Mohammad Sheikh Kamaluddin Sharon,
writer and columnist
This is a story of life philosophy by Mohammad Sheikh Kamaluddin Sharon. Bangladesh is a country of diverse cultures, but in the present time, many new cultures are being added. I think selfie is the culture of our time. I am not writing to defame the selfie culture. I have learned a prerequisite to understand life easily, and I have found peace by applying it in my own life. The mantra is: whatever comes with the wind of the age, there is nothing but unrest in burdening oneself by complaining against it. There is no point in making the age an enemy. But I don’t need everything of the age.
Not all the blessings of technology meet my needs, rather they often harm me. But there is nothing to be angry about it. It is a matter of my choice. I am not angry to reject anything in life. This is my first skill to live well. I have not learned these from anywhere. I am learning everything to live, to walk on the path of life, and I am saying what I have learned! I am in an experiment with my own understanding.
How many people are saying how many things! I am not taking anything completely, nor am I throwing anything away completely! I like this play, this mingling with life, wanting to understand it. I can’t do anything by leaving aside the urge to make life beautiful. The biggest hero of my life is life itself. I like to say this too. My most favorite identity that I like to carry is this, that I have wanted to understand life, to live, to earn the worthiness of loving it all the time.
This endless and uninterrupted curiosity about life is my companion every day. This is my most favorite truth that, I have wanted to be happy with life in my everyday life in a simple sense, to be well, and not to let go of myself in that question at all. My brightest identity is that I am a devotee of life, its disciple, its child and its lover, I do not want any recognition as a writer, because my writing is not that good.
This writing of mine is a part of my life. I have become a little harder now. Whenever a throat wants to come out of me, I look at myself with a complicated eye. I rule myself. Do I have no one to rule me now, so will I be deprived of my own rule? So I stop myself. I take care, when the mind wants to be restless. I will need this vigilance and caution all my life. Because, I am human.
Whatever is good for me, I fall behind from it repeatedly. And as many times as I fall, it is my responsibility to pull myself up.
Whenever someone says, “Everything is ruined in this age, our golden age was different. That is, it was good. As soon as I hear this, my mind becomes tense and alert. I tell myself, I will never say such a thing. Because, I will not be able to believe that everything is ruined in my time. Everything is bad in my time. I have rather arranged my thoughts in this way, that there were some obstacles in every age. Each age comes with a different wind. I was born in this age. There is nothing good in my time, I cannot even give shelter to this word as a word. This is a disgrace in the name of nature. I cheat on behalf of the world, on behalf of life, I cannot let this disgrace happen quietly. I refute it in my mind. Apart from just winning the argument, I actually have not been born in any other time than my time. All the good paths of the world, which can be compared to this time, all those good paths are outside my reach. The history that happened before me! The history that makes me depressed, that wants to prove me as a living being who is deceived in my own eyes, that history is unacceptable to me.
I am writing a story about my life philosophy and my views on history, past, and present. I like the history that makes me feel good, gives me peace, gives me joy, gives me strength to live. I am willing to look at that history for a few moments. Because it may also inspire me to survive. But the history that only makes me sad, only makes me despair, “Oh, what a time it was! Rice-filled fields and cow-filled cows” this cry never touches me. The history, the past that teaches me to be grateful, I can look back at it if I have time. The point is, when my mind shows more interest in sadness, frustration, complaint, etc., I reject it as a skill to survive with a strong conscious mind. I could not do this when I was young. I have learned a little by trying and trying. There are many minds in this one mind. I hold that mind above all, the mind that keeps my life easy for me, makes my survival bright, nurtures my joy.
I want to give the most attention to that mind, the mind that helps me understand the rhythm of life, tells me to be tough when needed, and sometimes softens and sits next to my soul. I trust that mind the most. The mind that makes me fit for my life, prepares me, pushes me towards it all the time. I do not know where I got this mind. But among my many minds, this mind is the hardest, but the most reliable, trustworthy, friend-like. I trust this mind and I go on.
