Maulana Wahiduddin Khan I Spirit of Islam
Alfred Nobel (1833 – 1896) was the first person to invent dynamite. He went on to establish 90 armament factories and amassed huge amount of wealth through the arms trade. Then an incident took place which totally changed the course of his life.
In 1888, the death of his brother caused several newspapers to mistakenly publish obituaries of Alfred. One French obituary stated: Le marchand de la mort est mort (‘The merchant of death is dead’). The obituary went on to say, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.” Alfred, shocked at what he read, then took a positive decision about his life. In 1895, at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament and set aside the bulk of his estate to establish the five Nobel Prizes, including the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.
Shock is a great educator. It sets off such a process of brainstorming that a whole new mindset takes shape and as a consequence a new human personality emerges: if in the pre-shock period he was just a man, in the post-shock period he emerges as a superman.
Shocks, great or small, are quite common. Almost everyone has had experience of them. But most people take these as negative experiences and are unable to learn a lesson from them.
However, shock is not an accident: shock is the language of nature. Nature speaks in the language of shocks. If one saves oneself from becoming negative after suffering a shock, this can be a highly creative experience. Shock will stimulate the mind and will unfold the latent potential. It initiates creative thinking processes. It helps a person to take better decisions in life by removing him from a state of total derailment to being right back on track. In other words, it makes man realistic in his approach.
Shock is the greatest positive factor in one’s life, provided one responds positively to it. Everyone can play a high role like Alfred Nobel; the only condition being that one should take shocks as a source of learning rather than a source of anger. History is replete with instances of people who received shocks but were able to face them with a positive mind. Shock had proved a booster to their uplift.
According to the law of nature, life is not a smooth journey: it is a journey through shocks. One has no option but to accept this as a reality. Indeed, the course nature takes is determined by shocks and challenges. Anyone who seeks to make himself successful should understand this reality and take shocks as steppingstones in life.