Lessons Learnt

No person knows what he will earn tomorrow. (Surah Luqman | Verse 34)

As I edge towards 40 a certain number of thoughts weight upon my mind, and they can be best described as the abstract nature of life as we see it – which in reality is actually the predetermined milestones decreed for us by Allah, the all mighty. The following few paragraphs are aimed at writing my life lessons, the ugly one that most people don’t talk about, and the people / the mentors who helped shape me. The following content is very raw and in no way is it meant to hurt or offend anyone – these are a few chapters of my life!

This story I will start back to when I was in the 8th grade – which truly was the beginning of when we as very young humans started the process of evaluating people by what their personality was and to a certain degree how much they had in terms of wealth (good clothes, toys, how big and lavish were their birthday parties) and very quickly within the realm of the school a socio economic divide started taking place. As a very minuscule example the kids with the Nike shoes back then looked down upon the kids with the Bata shoes. It was the start of how I would assess people for a very long time to come, what they wore and what they had, played a heavy weight in my opinions about them. I would go a little further to say that the intensity of my opinions or debates would vary significantly under what I have just said, I suppose that is the price one pays for immaturity and youth. Having said that, in hindsight I feel that maturity is a result of first experiencing immaturity – a necessary evil of sorts which calibrates our barometer later on in life. 

When a certain life altering situation took place during this period and I found the world judging me, I learnt the first life lesson – the people who matter cannot be standardized, the friends who care do not judge on what you have and what you don’t, they maybe few but those are the people that matter. Things and possessions is not a gauge by which a person can be assessed.  

Subsequently we move on to college, a tough time in my life as I was juggling a job as an assistant in a travel agency and studying – this was a period of financial dreams. I would work 9 am to 3pm and then college till 9 pm, money was always tight and the wish list always unsatisfied. This is also the time when the responsibility of being the eldest sibling came into full swing, my actions would be replicated by my younger siblings – so every debate I had with my parents, every act of defiance and every move had a trickledown effect into two younger beings. It was tough and I hated that I was always told to act like an elder sibling – the meaning of which I appreciate today. Growing up I suffered from a victim approach, I always felt that life was toughest for me and that it was unfair – that Allah was being mean towards me and this thought process started seeping into my personality and a certain bitterness became a part of who I was. This is when I found my first mentor in life, Salman Naqvi. He was my father’s friend but was very close to the family. At that time it was always easier to talk to him than any other adult around me. He had a very abrasive but fun approach to life, and every problem or situation discussed with him then was always solvable with one key ingredient – faith in yourself and the power of effort and not giving up. From him, I learnt my second big lesson in life – problem will always be there, we shouldn’t ever lose hope in ourselves and the good in other human beings. In due time (much later in life!) I learnt that destiny I cannot control but how I react to what that destiny holds is something that I can and with this approach life’s problems became manageable.

Time went by and I got my first real job in ABN AMRO, a brand name bank and with that I got a certain financial freedom – money! That I could spend and do as I please. With financial freedom unfortunately came a certain arrogance and a defiance – that this success is because of me and I can do just about anything. Now don’t get me wrong here – confidence is a good thing but there is a fine line between being confident and being arrogant. I had become grossly arrogant and a subsequent result of that arrogance was the fact that I kept losing sight of my religion, this loss was something that I did not realize for many years to come. As life would have it, I got success after success and started creating a brand name of myself and achieved many firsts for my career and work sphere, but the mistake that I made was that I was always concerned about how ahead or behind I was from other people, it was always bench marking myself with other and not my own self. It was always about being ahead of other! Which I can tell you today was a really stupid thing to do, during this period I had the luck of working with someone who mentored me through the larger extent of my banking career – Adnan Khan, who taught me the third most valuable lesson in life. He taught me many things first of which was that we have to focus on being a better version of ourselves and to invest and develop our own skillset, to focus on enhancing what we know and to learn what we lack. This process of self-assessment taught me to better see flaws in myself, to know my strengths and weakness. The strengths reinforced my confidence and the knowledge of weakens started to ground me and make me humble.  

Life and my career moved on at a very rapid pace, and during that growth at a certain point I started to see and realize that my efforts or skillset is of no use if the right opportunity does not present itself. I also started realizing that the creation of the right opportunity or time was outside the powers of any human being, these things would happen – almost like magic. Who does this, who is in control? Why do certain things happen a certain way? These questions started taking space in my head. Surely in a very morbid statement, we as humans cannot even control the very next breath – the very basic element in sustaining our life. I till today don’t know how or why these thoughts came into my life but this is where I learnt my fourth and most probably the most important lesson in life – the truth that is in my religion, Islam. During this I reconnected with an old acquaintance after years – Nida Iqbal. She mentored me with reading the Quran, getting back to my prayers and reestablishing my bond with Allah. During this time of my life I learnt that everything is from Allah and that the only way to succeed in life is to first try and understand his teachings and to do your best every day in following those teachings. There will be days when our resolve will be tested and there will be days when we will be rewarded, there will be days when we will feel alone and despair will sweep in and there will be days when we will feel protected and loved but above all as long as we have true faith and we try and be the best version of what has been asked of us, this life which may seem like a roller coaster will always work out. Maybe not as we wanted it but it will work out for what is best for us and the only way to truly appreciate the wisdom of Allah is to look at life backwards, that is when in our limited intelligence will we be able to see what seemed like a punishment was indeed truly a blessing.

Many years passed since this thought and I found myself in a new city with new faces and a new role, surely I thought that whatever needed to be learnt has more or less been done – boy! Was I so wrong. I was thrust into one of the toughest assignments of my life. I found myself navigating waters that I had never been trained for – or had any idea about. This is where I found two mentors at the same time – (for the sake of privacy, as we are still working together I will only use initials). M.R. and K.T. From M.R. I learnt a deeper understanding of being a good human being and a good Muslim. I suffered from a guilt of previously being far away from my religion and virtually being a borderline atheist, he taught me to see and understand the brighter side of forgiveness that Allah has said and the values of not letting negativity weaken my faith. He has a unique way of positioning questions that leave food for thought and by the virtue of that exercise we come upon our own answers. From K.T. I have learnt the art of looking at things with a detailed approach, to know your work in its finest form is to have command on your output. Very often as we progress in our roles we look at things under a strategic light and the details sometimes take a back seat, however from him I learnt that it is the very details that make up the foundation of the strategic outlook. I changed my working style, where I started diving deeper in the stats and the working and found that in the process I was able to find more than one option of resolution and by doing so I increased my chances of success. This style of thinking I have tried to adopt in my life choices as well – as it gives me a better understanding of how to look at things under different lights.

In summary of my fifth lesson in life, from both of them I have learnt that life will never be a straight line, it’s a series of ups and downs, wins and losses but at the end what matters is that we should never lose sight of the blessing of Allah, do our best to help those who are in need, always look at things under the microscope of honesty and fairness and above all never lose hope. Every day is a new chance at taking on the challenges of life and as long as the things I have mentioned above are kept into consideration – we may not win some battles but we will surely win the war. I don’t know what challenges life holds in store for me, but I do know that as long as I have good people in my life, I will always end up being a better version of myself.

In conclusion I have written this piece to write about the most valuable life lessons I have learnt with the hope that they might help someone else who is reading them. I want to honour the people who have stood by me and taught me like their own. I want to honour and appreciate the sacrifices and efforts of my parents – to whom I will always be in debt. 

To explain the opening ayat of my article, truly no person knows what they will earn tomorrow – I hope that we earn the blessings, protection and guidance of Allah and the companionship of good human beings. Ameen.