That is why, I do not want to see myself confused by anything that comes floating in the stream of time. Many things will float in the stream of life. The boat is mine. The oar is mine. The sea is mine. The river is mine. Whatever I like, I will take it on the boat. Whatever feels heavy, I will return it to the stream of life. Do I not have this responsibility for my oar? So if I took it, then where is the opportunity for so much frustration, so much stain in the name of life here? Life is fine. Time is fine. Everything is good. If you want to live, you have to listen to life with interest. If not, life has no obligation to keep me happy. This is my mantra. This works for me. That’s why I say at the beginning, today I am not writing against selfies. These come and go. My job is to learn to cut them off and move on.
Today I will talk about selfies. A lot has been seen in the last few years after entering the selfie era. What is the role of selfies in my life? I might be able to write a little bit of that story in a mess. This is not a very serious story. But in my mind, various kinds of waves of emotion play at times. From any so-called light event, I sometimes find myself in a very serious situation. And in the midst of any so-called serious situation, various kinds of so-called light thoughts come to my mind. I say so-called, because these are all relative matters. Even with a so-called serious matter like death, people celebrate it with respect and celebrate it. And with a so-called joyful matter like birth, people can object for a valid reason! There is no such rule for anything. Whatever one experiences, whatever one agrees with, that is his truth, that is right for him. No one outside can be his judge.
The story of Mohammad Sheikh Kamaluddin Sharon’s life philosophy.
From this perspective, I feel very fair about my life. I have to understand my situation as soon as I am born. It will take some time to understand that. Then when the understanding is complete, I can enjoy the journey of life for a while by using that understanding. Doing this will be the end of the day, unless I lose my life in a so-called accident.
The fairness of life is here, if I take your knowledge and apply it to my life, it will not benefit me much. Everyone has a different account of life. There is no opportunity for comparison. I can call life fair because it is not. Everyone’s challenge is not the same. But everyone is in a great challenge. No one is less than anyone. There is no rule to measure that! Fairness means something like “equality” to us. I have not seen this tendency in nature. He does not experience the urge to be equal. I do not see any weakness of nature towards importance. His storm is very cruel. Whoever survives, survives! Inverted flowers are born here and there. Everything is beautiful. But no one is like anyone. I think life is fair, not because it is equal. Rather, his fairness gives me this impression, that he is definitely unequal for everyone. Equally different for everyone. I find this place amazing.
Anyway, a serious voice has come down. I tried to talk about selfies and not be serious. I couldn’t. I became. Now turn around a little. The name of this composition could be, “The Story of Life Philosophy”! Okay, let it be this name then. His own picture. He is looking at the sun holding the window. I asked him, “Wow! Beautiful, isn’t it? Who took it?” He said shyly, smiling, “Me!” I was so surprised and amazed! It seems like someone else took it, such a dense expression! Then I realized, it would be a good thing to do that! There is a self-reliance in it. A person has taken his own picture with his own interest, he has acted a little in his face and brought a sad expression in his mind! He captured that moment with the camera then. There are many arrangements here. After doing this much, he took that camera-bound moment with someone else. With his friends. Everything is beautiful here. What is there to judge this person? What harm has he done in this process? No one has!
So what’s the problem? There is no problem. The problem is, when I took my picture of my moment with someone else, I shared it with my friends, and then if someone does not praise that beauty, if I feel bad about it, then only that bad feeling, that’s the problem for me! Nothing else! Because that bad feeling becomes an obstacle to my survival, it tarnishes my smile for a while. I am a life-loving / life-facing / life-loving person! This is the only criterion for judging everything! Did it go for or against my well-being?
I have thought, this is that I have to look at someone else for my liking, that is the problem for me. The less I can reduce the dependence on others in life, the more auspicious it is. If not, it is not in my hands to stay in it. Whoever sees me in the mirror and likes me in my own eyes, I dress myself in my own way and I look very beautiful in my own eyes, that is a very joyful thing! Then when I take a picture of it and share it with someone else, when he praises me, if I like it, there is no problem in it. That is also a matter of joy. The problem is, if I get attached to that praise. If I wait for his praise. I stay up. When I feel criticized when I don’t get it. That is the problem. My mind’s key has gone to someone else’s hand. That is the problem. At that moment my ability to feel good has gone to someone else’s hand. The remote controller of the laughter inside my mind has gone to someone else’s hand. That is a very problematic thing in my eyes.
Mohammad Sheikh Kamaluddin Sharon’s life philosophy story.
