to sail and his very own son and wife refused to board it, hence drown­ing in the flood. Time was right in doing so. Hope led it to the future and there it wit­nessed the stand of Abra­ham against Azar.

Tragedies have struck our world, our coun­try, our com­mu­ni­ty and our­selves and yet we stand here talk­ing about it. It is only because we had the hope to move on, just like time. We put the past behind us and wel­comed the new and the bet­ter day when we saw it com­ing. Then why is it that we are again find­ing our­selves in an abyss of dark­ness? It is because we are fac­ing a cri­sis. What we have for­got­ten is that it too, like the ones in the past, has an expi­ra­tion date. Effort and hope can lead us to that date. Then we will again rev­el and indulge in the new and bright rays of a dawn that will relieve us from this dement­ing cri­sis.

“Man can live about forty days with­out food, about three days with­out water, about eight min­utes with­out air, but only for one sec­ond with­out hope.”

Only one pro­tec­tor stands between the light and the dark­ness. Only one fea­ture deter­mines the attain­ment of suc­cess or fail­ure. This, I’m sure you’re not sur­prised to hear, is hope!

From the dawn of civ­i­liza­tion to the present day, it is only through hope that human­i­ty has risen from small pock­ets of rather unim­pres­sive mam­mals to the dom­i­nant species of our plan­et, inhab­it­ing almost every land­mass and with tech­nol­o­gy far supe­ri­or to that of our ani­mal coun­ter­parts. But, by the same token, the rise of our soci­ety has not been peace­ful; it has instead been cloud­ed with destruc­tion.

Many sci­en­tists believe that there is an ever-increas­ing hole in the ozone lay­er. Over half of the world’s forests have been cleared away to make room for our bur­geon­ing pop­u­la­tion, and the deple­tion of non­re­new­able resources is on the rise. The ques­tions remain: Is there hope for future gen­er­a­tions of the human race? Are humans a dis­ease, a virus sap­ping the lifeblood of a once-healthy plan­et? Can there ever be world peace, or is the human race des­tined for self-destruc­tion?

The world sur­vived two great wars. Our coun­try sur­vived the earth­quake and dev­as­tat­ing floods with­in a peri­od of 5 years. Ter­ror­ism, sec­tar­i­an­ism and eth­nic con­flicts are the main issues of today; yet we are brave enough to dis­cuss upcom­ing elec­tions.

“Any­one can give up; it’s the eas­i­est thing in the world to do. But to hold it togeth­er when every­one else would under­stand if you fell apart, that’s true strength.”

This is why I insist that not all is lost. We still have hope. There is light at the end of this dark peri­od. All we need to do is to muster enough strength to get up and seek it.

Those who per­se­vere in the tough­est times are the ones who are blessed to see the dawn. The suf­fragette move­ment, the bat­tle of the black peo­ple for their rights in the west and the Pak­istan move­ment are all exam­ples of how peo­ple reached sal­va­tion after they expe­ri­enced hell-like cir­cum­stances. Had they lost hope or lacked per­se­ver­ance they would not have become suc­cess sto­ries. I there­fore strong­ly rec­om­mend con­tin­u­ous opti­mism, hope and unmit­i­gat­ed hard work to over­come our prob­lems. Right now, as a nation we have had enough pes­simism; it is time to turn over a new leaf!