Survival Instinct

Written By: Naufal Bin Wali

Living in an environment where depressing incidents are common can challenge the stability of any human mind. To be able to face them, fight them, accept them and live with them is a true test of integrity, endurance and patience of a human. Almost every month Pakistan sees a bomb blast; a riot or a strike that would have caused serious functional breakdowns in any other country, but this nation survives through them!
People have often commented that Pakistani’s have lost the sense of valuing life. For them death of a hundred people is nothing. This may be true to some extent, but, not because we are cruel and emotionless people, but, because we have seen so much that now our brains have adapted to contain such horrific news in a subtle way and deal with it.
Is moving on a bad thing? Recently Gulf, a very famous shopping area in Clifton Karachi, saw an unpleasant incident. Two shop owners, belonging to different ethnic backgrounds, got involved in a conflict with each other, their colleagues supported them and it got serious to the extent of usage of guns. Customers were trapped in there for a good three to four hours because of it. People were scared and it was the breaking news of the day. Next day if you had visited Gulf, you wouldn’t believe that this place was dangerous just a few hours before. Shopkeepers were back in action and there were customers present (not as many as on a usual day but significant enough). Customers not showing up would have caused loss in business but thanks to live hearted people here, that did not happen.
This was an example on a small level; the blast carried out on the 10th of Muharram on Shiaa congregation was devastating. 25 people lost their lives while several were injured. It was a mental trauma for many. Chaos was further created by a certain group of people to worsen the conditions. If this happened internationally everything would have been closed down, people would have been scared to go out. But with all this happening in our country, within 5-6 hours street life was back to normal. Not only this, but, also looking at the diverse crowds we are inhabited by including the foreigners, it is a proud sight to see that even though being surrounded by such uncertainity they tend to live their normal lives amongst us. Thus, the economic, social or even academic activities wont stop but continue to grow.


There are several other examples to it. People have learned to move on, this may be bad as gradually people are losing hope and are not voicing their concern about the instability. But on other hand, in a nation that has been crippled, people had to find a way to survive and this is how we survive. This is our instinct to survive.
Asking us to stay back home or cut short our social gathering is like asking a human not to breathe because there are some viruses in the air. Our lungs won’t stop breathing but will depend on white blood cells to take care of these viruses. In the same way, people can’t stop or change their routines as often, thus it’s the responsibility of the nation’s defense forces to protect them.

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