To wish to achieve immortality is part of the human psyche. One way to achieve this is to preserve memories and pass them on to the next generation.
Memories have a very short shelf life and, if not preserved carefully and honestly, they perish or change in meanings and substance, changing color like a stale fruit. Only a few lucky people live on in history; otherwise, most of us perish with the second generation.
Memories by themselves are not necessarily the route to immortality, but memories, if collected and presented honestly, comprise real-time history, reflecting culture and acting as a thread that connects the past with the present and helping us to anticipate the future to a limited extent.
I have a firm belief that every one of us is send to this world with some purpose and design and each one of us plays our part in molding history and influencing some lives. Every one of us has his or her circle of influence and helps shape the environment and circumstances around him or her in small and big ways, depending on the task assigned to him or her by Nature.
I have tried to put my memories on paper as a way of keeping myself alive in the memories of others while also keeping some people and events that shaped me and my time alive as well. I have tried to collect the events as they happened and to chronicle the way I reacted to them, without justifying or interpreting the events or my reactions to them. This is therefore a simple account of events as they unfolded.
I do not claim that my life has been something extraordinary, but I am proud to have lived a full life, in which I tasted failure, disappointment, and the sweetness of successes without pride or guilt.
My advice to everyone is to preserve your memories, share your achievements, accept your failures, acknowledge the contribution of others in your successes, and leave it for others to judge your part in shaping their world.
True history consists of the collection of the memories of a particular time, and those memories are a sacred trust that is left for the next generation, to connect the thread of time.
Rais Khan is a Chartered Accountant and an author. He has worked in corporate sector for 40 years in a variety of corporations ranging from IBM to Etisalat in UAE. He has worked and lived in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, USA, Africa and the UAE. Currently he is a freelance business consultant and part-time writer. He is the Editor of Pehchaan and can be contacted at
[email protected]
