Liberty Market

Rizwan MAqsood
Sep 6, 2018 · 4 min read

I woke up and had mixed feelings about fundraising activity in the evening. Going out with people has never been on my to-do list. But I have started to do things that I have never done before and feel reluctant to do. The magic of Amal is happening.

Our original rendezvous point was Fortress Stadium. But due to the rehearsals of Defence Day, the fortress stadium was closed for public. We then choose Liberty Market and without wasting any time or canceling the activity, rushed to the Liberty Market. It was very hot and humid day, most of the market was deserted and there were very few people. We waited for about an hour and people started to show up. Our body language was changed from the day we spent in Lahore Zoo, we had this super confidence, ready to face anything, ready to face failure and humiliation. The difference is that we have become a team which is profoundly connected and have a special respect for its members, and each member has a sense of intrepidity that if he is going to fall the other members of the team will be there to catch him.

When we were waiting for the people to show up we had a chance to talk to two little boys who were selling coloring books and pens. So I did some market research and gained some valuable market insights from them. They told me about the points where we can get maximum donations, they also helped us in developing the profile of our potential donors. One boy told me that he made Rs. 130 for the whole day and he will go home when he will made Rs. 600. The other boy told us that he goes to school in the morning and in the evening he sells coloring books and pens to support his education. This little child has so much weight on his shoulders in such young age, seeing this side of the world and this level of uneven distribution of wealth that on the one hand there is a child who supports his own education and the time that is supposed to be the best time of his life, he is selling stuff to support himself, on the other hand, there are children who are worried about having the latest smartphone, video games, and fancy gadgets, made me think that there is something profoundly wrong with human race.

During the collection of funds I thought that how hard it must have been for Edhi Saab, he devoted his life for the service of humanity, he rose above religion, race, ethnicities, and nationalities. He gave with his both arms open and never expected anything in return from anyone. Edhi Saab said “People have become educated, but have not yet become human”, it took wisdom to become human, filling your head with books and knowledge that serve no purpose to humanity is worthless. English philosopher Bertrand Russel in his essay “Knowledge and Wisdom” argued the difference between knowledge and wisdom, knowledge is easy to pass from one generation to the other and can be taught in classrooms, but wisdom is hard to teach. He gave different examples to prove his point, one of them is that when human split the atom, everyone started saying that mountains could be moved now, the course of rivers can be changed now, but instead of using this for the betterment of the humanity we started building weapons of mass destruction. We have the knowledge to build the pocket-size gadgets that can access to infinite knowledge of the universe but we don’t have the wisdom to use them and instead of discovering new ideas and secrets of the universe we watch pictures of cats and food.

I read somewhere that 100,000 years ago our ancestors were insignificant animals, their impact on the world was not much greater than that of jellyfish, cow, and frog. From being apes from the distant corner of Africa we have become the ruler of the world. The mess humans have created in the past few thousand years, the rivers of blood humans have spilled on the base of religion, god, color, political ideologies and other differences, made me disgusted to be a part of human race. We are identically the same and share almost the same biological structure with trees, monkeys, and other living beings. In a world full of hatred and hostility we need more people like Edhi Saab. What would be the world like if we all become Edhi in our lives, and just rise above the group that we happen to be born in and stand for the human race. What would be world look like if all the decisions, policies, rules, ideologies, doctrines are made with the human race as a final cause of the whole system. I hope the next decades and centuries will be more focused on the human race, and we will have a common agreed upon goal.

I feel grateful to become a part of Amal which provided me the opportunity to do such deeds of kindness. I feel grateful and honored to be a part of such a team, just imagine what would we become as a person if we have fellows like Amal in our universities, they have this magical aura around them which makes you want to do things that you never have done before. It feels like I have known them for a long time, their faces look so familiar that I feel like I have been seeing them for years.