"What is your aim in life?" asked one of my best friends while we were enjoying 'free lunch' at work.

"Umm..., I don’t have any aim..." was my frank reply.

"What do you mean you don’t have any aim? You gotta have some purpose to your life..." he shot back as if I was the only guy in the world who didn’t have any defined aim. This was one of those rare occasions, when he probably saw an opportunity to win an argument with me.

I started eating my sweet dish before finishing the meal just to get some time to think. "I take my life one stride at a time and don’t think beyond 5 years. I set new objectives when I have achieved what I earlier aimed for" was my reply.

"I am asking about your overall objective" he was relentless.

"I don’t have any overall objective and I don’t think that it is necessary" I replied as if I knew that I was right and found the discussion completely useless.

"What is _your_ overall aim?" this was my turn now and I expected to catch him on wrong foot.

But he was well prepared for the question and probably was expecting it. "I wanna go into space." he said looking at me with eyes filled with strong determination and face lit up with confidence.

We went on to argue until we finished eating and as usual didn’t reach any conclusion. As a last ditch effort to convince him that I have a valid point, I later sent him this sher written by Allama Iqbal on chat:

Har makaam se aage makaam hai tera
Hayat zauq-e-safar ke siwa kuchh aur nahi

Frankly, I myself wasn’t sure of what I was arguing for and I now realize that I had no idea of what we were talking about.

(To be continued...)