I don’t think there is any problem with taking selfies. A person can use a camera to take their own picture, and that makes them happy, and thinking about it makes me happy too. The only thing to keep in mind is that the culture that has been built around selfies, if it becomes a successful and certain productive line of depression, then that is a warning message to me. I test everything and then enter into life. I don’t enter blindly. That’s why I want to pay attention to this place. The things that make me happy, let them be in my life. But why would I be drawn to the actions that cause me sorrow in my life? Why would I enter into this process knowingly? If I am in there, why would I stay there? I am getting a message of constant dissatisfaction and instability from within myself. Then why would my traffic be uninterrupted there?
The measure of happiness that is very high, does not come every day. People do not stay intoxicated in the festival of madness with everything. Excitement, madness, and happiness are not the same thing. There is a difference in measure between them. The high measure of happiness comes occasionally. There is a simple natural source of peace in happiness. That can always be there. I heard that in Rabindra’s song. “The stream of happiness flows in the world”! This stream of happiness is not the high happiness of fireworks. This happiness is natural, easy, peaceful happiness. Which quietly flows everywhere in life. Whatever I can touch, that is my gain. I try to recognize that happiness in everything. And I also want to recognize what attacks that happiness. Staying in touch with this peaceful happiness is what I mean by happiness. Happiness is not the matter of staying alive by constantly exploding fireworks and dancing. If I can go to sleep with a simple measure of attraction and interest in life, and if that interest remains in the morning, then that means to me that I am in touch with the flowing stream of happiness in the world. This sense of happiness is the protector of my desire to live.
I see the problem in the midst of ugly thoughts. If there is a deficit in seeing, then people can think of themselves as ugly. This is my belief, which I preach. If you look with someone else’s incomplete and unformed eyes, then people can lean towards the direction of inferiority and ugly thoughts. They can insult themselves alone in the house. The person who is connected with nature, with God, with the soul, with the life force of the world, for them it is impossible to think of their face separately as ugly. The true use of the word ugly can be in the field of human nature, in the field of their thoughts, in the field of their actions! Yet the most prevalent use of it is in the field of human faces! How much business, how much stuff around it! Just because it is more prevalent, if someone wants to impose it on my mind, I will not approve of it. If everyone in the world agrees with this stupid thought, then it can be the general decline of the intelligence of the world. For that, in this field, I do not doubt my intelligence. I do not doubt my sense of belief. I am sorry for all of them.
If I fall into this trap and keep eating nonsense, then it would be appropriate for me to redefine and rebuild my sense of beauty and definition. My constructed definition of beauty should be consistent with the truth available to me, it should brighten my survival, it should give peace to my sense of existence, it should give comfort, respect, dignity. The definition of beauty that keeps me small inside, gives me a sense of incompleteness, keeps me half, do I want to join the group madness of nurturing it? I don’t. I use my place to preach the knowledge that I don’t want, that I know is harmful to me, to sell that sense. If I have something to do in the world, then it is the work of spreading this sense, which kept my existence beautiful in a life that survived. Which gave me respect. Gave me peace. If there is something to preach, in poetry, or in politics, or in pictures, or in laughter, or in silence, then I want to choose for preaching, some kind of beauty tips or mantra, which keeps me connected with my life in happiness, peace, respect, comfort.
He holds on. A dignified person, who lives his life by respecting himself and others, I don’t think there can be anyone more beautiful than him in the world. I have constructed my definition of beauty in this way. Until I find a more attractive definition, I have fixed this definition as my functional definition of beauty for humans.
The definition of beauty that keeps me waiting all the time, makes me restless, when someone will come and praise me a little, then I will be beautiful, until I become beautiful in his eyes, I will not be beautiful in my eyes, I will keep my mind small, the definition of beauty that takes me through these feelings, no matter how much it spreads in the world with catchy songs and advertisements, no matter how successful and widely accepted it is with a face, it can be nullified from my side! It is actually worthless, and worth throwing away!
Let’s think a little about the praise. When we wait for praise for anything, we are very poor inside. The work that I have done, or have become, on my own initiative, on my own demand, someone can say something good about it. That’s one thing. I’m not talking about that. I may like that expression. That’s natural. That’s also a kind of recognition. But those are much later things of the main work! The main work has its own fulfillment. The main event happened in a completely self-contained process. It has its own achievement. Praise happens much later. Praise is a byproduct but if my main thought and goal at the time of doing a job is that I will get a lot of praise for it, if I don’t get it, I will be upset, I will doubt my own work, then my position is very weak, playful and dependent. I have moved away from the main beauty of the event.
