We often discover the value of freedom only when we imagine its absence. A door that we can open, a road we can travel, a country we can return to, a voice with which we can disagree-these ordinary privileges rarely announce themselves as blessings. They become visible when they are taken away. Listening last week, thousands of miles from Pakistan, to the grievances, frustrations and concerns of people from different segments of our society, I found myself thinking beyond the complaints themselves. I began asking a more fundamental question: what does freedom mean to a human being who has truly experienced the possibility of losing everything?
I listened to many voices during the Independence Day celebrations, including those of guests who had travelled from Pakistan and Chairman of the Overseas Foundation Syed Qamar Raza. Their concerns were real, and I do not believe genuine grievances should ever be dismissed. But I have never been satisfied with looking at a problem only through what is immediately visible. I try to go beneath the grievance, to understand its cause, its consequences and the state of mind that produces it. I sometimes describe this as looking with a “third eye”-the eye of experience and reflection.
Perhaps this instinct was shaped by my own life. I have lived Pakistan, served Pakistan and had the opportunity to see the country from within some of its highest offices. I have also known disappointment and personal despair. There was a time when circumstances brought me to what felt like a dead end. I even fantasized about jumping from the Jhelum River bridge. I had reached a point where I could not see a way forward and wondered how a person survives when every familiar hope appears to have disappeared. I share this not to seek sympathy, but because surviving that period taught me something that no position, office or recognition could have taught me: the value of another morning.
I never harmed anyone, and I never corrupted myself for personal gain. Like every other human being, I was born with the instinct of survival. Life continued to place obstacles and opportunities before me, and I continued to build my way forward. Sometimes circumstances broke what I had built; sometimes I had to begin again. But survival is rarely a straight road. It is the human capacity to endure, adapt and continue.
That experience also changed the way I understand freedom.
A prisoner may have food, shelter, medical care, discipline and security. His day may be organised with greater precision than that of many free people. He may be surrounded by protection and vehicles, and everything may happen according to a prescribed routine. Yet there is one thing he cannot command: where he goes. The absence of that single choice transforms the meaning of everything else.
Freedom is therefore more than the right to speak or disagree. It is the ability to choose one’s direction, to move, to return, to dream and to build. It is also the freedom to question one’s own country. Criticism of a state and appreciation of its existence are not contradictions. We can demand better governance, accountability and justice without forgetting the extraordinary value of possessing an independent homeland.
This distinction matters.
A nation can have serious shortcomings and still be worth defending. A house may require extensive repair without its inhabitants wishing the house itself to disappear. Pakistan is not perfect, and no serious citizen should pretend that it is. But the answer to imperfection is responsibility, not despair; reform, not self-destruction; constructive criticism, not the rejection of one’s own existence.
There is another freedom that deserves our attention-the freedom of the mind.
In an earlier column, I wrote about the survival instinct of the state and compared it, metaphorically, with the survival mechanisms within the human mind. When an individual is continuously exposed to threat, conflict, fear or irritation, the mind begins allocating enormous energy to those stimuli. The same principle can be considered at the level of society. If every disagreement becomes an emergency, every criticism a personal battle and every controversy a national crisis, we gradually exhaust the very intellectual energy we need to solve our real problems.
Our minds require discipline just as our institutions do.
Not every issue deserves the same department of our attention. Some matters require political debate. Some require legal processes. Some belong to institutions. Some belong to personal reflection. And some are simply not worth carrying any further. A mature society must learn to distinguish between a problem that demands action and an irritation that merely consumes energy.
This is where I believe Pakistan needs a deeper national conversation. We have become extremely efficient at reacting, but we must become better at thinking. We must ask whether the arguments consuming our attention are producing solutions, or merely producing exhaustion.
The human brain is an instrument of survival, creativity, memory and judgment. If we continuously burden it with anger, resentment, unnecessary controversy and endless repetition, we leave less capacity for education, productivity, innovation, family, service and national development. A nation, like an individual, cannot spend all its energy fighting every shadow and still have sufficient strength for the challenges that actually matter.
This does not mean abandoning criticism. It means giving criticism purpose.
It does not mean ignoring grievances. It means converting grievances into solutions.
It does not mean refusing to see weakness. It means having the maturity to see weakness without surrendering confidence in our collective ability to overcome it.
Life itself teaches us this lesson. Disappointment is part of life. Failure is part of life. Migration is part of life. People leave their homes because circumstances compel them to seek opportunity, safety or a different future. Even nature teaches us that survival sometimes requires movement. But leaving a place does not require hatred of the place from which one came, and hardship does not justify hostility towards one’s own existence.
I say this as someone who has experienced both attachment to Pakistan and distance from it. When you are thousands of miles away, the meaning of homeland can become clearer. You begin to understand that a country is not merely a government, a political party, an institution or a particular period of history. It is the soil of memory, the language of childhood, the graves of ancestors, the places where one’s identity was formed and the collective space in which millions of people continue their own struggle for survival and dignity.
Pakistan, therefore, deserves neither blind praise nor careless rejection.
It deserves thought. It deserves service. It deserves the courage to identify its weaknesses and the wisdom to protect its strengths.
Our adversaries remind us, sometimes more clearly than we remind ourselves, that Pakistan occupies an important place in the strategic landscape of the region and maintains relationships with major powers across the world. That reality should not make us complacent, but neither should our internal difficulties make us forget the value of the country we have inherited and the responsibility we carry towards those who will inherit it from us.
On Independence Day, perhaps we should therefore ask ourselves a question more difficult than “What has Pakistan given me?”
We should ask: “What have I done with the freedom Pakistan gave me?”
Have I used it to build or merely to complain? Have I protected it? Have I served anything greater than myself? Have I taught the next generation to think, or only to react? Have I used my mental energy to create something, or have I allowed every passing controversy to consume it?
There was a time in my own life when I could not see beyond the wall in front of me. I now know that the wall was not the end of the road. It was simply the point from which I had to find another direction.
Perhaps nations experience the same moments.
Perhaps Pakistan, too, must continually find new directions without losing sight of the reason for its existence.
The lesson I take from my own journey, and from what I heard last week, is therefore neither complicated nor political: existence is a blessing. Freedom is a blessing. An independent homeland is a blessing.
We honour these blessings not by pretending that everything is perfect, but by becoming strong enough to improve what is imperfect. We honour freedom by using it responsibly. We honour our homeland by serving it intelligently. We honour our sacrifices by ensuring that the next generation inherits not merely a country, but a stronger sense of purpose.
A free nation does not need every citizen to agree with every decision. It needs citizens capable of disagreement without losing sight of the larger national interest; capable of criticism without contempt; capable of disappointment without despair; and capable of seeing beyond today’s noise towards tomorrow’s survival.
That, ultimately, is the freedom I have come to value most-not merely the freedom to live outside a prison, but the freedom to keep one’s mind clear, one’s purpose intact and one’s hope alive.
Freedom is not only the absence of walls. It is the ability to continue moving forward when life has placed a wall in front of you.
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