2/20/2013

09:42 - 1 comment

The Pakistani Dream


The Pakistani Dream: Thoughts after attending a motivational lecture by Asad Umar
 
Asad Umar

Asad Umar came to the National University of Sciences and Technology yesterday and gave a motivational speech to a congregation of 250+ students from various departments within NUST H-12. For all those who do not know who Asad Umar is, first of all, “Hawww :O” :P. Secondly, fine I will give you a very short introduction(:P): He was the former CEO of Engro Corporation and the man who made Engro what it is today, pioneering ventures like Engro Foods and the World’s Largest Single Train Urea Complex at Daharki run by Engro Fertilisers! He resigned from his position as CEO in 2012, and is currently serving as the Senior Vice President of PTI, continually moving his vision of positively impacting the economy of Pakistan ahead.

Engro Food Products

Engro Fertilizer

Now that you know who he is, let’s come back to his motivational speech. During the talk, his emphasis remained on instilling in his audience the true meaning of success and the concept of the correct pathway towards it. He maintained that if a person wanted to be truly successful in their life and career they would have to do two things:

1.       Have a vision and a goal set in life.
2.       Have the determination to achieve what is required to grasp that goal.

 Mr. Umar further stressed that a good vision/goal again comprises of two things:  

1.       It should take the person beyond his or her personal capacity at the moment of the creation of the vision or goal.
2.       The vision itself should be vague enough to ensure satisfaction at the end of the person’s life that they were able to achieve what they wanted to from life.  

All this talk of developing visions in, at least the upcoming generation of educated Pakistanis, got me wondering… 

With all due respect to Mr. Asad Umar, who really did inspire his listeners today, I do not completely agree with his allusion that Pakistanis’ lack vision and that their problem is the projection of their failure to achieve onto the society and country as a whole. To tell you the truth, Pakistanis’ do have a vision, but it is a distorted, misplaced and quixotic vision. The idealistic Pakistani dream is not really a Pakistani dream at all, but a foreign inspired American dream. Do not get me wrong, I am not arguing for or against westernization etc here. I am just stating what I, personally, have observed in our educated class.  

The Pakistani dream is not inspired by our local art, culture, literature, religion or even society. It is inspired by American art, culture, literature, electronic media, fashion, law, business, social norms (Yes EVEN social norms: I am shocked at admitting this myself) etc. You name anything American and you will find someone in the educated class of the Pakistani society agreeing that it inspires them. Although, our dream is essentially to be like an American in every possible way, yet we will never concede to this. To be very honest, we would deride anyone who would even suggest such a thing and begin to quote various ways in which our society is sooooo much better than the western society.  

 
 
However, one has to face the facts here. We say that our society is better because of our social values. For example, we argue that the Pakistani society has a more stable family life, where parents are taken care of at home by their children and not thrown away in Old People Homes and the sanctity of marriage is kept alive, considering a comparison of divorce rates with the west. But recently, Old People Homes have sprouted rapidly in the Pakistani society and the divorce rates keep on escalating. So where does that bring us? I am not suggesting that we are moving along the same path that the western society took, but we do seem to be heading towards a similar destination.

No matter how much we might spout hatred towards the American policies and their impact on our country, whenever we get a chance to get education, job etc in America, we jump to grasp it! This sanctimonious behaviour is the root of most of the confusion brewing up in our nation. We do not know what to accept and what to reject and we keep on oscillating to and fro. Such a flaky dream can only result in a confused and distorted vision. “To be or not to be Americanized?” That is the question. And the answer is simple: We all stand conflicted.

Our nation might have overwhelming amounts of talent, great minds and a huge number of ideas, but we lack the will to accept who we are and what we want. Until we figure that out, there is no point in blaming the government or a bunch of politicians for all our problems. The problem lies within us, because a confused nation will only ever generate an incompetent leadership.

Asad Umar’s experience says it all. He admitted to rejecting a profitable job in Exxon, Canada, and an offer of a job in Singapore that would have paid him a million dollars just as a signing bonus, because it clashed with his vision, with what he wanted to do with his life. His vision required for him to stay put in Pakistan, to stay put in Engro at the time.  

As a nation, we need to stop complaining about how Pakistan can never progress and we can never progress in Pakistan, and start realising our calling in life. The trick is to be honest with yourself, even if your dream ends up being an American dream, it is still yours, for until you don’t realise your dream, your life is going to run along the path of a lost man’s nightmare, winding its path eventually towards failure…