Praise or recognition comes in a natural process. Even if someone cooks a meal, his main concern is this, that those who will consume this food, they will have a good experience. He pays attention to giving this good experience or I hope he does. I go crazy with the good feeling of eating that food! I can’t find the words, what to say to praise this person’s cooking properly! Actually words are very poor medium! How much can be said in words! But these words of mine, they are just the expression of my liking, they are not my experience! My experience is my own. The one who cooked, he will understand best by not my words, but by seeing my eating, whether his work was successful or not! Whether I got a good experience or not! His care is there that I feel happy in my body, soul and mind by eating. But if his attention is this, that when I will tell him, “You are the best! You are simply the best”! If he waits for this to hear, then he is very poor. If his main thought during cooking is around this, who will say what to him, then that is absolutely poverty! Very poor! These poor thoughts will also mix in his cooking, it seems, his cooking will also have a poverty. The food will not taste good!
When a person tries to get a praise by being fake, he shows his poverty. I’m sorry, I don’t know if I attacked many people with this word! But the attack is not my intention. The poverty that I have discovered in this process, I don’t know how to express it in a little softer language! There is nothing wrong with being happy when someone calls you beautiful. But if someone doesn’t call you beautiful, making your mind bad about it is a stupid and harmful thing. There are many good sorrows in the world. I am against sitting in the factory of making these fake sorrows and destroying your beauty, your thoughts, your existence. You are beautiful. Life is beautiful. The sky is beautiful. The tree is beautiful. Look at yourself. And look at everything. You are part of the beauty of the world that is playing. It is impossible for you to be ugly here. Even if you try to be ugly by yourself, you will not be able to. But if you try, you will be able to tarnish your beauty for some time with these useless sorrows and pains.
Your beauty is not dependent on any likes or comments. Your beauty is the decision of nature. Wherever you look in the world, it is only beautiful. Rather, whatever people may call you ugly, it is the result of some untransformed ugly thoughts of the world, and there are many commercial matters involved with it!
Think once, if everyone believes that they are beautiful, then how much sales are going on in the world to feel “more beautiful”, some people are making their bread and butter with that, what will happen to them! Some people have created a business cluster, so they first spread a false propaganda, that you are ugly, and then they have set up a cosmetics market with their medicine. I am not against cosmetics. Cosmetics use beautiful people to present them differently! There are some eye-catching elements in it. It is a beautiful game of spending time! I do not blame it separately. So cosmetics do not make “ugly” beautiful. It makes one beautiful differently. I agree to see it this way.
If you always think about your beauty, you and I will be very deceived. There is a lot more to see. To see the beautiful, you have to be beautiful first. You have to understand that you are beautiful. That is the first beauty of the world. To realize, that I am really beautiful! After realizing that, there is no need for anyone’s likes or comments. Those likes or comments can be a matter of general participation. A matter of small jokes and mischief. There is no need to emphasize there. I am talking about that place. There is no need to give more importance to this place. I am thinking like that.
One thing is to take care of someone. To be noticed! You dressed up for a person. That person did not even notice, you dressed up for him, then he is not connected with you at all! Can you dress up for everyone like this? Can you hope that he will notice? No, you can’t hope that everyone in the world will notice you by dressing up! You can dress up for yourself first. You yourself take care of yourself best. The good feeling that comes after dressing yourself up in the mirror, that is the most necessary like in the world! Your own comment is the biggest compliment! And then there are some special people of people. People love them too! Regardless of men and women! There is no offense in that! It is their own matter. And that special person expresses his liking for you, you may also like it! That’s a matter! The feeling is natural.
