Success stories. And who doesn’t like a success story. We thrive on them, we delight on them, and we make movies to convince ourselves of… success stories. Smile.
There is a point to be noted though. All success stories Start with one person and End with that person. With that one person. His death marks an end. He may leave followers but if any of them, being a unique individual, with a unique set of circumstances, a unique set of choices made by him according to those circumstances spins out another success story; this new success story is individual to him and him only. It’s his success story and his alone. He made it. It died with him.
You may follow this success-story person, read of what he did and what he said, be inspired yet your success story is contingent upon one thing only: your decisions to the circumstances that emerge on the horizon of your life.
Just like examiners hardly ever set the same exam questions (except in Pakistani B.A. exams) even though all the chapters, the whole syllabus is the same, the level of study is the same, your age is the same as those who were previously examined, your science of study is the same, but the examiner seems not to care… just like that Allah never seems to set the same circumstances… even if He does set the same circumstances, like all of us of the same batch taking the same examination at the same day of the same subject at the same time but the tilt of our handwritings, our bulby ideas, our statements, our helping verbs, the ink shades of our pens makes each one of us brew a separate outcome and therefore a separate circumstantial question for the examiner of how much marks each one of us deserves. The limitation of examiner to mark within a given set of marks then more or less causes an almost equal median type standing for each of us.
The whole purpose of this *taqreer* was to make it clear for myself as to how much help you and I could take from the instances of other peoples’ lives. Whether the inspiration was worth taking, or if their stories were to simply be considered magical, enjoyed and dreaming about what we will do to change this and that, to resume our grind of life. So, a few success stories will do. Piles of quotations will accelerate experience and success. What will suffice and see us to success is the only thing we have: volition, our will, our decisions, our will-do’s when confusion lurks and hazes and only a decision will dispel it… whether we are wrong or right as in successful or fruitless. Not good or bad!
Starting with the latest: Hamilton, Majid, Ishfaq, Kheyal, Zulfiqar… some of the people mentioned in this Hall of Fame, an ode, a lesson…
What all of these success stories have in common from Julius Levy in the Progress of Julius, to Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo, to the holocaust legend Adolf Hitler, to the immortal Muhammad Ali Jinnah, to the blessed most exalted Muhammad (pbuh) to the afore mentioned plebian anonymous success stories is… guess what… What?
Edu-cation and then Edu-action. From the books they read. Books. They all read books. They read the whole book, used the parts that were means to the ends and discarded the rest of the flood of knowledge. Reading books made them read people, read circumstances, read life and beat it at its own game of pain. Knowledge bred wisdom.
And before books were created and for those who were success stories but could never afford a book, edu-cation yet again… they were blessed, most gifted than any one of us for they read from the very book of life and understood it… they were the ones that went through the ‘test of fire to make the finest steel.’
Ending with an anonymous piece: ‘Have you ever wondered why everybody wants that extravagant house on the hill where you open your window every morning to the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen? And why nobody wants to be part of the pain and suffering?’
Learn to savor lonely pain and painful loneliness to the road to success. On this road resides Madam education with lessons to lead you to the place that you visit each time you dream. Madam education is the daughter of Mr. experience from the town called Other People. When you marry this education, you breed it… and your experience is further education to new men on the road.
