They do not wake up every morning with the desire to change the world. They simply dare to change themselves; they chase their individual dreams for the sheer thrill of the chase.
Source/Credit: The News International
By Talat Farooq | August 14, 2012
Today is the 14 of August and just for today I want to indulge in the willing suspension of cynicism. I can perhaps return to it tomorrow and continue to resort to it throughout the year, for anger and a deep sense of injustice finds catharsis in cynicism. Cynicism is the opium of the damned, the condemned and the aggrieved. It is also the opium of the victims of learned helplessness. According to Qateel Shifai, those who indulge in learned helplessness reflect the highest form of double standards:
Dunya mein Qateel us sa munafiq nahin koi/Jo zulm tou sehta hai baghawat nahin karta. (The victim who refuses to rebel against his torturer is the greatest hypocrite of all)
There are umpteen ways of rebellion – from devastation to beautification and from destruction to repeated reconstruction. There are among us some determined Pakistanis who refuse to give in to learned helplessness or use it as an excuse to perpetuate the status quo. There are those within us who find the courage to excel and stand out despite the terribly deficient system of education and the absence of both merit and opportunity for those who lack the right contacts within the culture of patronage.
Arfa Karim, Moosa Feroz, Malalai Yousufzai, Naseem Hameed, among others truly make us proud. There are a number of other stories that bring hope and joy to our lives and www.goodnews.pk is full of them. Let me share a few here:
Rosheen Khan of Balochistan is Pakistan’s first female scuba diving instructor and now trains diving enthusiasts in Pakistan. Seventeen year old Suhaila Muhammadi also from Balochistan, hails from a conservative family. Against all odds, she became a martial arts champion, with 35 gold medals under her black belt. Shafeeq-uz-Zaman who won second prize at the International Calligraphy Competition in Istanbul, Turkey, learned calligraphy on his own. He now has scores of Arab and Turkish students. Asheesh, a nine-year-old breadwinner for his family does menial jobs including picking tennis balls on the courts. He learned the game by watching tennis players. Today, he is the under-19 Sindh tennis champion. In the Maroof Trophy Tennis Championship he outplayed twenty other professionally trained children.
Shahid Wajid Ali is among the thirty-six winners out of fifteen hundred global entries for the 2012 Space Foundation Student Art Contest. As the breadwinner for his family since the age of nine, Shahid developed his God-given talent by learning the art of thread work. Twenty-one years old Samina Baig belongs to the Shimshal valley in the Karakoram mountain range. She is the first Pakistani woman to adopt mountaineering as a career by embarking on a high-altitude winter climbing expedition.
Sara Nasir earned her Karate black belt at the age of eight. At twenty-one she is the first Pakistani female to win a gold medal at a recognised martial arts competition. She made history in the South Asian Games in Dhaka in February 2010. Seraiki speaking Marium Malhar could not get admission in any Islamabad school because of her insufficient English language skills. She recently received an Aurat Foundation award for organising a successful campaign to raise awareness on dengue virus.
Shahzad from Mardan has devised an SMS-based social networking service that enables users to gather information without using internet connection, hence free of cost. His passion has allowed hundreds of students in his village to benefit from the portal. Asma of Daud Khel, a twenty-five years old mother of two, enrolled in Class 1 in a government girls’ school in Mianwali along-with her two daughters. She never gave up on her dream to become literate.
In short then, it is not without reason that a poll conducted by the Institute of European Business Administration in 125 countries ranked Pakistanis among the top four most intelligent people in the world “despite a dearth of required resources and opportunities.” These people live within the same system as the rest of us but they refuse to let it get to them. They continue to rebel – not by burning down government property or by bad-mouthing each other in television talk shows; nor by resorting to anti social behaviour or by blowing themselves up to kill the innocent. And they certainly do not go around imposing their values and beliefs on other human beings. They simply lack the missionary zeal to convert non-Muslims into “believers”, so as to temporarily feel reassured about the validity of their own beliefs.
They do not wake up every morning with the desire to change the world. They simply dare to change themselves; they chase their individual dreams for the sheer thrill of the chase. They are the ones who love Pakistan for it is their constant, sincere effort at self-improvement that contributes to the betterment of this land. The true patriot knows that patriotism begins at home.
Chasing one’s dreams is a lonely and awe inspiring activity- not meant for the faint hearted and the weak. The weak can only sermonise and proselytise and kill and rape and steal – all in the name of collective good. It is the brave who focus on their individual potential and who have the unlimited courage to transform their inner world rather than constantly judging the one outside.
Pakistan Zindabad!
The writer is a PhD student at Leicester, UK. Email: talatfarooq11@gmail.com
Read original post here: Fulfilling dreams
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