A stranger once told me that if I search but not seek I shall not find anything. I did not understand why he told this to me. I was merely standing at the metro station, waiting for the metro. Furthermore, I did not understand what it meant. To me search and seek meant the same thing. I thought about it for a while but then the metro arrived, and I forgot about the stranger and his advice.
Months later, I was trying to find the answer to a particular question in a newspaper article. The question intrigued me. It was a simple question. “Do you know who you are?” Of course I knew who I am. I am Anuraag Baishya. Engineering Student, Writer, Poet, Philosopher, Lyricist, Rapper, Composer, Blogger. (Okay, somewhat all of that.) But then I thought, do I really know myself? Do I know the value of my existence? Do I know where I stand in the sea of humanity or do I even stand anywhere?
I decided to search for the answer. But I did not where to start from. How do I find out something about myself? Do I ask my parents? Do I ask my friends? Do I do a Google search? And then all of a sudden I remembered the words of the stranger.”If you search but not seek, you shall not find anything.” I had to seek the answer to who I was, and not search for it.
The difference between searching and seeking is very delicate. The only way to understand that difference is to experience it. We search every day. Sometimes we search for objects we have lost, sometimes we search for objects to buy, sometimes we turn pages in our textbooks to search for the answer to a problem, and mostly we Google Search. But we never seek. We do not seek because we give up when we cannot find what we are searching for. Ask yourself. Have you always found what you looked for? You might have always found the lost objects, or the solutions to the textbook problems, but have you ever found peace, happiness, and tranquility? You may have experienced them when you came across them, but the probability that you found it by yourself is less. And if you have, congratulations, you have learnt the difference between searching and seeking, even if you learnt it unknowingly.
You search for things, objects and materialistic pleasures, but when it comes to things that affect you, you never find them till you seek. The answers to all your problems, great or small (No, not textbook problems. Those are answered in the textbook.) always lie deep within you. You have to find them by seeking and not by searching. You have to go deep within yourself and try to answer the question “Who am I?” The day you learn who you are, you shall understand the difference between searching and searching, you shall find happiness, peace, tranquility, you shall find what your soul desires, you shall find that elixir that will sustain your life, you will find the purpose of your existence. So go ahead. Ask yourself. “Do you know who you are?”
~If thou hath not sought, thou shalt not find~