Achieving a goal is a never an easy task unless an effort is made. The higher you plan to go the harder the goal gets and requires greater effort. Like other basic principles, this simple fact describes an important rule of life, which is often ignored by most people. This is what sets a common man apart from the ones who succeed.
It is a rather common but unfortunate that we often fail to acknowledge and benefit from great personalities during their life time due to personal prejudices, however, regret and pay tribute once they have departed from this world.
Here, I must confess without hesitation that I have made the same mistake by not being able to fully understand the magnitude of Mir Khalil-ur-Rahman’s personality and by not being able to learn and benefit from his examples and principles that could have guided me through thick and thin.
Mir saheb was a man of many qualities and all of his acquaintances have similar views when it comes to describing his personality. He was an exemplary character and was the personification of uprightness and perseverance. However, as mentioned earlier not everyone is able to recognise these qualities. We tend to analyse a person by only seeing bits and pieces of his personality rather than the whole character and thus base our judgements about him on our observations. In this regard, we may consider a person to be great by virtue of his wealth, orating skills, his status in the society, his influence in worldly affairs and sometimes simply because we somehow or the other like him.
While all these benchmarks may be good enough to guide our judgements but our yardstick is inappropriate if it is forgotten to take into account that the real worth of a man cannot be evaluated without measuring his ability to practise what he preaches. It is only when a man actually follows what he stands for that he reaches excellence of character and purity of soul.
In this regard, Mir saheb will always be remembered as a man who in the true sense was great, not simply because of his monetary status, or because he owned an entire media empire but because he did what he believed was right and among this believing in helping others succeed was one of his top agenda for which he took practical steps as well.
It requires a lot of effort and restraint to remain down-to-earth when you have reached heights like Mir saheb did but despite this he never boasted of being an extraordinary man. On the contrary, he often made consultations, asked for advice and encouraged discussions from which he derived solutions of various issues.
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Events of national and international importance always kept Mir saheb busy in meeting with his co-workers and colleagues |
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The line of work he had chosen had numerous difficulties attached to it but he never gave up. The passion for work that one saw in Mir saheb is hard to compare to any other. He was true to the core for what he believed to be his duty and often said, “My work is my life”.
Having had the honour and the opportunity of having worked with him for nine to ten consecutive years, I can confidently say that he was absolutely right in saying so, because he derived immense satisfaction and joy from the work that he loved. He was organised in his working and had a fixed schedule, and would work according to it, devoting as much time to his beloved work as he possibly could.
It this way, he far excelled his contemporaries. Focussed in his actions, he was not easily distracted from the work at hand but would put his mind and soul into what he had to do.
Being his direct subordinate, it is a first-hand observation that he possessed a very humble nature, which was further accentuated by his truth and sincerity towards his work. Considering such excellent qualities that he had acquired at a tender age, many people wish to emulate him, but it is not easy to attain the standard and degree of dedication that Mir saheb had.
Today, while remembering Mir saheb on his death anniversary we should learn from his varied experiences and try to emulate this great man as much as possible so that we too are able to set our feet on the path of excellence that he achieved. This is perhaps the best way one could pay tribute to Mir Khalil-ur-Rahman.
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