Daily Times

“Even if you go out and murder someone, come to me and I will shield you.” The words she once said to me with that austere expression on her face have been engraved in my heart and soul like nothing ever did or ever will. We all have that one person, right? Someone we can talk to. Someone we can turn to in time of need and we have faith that they will always be there to give us advice or to help us through whatever mid-life crises we’re mired in. However, most of the times we end up turning to the wrong people.Some of them use our discrepancies against us, others just hear our words and forget about them after a minutes notice and the rest, well, just simply don’t care.

Reliability is a very complex term which most of us seem to be too familiar with but know nothing about. We rely on a lot of things on a daily basis. We rely on our friends to keep us company, we rely on our work without which we’d be homeless people out on the streets with our hands out and our pockets empty, we rely on society’s gaping holes to help us vindicate our own sins that we commit on a daily basis, and of course, last but not the least, we rely on that “one person” who we hold potent enough to put up with our day to day drama and then help us regardless of our behaviour towards them. Then how does one decide who’s reliable and who’s not? Do you put them through different tests to check their loyalty towards you? Or do you just out-rightly ask them to always be there when you need them?

No matter what you do, you can never really trust someone in this dog-eat-dog world. Everyone has some sort of vested interest in your life that they choose to exploit as a payment to their loyalty towards you. Whether it’s financial, emotional or physical, they always find a way to make you realise that what you had with them was only a result of mutual benefit and nothing more. They helped you because you helped them and that’s about it. Even if you give everything to that one person, you would never get the same in return and it is in this module of our society that this forms a perfect ground for failed relationships.

Amidst the frantic chaos that life had put me under, I found that one person. That one person who was always there regardless of my attitude towards them; never not coming to my aid when I needed it most. The only person who gave me the feeling of such security, forcing me to divulge all of my tears and expose myself in front of them, the only person who had a smile on their face when I fell down, which wasn’t because they were happy that I fell but because their smile would give me reassurance that me losing wasn’t the end of the world and the world stands with endless possibilities and I can conquer them all. My mother, ladies and gentlemen, has and always will be my sole protector.

We’re all aware of the importance of mothers, of course. We’re taught that in school and then we take out an entire day for them and label it “mother’s day” to show gratitude for all that they’ve ever done for us. We take out money and buy them gifts and maybe kiss them that one day in a year, take “selfies” with them and post them up on social media,showing the world our affection towards and love for them but what we fail to realise is that the minute that one day is over and we return back to our daily routines, it’s another 364 days before we thank them again.

We can’t even begin to thank them for all that they’ve done even if we’re given a lifetime to do so, so the least we can do is take some time out every day to go and just sit with them, for our mothers were there before anyone else; before our girlfriends, before our wives, before our friends and regrettably they won’t be there forever, It’s high time we start giving them the devotion and respect that they deserve, for if we don’t, there’s only a lifetime full of regret left.

The blogger- a student of political science and media at the Lahore School of Economics- has been an active participant in Model United Nation simulations and has keen interest in sports, music and literature.