A special matter with a special person! It is a personal transaction. Is it possible that you will feel the same if five thousand people say it? Is it ever possible? How is it possible? You are a person! You have one face! You have one mind! If you do not get the praise of five thousand or five hundred or fifty people, you do not feel complete, how did it happen in your life? You dressed up for the person of your life. He did not even notice. It can hurt your mind. It is not a waste of mind. He is your person. You hope he will see you. He will notice. He dresses up for you. You notice. You tell him two things about it. You dress up for him. And you also dress up for yourself. He tells you two things about it. He dresses up for himself. And he can also dress up thinking of you. These are the love of people to people! Isn’t it? Whether he sees you or not, something of yours comes to him. He is a true person of your life! It is a logical matter and a logical pride! If you are ashamed and want to hear two words of praise from him, it is a beautiful demand within the limits of two lives, an exchange of love, there is a relationship in it! You do not want it anywhere else, just want it from him! He wants it too! I can understand it clearly.
As long as it is a source of joy, I am with it. When it becomes a cause of sorrow, I can understand that when there is a lack of real sorrow, people can create such sorrow and try to be unhappy!
Now I come to my life on the road. I have a political relationship with selfies. When I walk, or go somewhere on foot, I meet many people on the way. There is a one-sided communication in political news. I do not know many people, but they know me, because I do politics. Now they come forward and want to take a picture. Many of them ask someone to take the picture first. Then when it is done, they say, “I want a selfie!” This is the second picture. Then if they do not look good in it, they sometimes say, “Not like this, please! One more, please!” I laugh. If I do not have to reach somewhere on time, I stand. They take the picture and leave. When I go out of the house, this happens a lot. I do not mind it. But I do not mind it if it does not happen either. I have no expectation for it. I have no arrangement against it. It means that some of the good deeds or something else that I have done have reached the hearts of these people. And when it does not happen, I do not have any nagging thoughts in my mind, like “I have to spread my banners, posters, leaflets everywhere so that the number of selfies increases exponentially!”
Some of these people post the pictures they took on their walls. I do not know that. I have many people in my Facebook friend list. I know some of them a little bit. Most of them are known through political channels. When I meet any of them on the road, they take pictures. They post it on my wall. They express their appreciation. They praise me. I accept some of these words as “tags”. I use their expression of liking, through my writings, for publicity. If I gave this job to an advertising agency, they would make up some nice words in my name without any experience, and they would take money from me for this praise. I do not want to spend money to buy praise, to do my publicity. I do not feel satisfied with it. Some people on the road say some nice things from their hearts. I think, from my side, this is the most healthy and organic publicity of my writing. Whatever these are as words, I know this person myself. The words came from his heart. His words may be weak. But his feelings are true to me. This is all I need from a devotee for my writing. The person who comes forward and thinks to recognize me and takes a picture with me, and expresses his liking for some of my writings, I give him some comments. But I do this thoughtfully. I do not do it selflessly. My interest is to create a community for my political and writing work. That has happened. I do not need more. More connections will ruin the peace of my life. This is enough. But I need to mention this in this context, I do not expect, after taking a picture, when he will say two good words in my name, and I will be able to use him for my publicity. When the matter happens in a natural and easy process, then I support it. This is my publicity style.
I get many beautiful stories in this selfie process on the road. Some people say, “I want to keep a memory. Will you?” A very sweet word. He is excited, he tells me he is burning for me. But his humble request pleases me. All in all, I love to walk on the road. Dhaka’s road is not something to be proud of at all. There are very few roads in the world that look so bad. But I have a relationship with this road. When I go down the road, I feel like I am meeting some ordinary acquaintances of mine, not a political leader. Everyone on the road knows me. I love to walk.
It is good to have a balance in everything. I have no strict policy. Whatever day it is, whatever mood it is, whatever moment it is, that moment guides me, what I will do that day. I do not fix it beforehand and go out! But I have this basic knowledge. That is, I do something for the world by depriving myself of my personal time. I help others from my own happiness. Then I take a picture.. I do this and that. My walking, my sky watching, these are more important to me than trying to be famous. More important than being loved and known by many people, is to know and get life more closely. I will break this down a bit more. In a day of my 24 hours time, I try to do many things, most of which are to stay well. That is my own well-being. That is my work for myself. I have no name there. I am a child of nature. The writing tendency is a gift of nature to my existence. I enjoy it with all my heart, eagerly, generously. There is no one to say remember there. I am just a life-loving soul! That is a big place for me to survive. But when I try to reach out to people with that writing, that attempt is my work of “importance” – identity.
Mohammad Sheikh Kamaluddin Sharon
writer and columnist
This is a story of life philosophy by Mohammad Sheikh Kamaluddin Sharon
