Mark Zuckerberg, world's youngest billionaire, once said in a speech in front of 8th graders "There are no shortcuts in life". He is not the only superstar who has warned this. I have heard similar words a ton of times. Yet when I look around I find this admonition hardly associable. Here, in Pakistan, going for shortcuts is our auto-genetic feature. Bypassing the logical, legitimate and necessary paths and adopting the less demanding and less daunting ones is a standard practice.
This petty attitude is not confined to a specific group of individuals. Rather it is pervasive and entrenched in every segment of our society. Be it the Army Generals who pack up elected governments and take matters in their own hands or the suicide attackers who kill people to get their quick ticket to Jannah, our nation has this natural tendency to go for the shortcuts. Such is our fondness with taking the shortest passages that even as little kids we fancy cramming on the nights of the exams instead of studying bit by bit, day-in and day-out. Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying." No points for guessing what happens when one tries to fly straight away. Our country's current state affairs is an epitome of chaos that ensues from such behavior.
The proposition I am trying to make is not "Do not take shortcuts ever." My intention is to get across this bitter reality that shortcuts, when taken to avoid the crucial processes, always turn out to be harmful in the long term. Although they seem to save time but we miss out on learning important details and lessons along the way which are necessary for us to flourish at the other end. Imagine had Santiago of "The Alchemist" found the treasure without having to travel all through the desert and meeting all sorts of people. Do you think he would have been the same man? No. It was that process that made him wise and knowledgeable.
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