The Price of Success
Al-Risala (English), May 1990, p. 10
By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan is named as the default author of the periodical; a piece that carries another writer’s byline is credited to that writer.
The Price of Success
1990 5 May 10 The Price of Success (308) “Every prize has its price. The prize is the yes; the price is the no.”
“God is with those who are patient.” (2:249) In the words of the Prophet, “Consider that victory always follows patience.”
The price of success is patience. This entails the avoidance of all side issues and the unremitting pursuance of one’s goal. Igron Gorin, the noted American singer, tells of how, in his early days of voice-training, he loved to smoke a pipe. One day his professor said, “Igron, you will have to make up your mind. Whether you are going to be a great singer or a great pipe smoker. You cannot be both.” So Igron stopped pipe-smoking. He went on to become a great singer. The act of renunciation in order to gain is possible only if one has patience, an attribute alluded to by an American psychologist when he says, “Every prize has its price. The prize is the yes; the price is the no.”(Reader’s Digest, March 1990, p. 68)
This observation ‘has great significance. If you want to be a disciplined and principled person, you must give up many unnecessary or counter-productive habits. It hardly needs stressing that if you want to become a healthy person, you have to bid farewell to all those things which ruin the health. The pangs of saying ‘no’ have to be borne before you can have the joy of saying ‘yes.’
In like manner, anyone wishing to make progress in education, industry, etc., shall have to eschew confrontation. And his avoidance of all conflict with others shall have to be unilateral. He must also consciously stay away from all such activities as are likely to disrupt harmony with other social groups. Progress can be achieved only in an atmosphere of peace. The journey of progress can no more be made in an atmosphere of hostility than a train can pass down a railway line which has been blown up.
