Looking back at the time that has passed living in one place from ages one doesn’t acknowledge the beauty of that place. The beauty of how a man has settled so well in a place for years. I personally didn’t even believe in that, how can a change of place effect a person’s life so drastically, because maybe we all are so busy in our daily lives that we don’t realize the value of things around us until and unless they’re no more.
It was the summers of 2015, I was completing my A ‘Levels from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I didn’t get good grades in AS Level (1st year of A ‘Levels), that was when my parents decided that it was better for me to move to Pakistan to complete my A ‘Levels. No doubt studies were tough now and schools in Jeddah didn’t have much to offer. There were hardly five or six good schools and even they lacked excellent faculty. So many students like myself have to move to their home countries or go abroad.
I moved to Lahore last year, although I did come to Lahore every summers in holidays but this time it was different. Lahore wasn’t the most charming of the cities anymore, where I used to enjoy my holidays. I never got that excited feeling, I used to have when I came to Lahore. I used to live with my aunt and my grandparents. I always found plenty of love in that place, still do but life out of home was different. Now I didn’t have my parents around me listening to me, ignoring the bads in me and always encouraging me to do better in life, in studies and preparing me to face the hardships of this world. My parents have been with me my whole life, and I had never imagined living without them. And here I was a stranger in my home country, barely having a friend or enemy.
The Pakistani culture is pretty different from the Arab culture, where I was raised, however my aim here was to study and I did my best I could to uplift my results. Boys and girls were of different thinking here. Either their aims were to be successful or there were those who were into all the evil one could imagine. One of the biggest difficulties I faced here was riding a bike, I have never been on a bike before and riding one was a back-breaking task. At first I used to go to school and academy on car but that was too costly. Hence, I made up my mind and learned how to drive a bike.
With the passage of time, I started settling in with the people around me. Studies were really good here and there was so much competition here, which I never really experienced in Jeddah. I tried my best to compete and gradually I did score well. Things happen so quickly and now here I am having the time of my life after a hard year. I am doing a degree of which I always dreamt about. I like my university, I have friends and I know how to handle tough situations now. This was the experience of my life, which I really needed to know the ground realities of things. To know how much my parents have suffered before actually reaching a stage where they could provide me with more than I could ever think of.
Our life is so fast that we never can take a break to appreciate the efforts of our parents and to enjoy the things we have around us. The environment our parents have offered us to get the best out of us, the facilities we use on daily basis. We ignore them all because we have them, we don’t know what they are worth until they are taken away from us. Changes in our life are essential they make us realize how much we have lost, they teach us how to adjust in different places and different circumstances, helping us grow into a man with strong character. I have been in that sort of situation and now I try to enjoy my time, and at the same time make it useful.
