In jedem lebt ein Bild dessen, was er werden soll.
Solange er dies nicht ist, ist nicht sein Friede voll.

In each one lives an image of what he is to be.
As long as he is not this, he ne’er at rest will be.

[Friedrich Rückert]

یکی گفت که اینجا چیزی فراموش کردهام

Someone came and said: ‘I have forgotten something here.’

[Rumi: Fihi ma fihi; # 3; p. 14]

Rumi answered:

‘There is one task in this world you should never forget. Even when you’d forget everything, except this one task, then it doesn’t matter. When you performed all tasks, remembered everything, and not forgot anything, but forgot that one task, then you have done nothing whatsoever’.

‘It is as if a king has sent you with a special task to a village. You go there and perform a hundred other tasks; but if you haven’t performed that one special task because of which you had gone to that village, it is as if you haven’t performed anything at all’.

پس آدمی در ین عالم برای کاری آمده است و مقصود انست چون آن نمیگزارد پس هیچ نکرده باشد

‘So a human being has come to this world to perform a special task, and that’s his purpose; if he doesn’t perform it, then he’ll have done nothing’.

Remember who you are. Remember that the ‘king’ has sent you to this world on a specific mission. You, who have to perform that special task, you are precious. Rumi writes [Ibid; p. 15]:

تو بقیمت ورای دو جهانی
چکنم قدر خود نمیدانی
مفروش خویش ارزان
که تو بس گران بهایی

Your value is greater than both worlds.
What can I do? You don’t know your own worth.
Don’t sell yourself at too low a price:
You are so very precious!

Only you can perform that one task. Express yourself. Express yourself in every possible way. What you are then showing, will be the complete representation of you as a unique person. Be yourself, because no one else can be you!

A Chishti pir advices us to ‘take life as a precious gift and as such do not waste it’. He also states:

I am not concerned in the least with what you are, what you have, what you believe, how you live, how you act, how much faith you may have, or how much hope you may have, but I am concerned with what you like to become.