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| Wisdom behind Memories |
Chronical Background
I wrote this blog after my surgery last year. It was published on another blog of mine, namely: Arabic Streams, on 12 September 2023. Now, I am copying and republishing it here, because from now onwards, only my Arabic blogs will be published on the previous blog, while all my English blogs will be published here.
My Surgery
I had a surgery about two weeks back. There was some sort of clot, like a lipoma, near my left ear. Alhamdulillah, it has been successfully removed by a surgical operation in Jinnah Hospital, Karachi. The operation took about an hour. I have had the prescribed dosage of antibiotics and painkillers but did not complete it for some reason as I was feeling better without them and did not feel the need to use them anymore. The stitches from the operation were removed a week ago, but the wounds were bandaged. The bandage has also been removed three days ago. Now wounds are almost healed by the Grace of Allah. Hopefully, the scars will vanish as well, insha Allah, very soon. I got injured frequently and healed every time very quickly. All that used to be in a short span by the special Grace of Allah Almighty. All praises for Allah Almighty Alone.
During these two weeks after the surgery, I noticed an unusual change in my eating routine. I started using chilies in my food in considerably more quantity than my normal routine as I was not feeling their pungency and bitterness. A highly competent doctor of my acquaintance, Dr. Hassan Khan, one of my IPFP fellows, told me that this is the case with some patients, and it is quite normal. The crux of what I understood out of his root cause analysis was that by going off the medication, the body was making up for the extra nutrients it needed by extracting them from foods until and unless it would completely fulfill their deficiency. The same thing happened because, with every passing day, the bitter taste increasingly came back which is now completely restored, Alhamdulillah.
Physical and Spiritual Wounds
Today, the slightly painful rather remindful feelings of my wounds caused my thoughts to wander in a larger horizon of the unavoidable fact that humans experience many types of wounds in life. Some wounds are a result of physical injuries and accidents, while others are wounds of the soul. Both types of wounds occur sometimes because of unavoidable circumstances and sometimes are caused by our own mistakes and negligence. Some of them are natural and some are “gifted” by others. For convenience, they may be categorized into two broader streams, i.e., physical and spiritual wounds.
However, Physical Wounds heal anyway. But Spiritual Wounds remain excruciatingly painful, venomously tormenting, soul-stirring, blood-scorching, insomniacly sleep-depriving, thoughts capturing, mind provoking, nerves breaking, astonishingly breathtaking, seemingly everlasting, exhaustingly healing, invincibly challenging, frequently striking, intolerably frightening, unbearably aching, memorably the bitterest tasting, fiercely anger fueling, instantly reaction seeking, strongly abhorrence seeding, and deeply enmity breeding. Briefly speaking, spiritual wounds attack the soul more than affect it physically.
Wisdom from Arabic Poetry
The Arabic poetry excelled in saying it with captivating beauty and matchless delicacy in these lines:
جراØات السنان لها التئام
Wounds caused by arrows and spears are healed.
These lines reflect that there is a type of spiritual wound that is the suffering inflicted by others. It disturbs the human mind. However, sometimes this anxiety turns into negative emotions and becomes a precursor to even more dangerous spiritual wounds. This level may be due to the vengeful feelings of a person and may also be because of the predominance of evil and temptation in one’s nature. In this condition, a person commits immoral, wicked, and nefarious misdeeds that fall under the category of sin, transgression, and crime. As a consequence, the human soul and conscience are spiritually wounded.
Poem about Physical and Spiritual Wounds
The discussion and Arabic poetry quoted above identifies two types of wounds in terms of their healing and effects: physical and spiritual. These two types of wounds are vastly different from each other. In the following English stanzas, I will describe them in a more advanced, elegant, eloquent, and captivating form as much as possible.
My thoughts roam far and wide.
For all of us, life’s wounds can bring,
Physical wounds may heal.
They can torment you day and night.
And make you question everything in sight.
Physical wounds may heal with time.
They torment, stir, scorch, and bind.
They capture thoughts and break the will.
Spiritual wounds are more than skin-deep.
They haunt the mind and stir the blood.
They fill the heart with rage and mud.
Spiritual Wounds are deep and dark.
They ache and burn and never heal.
They fill the soul with bitter zeal.
They rob the sleep and break the nerve.
They last so long and heal so slow.
They challenge us and make us grow.
They are the wounds that never close.
They are the wounds that cut deep into the soul.
They are a poison that consumes us whole.
They can leave you excruciatingly in pain.
A pain that never seems to go
A hurt and scar that fester and grow.
A wound that leaves you feeling lost
Or adrift in a sea of despair
A shadow that you cannot tear.
They take their breath and last so long.
They frighten, ache, and taste so wrong.
They fuel the anger and the pain.
They seek reaction and abhorrence.
They attack the soul with forceful violence.
And leave a scar for all of life.
The gist of the matter is that wounds can be both physical and spiritual. Physical wounds are visible and therefore feel scary, while spiritual wounds are invisible, but they can sometimes be more fatal than physical wounds.
Moral of the Story
We should always take the path of goodness. Just as we try our best to avoid physical wounds caused by injuries, similarly, we should manage to avoid the spiritual wounds of sins and misdeeds. Also, we should not cause pain to others so that no one else suffers physical or spiritual wounds because of us.
In short, we should not leave this world with the burden of sins and mistakes on the conscience, because the spiritual wounds will hurt in the hereafter as well.
Dr. Tahir Mahmood
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