“Tom Cruise is a born success”…. Said the Vietnamese engineer… “He has a European look that made him fit for strong Hollywood movie characters…. He is a native speaker that made him perform well those characters and the most important point that he is a born US citizen and it made him able to get an easy and timely access to Hollywood….”… He was providing reasons to support his main argument…… “All these qualities in Tom Cruise collectively is called luck and it is the core of life perspective in South Asian people”… he continued…. (To further support his main idea he took his own life as supporting evidence ….)…..”I am a 40 years old man… I have struggled single-mindedly for more than 35 years now (since I got a little bit conscious about life and got to know that my life is destined to struggle hard for having a sustainable life) and I just could make myself to be counted among middle class Vietnamese citizen….and my prediction is….. I am going to die a middle class citizen… I even can’t think of moving to higher class…. and I believe that I have reached my climax and my life is stuck…..( I could see the seriousness in his determined face while saying all these)……
He had already earned respect in my eyes by having enough courage to come and work in Quetta, a place where even locals are deserting to move in safer places (Working in Quetta is a real challenge for any foreigner)….however, because of his strong believe in luck and destiny, I was wondering if there is more factor of accepting destiny and luck rather than courage and strong personality for choosing to work in Quetta?
So, I couldn’t stop myself of not showing other side of picture (or an alternative life perspective)….”But you have a more attractive and smarter look than Dr. Mahathir Muhammad…” I told him, while smiling….”You are taller, have more fair complexion and speak with an American accent (He has spent sometimes in Los Angles with his brother who lives there) than Mahathir Muhammad who has a typical Malay appearance and accent”…. I continued “There is no comparison between Dr. Mahathir Muhammad and Tom Cruise…. It might be even an insult to Dr. Mahathir Muhammad that we are comparing him with Tom Cruise….”….” Mahathir Muhammad was not a born success according to your definition… he was not even lucky according to your definition…He was born to a school teacher in an occupied Malaysia….had more ordinary look even to Malay standards (He was struggling a lot with other smarter, good looking and rich boys to win a place at heart of his current wife while they were a medical exchange student at London….He could earn a space in her heart only by compensating other shortcomings by his personal integrity)…. was selling rice to support his family…. He got scholarship to study medicine at UK (You might call it luck but it was not gifted by birth…he had struggled a lot to earn this position) and proved to be very different from fellow Malayan doctors that got the same kind of education at same foreign institution…. I tried to give a summary of biography of Mahathir Muhammad but before I could finish the whole story…he jumped in by a question….
“I agree with your points that Mahathir Muhammad wasn’t born success but what do you think made him to grow successful from an ordinary birth?”…..
“I believe in the spirit inside men…. I think one’s spirit is what he feeds and nourish his spirit with… I think the human body is a good analogy to human spirit inside…As a body-builder goes regularly to gym and eat properly to grow strong and beautiful muscles so is true for spirit… Say, you want to grow an artistic spirit…..If you practice arts and feed properly with artistic spirit…without any doubt, you will become an artist….the measure of your artistic success depends on the works and feeds (creative thinking and kinds of exposures that you expose your spirit to…)… I think it is what Tom Cruise did…..There are a lot of US citizen (who were wishing to take the same path as Tom Cruise took) who had the same three qualities that you mentioned as parameters of born success for Tom Cruise…. but they didn’t come out to be as successful as Tom Cruise? …. The reason is they didn’t nourish their artistic spirits as Tom Cruise did…….
Dr. Mahathir Muhammad has fed his political spirit…..The way that he has fed his political spirit is very well known as people around the world wanted to know, how a single man can change the fate of a whole nation……
He was serving the public while he was just a medical doctor… He was a political activist during High School time, during Medical College period and was serving the public with his clinic (by curing his poor patients at the way they could afford…free, in installment or with lowest prices for his services… A lot of local people were in debt of his lower fee though he was never demanding them) so when he decided to enter into practical politics he had already proved that he can serve his nation either in office or out of office…..
He changed the work ethics by his own work ethics in all ministries that he served as minister… and it is why Malaysian people started believing in him that he is a person that can lead the nation and is able to change the fate of nation and he did…….
He not only fed his own spirit but also nourished the spirits of millions of other people to turn Malaysia into an Asian Tiger….
It was 2; 45 AM that I reached at Quaid Azam Intl Airport, Karachi. We had to wait for 6 hours for our next flight to Quetta so we took this opportunity to have a lengthy conversation….(We talked for six hours but we still had a lot to say…….)….. We both had our own life perspectives and our own individualistic examples as evidence but I should say that people dominantly accept and agree with his perspective…. and I can only wish that people make a shift (When the spirit of masses are uplifted they would push to high the spirit of individuals whether they notice or don’t…. you may call it morale but it is something more than morale and I don’t have any name for it……….)
No comments:
Post a Comment