Dream big. Start Small. Act Now.
A famous quote by ‘Robin Sharma’ , “Dream big, Start Small, Act Now.” can be branded as the recipe to become successful in life and more precisely, “An Achiever”.
Great People are driven with these three mantras i-e, they dream big and they rush to take a start even with extremely small steps. They have no ‘shyness’ in doing anything in the quest of achieving their ultimate goal but sans compromising their values.
And as the advice goes, “Success is not a destination, it’s a journey”, we come to know that keeping ourselves on the journey is much more important than to gain destination. Great people has a very clear goal in their minds so they just start moving towards their goal and as we know great people have great goals, they contribute towards their goals during the course of their whole lives like e.g; ‘Carl Marx’ wanted to have a ‘Classless Society’ for which he contributed and tried to pave the way and that’s the reason why we know the concept “Classless Society” today, it’s a journey and the ultimate goal could never have been achieved.
There have been so many examples in the world of great persons who started their journeys towards their goals and died on their journey was success.
Among all such examples come the example of one of the greatest philanthropist known to this era and will be known to all the eras to come is “Sir Abdul Sattar Edhi”, he talked about humanity. Humanitarian service was his goal.
He had never been highly educated person but what education is actually intended to be, We can call him proudly , “A highly educated Person”.
Let’s see how Robin Sharma’s quote relates to him for which let’s look back into his life briefly,
Abdul Sattar Edhi was born to Abdul Shakoor Edhi and Ghurba Edhi in Memon family at Bantva, India and migrated to Karachi, Pakistan on Subcontinent Partition. His parents were liberal and progressive. The most dignified quality of his mother was ‘Possessing a soft heart and constant charity work” and she too instilled this quality to his son by putting him in action. She used to frequently give her something to give that thing to the needy persons along with an advice that do check before giving whether that person is really in need.
Ghurba , in Ramadan , gathered the women living closeby at her home and together with them, she made different kinds of food, packed them into different packets and then asked his son to distribute them to the needy people with an advice that do not let those needy people know who has dropped the packet for them. Ghurba would give 2 paisas to his son every morning and asked him to spend one paisa on yourself and the other one on some needy and she asked him on return whether or not he had followed the advice and even scolded her if he didn’t.This shows by every means her mother wanted him to be a real human who could console the humanity.
His father also influenced him in shaping his character by giving him very insightful pieces of advice. One of them was,”The strength of words lies in implementation otherwise they are meaningless” and that advice really seemed to be reflecting on his personality.
Abdul Sattar Edhi grew up seeing goodness not only in words but in the real action. He inwardly was becoming a sympathizer and he would keep thinking about his business but a business which is for humanity. He used to speak in front of his friends, with whom he had had really a great time in his childhood, that he would earn money and then make schools, hospitals, and a village for the destitutes and his friends would mock him by calling ‘Sheikh Chilli’. He thought he would sell matchboxes and pencils to make money. His friends would keep taunting him for his lofty dreams about building welfare centres for the needy people but he never minded and responded them by just saying, “I can begin small, but why should I think small” ?
When a person knows the power of action , big dreams fall short of height and Abdul Sattar Edhi knew that power. He believed that everything is achievable, just there is a need to take start even with a very small step. So he did really quite accordingly, he took small step and started selling pencils and matchboxes and kept saving money whatsoever little that amount was. With this, he never gave up humanitarian service, he did know what he’s actually made for. He kept working hardly to see his passion fulfilled one day in his life and then a day came when he purchased his first van for 10000 rupees and opened a centre for all the people who need help could contact him. He was also driven with another will and that was ,’Work, Work And Work’,(Quaid-e- Azam).
And, today there are hundreds of Edhi centres, Schools, Hospitals, Homes for homeless across Pakistan from Karachi all the way to Nagarpakar and more than that the biggest ambulance service around the globe is ‘Edhi Ambulance Service’. This could just happen by having big dream,then taking inititaive/action even with very small step alongwith that perpetual struggle. He contributed his part but the journey is still going on.
Lastly, I would only say that ‘Abdul Sattar Edhi’ is a real paradigm of
