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Bismillah wa alhamdulillah wa salatu wa salamu ala rasulillah.
Wa ba’d.
I am in my favorite place, which is in Florida.
And you can see why I call it my favorite place.
There are some mallards here, which are kind of resident.
And this is a water hazard on a golf course.
It’s a man-made lake.
And it has terrapins in it, turtles.
It has these lovely oak trees, which border the course.
I don’t know if you can see the turtles.
They dive pretty quickly.
And then there is this family of mallards.
Very beautiful scene.
Some friend of mine asked me to talk about marriage.
Because this year, my wife and I will be married.
At least according to me, happily, for now 40 years.
Alhamdulillah.
We got married in 1985.
On the 21st of March.
So we married 40 years.
And so this friend of mine said,
she said to me, you talk about your parents in the different podcasts.
And, you know, you talk about parenting itself,
coming from that background of your parents.
You have said many times that your wife has been a great support for you.
But you didn’t say much or anything about marriage itself.
So can you do that?
That’s what I’m planning to do today.
Talk about marriage.
But before I go into the topic of marriage,
I must talk about ambition.
Because ambition is a very important thing.
And it’s important in terms of careers.
Because in my view, and of course,
I was going to say, I’m sure I will get pushed back on this.
But there’s no need for pushback because this is my view.
And you’re most welcome to have your own.
My view comes not from reading a book or some intellectual exercise,
but from,
from,
from the actual experience of 40 years of marriage and 70 years of life.
And my opinion,
a marriage is a career.
So if you say marriage and career,
at least for most people,
I would say that’s an oxymoron because a marriage is a career.
And the secret of a successful marriage is if it’s treated like a career.
When you give it that importance,
when you give it that prominence in your life,
when it becomes the,
the
criterion for decision making,
marriage is a career.
Marriages come usually with the
actual biological reasons,
which are the reason for marriage,
which is procreation of the species,
meaning having children.
And that makes it even more of a career.
So I would say if you are thinking of marriage or career,
first get that thing right in your mind and say that,
and remind yourself,
that marriage means career.
Second very important thing is to,
therefore ask yourself,
what is my ambition?
One of my very good friends says,
my ambition is to get married.
It’s okay,
Alhamdulillah.
If that is your ambition,
may you succeed.
But if that is the ambition,
that’s my ambition is to get married,
then,
um,
the chances are that that ambition is,
I don’t know what to say to that.
I mean,
I don’t want to criticize somebody saying my ambition is to get married.
But,
if that is the ambition,
then obviously you’re not going to achieve anything much other than hopefully the marriage.
But since marriages require,
at least materially,
marriages are not necessarily a marriage.
But materially,
marriages are a resource sink in terms of,
uh,
non-material,
meaning emotional,
um,
emotional,
uh,
and other dancing awards.
And I want to say spiritual,
but certainly emotional,
emotional,
and other,
uh,
uh,
aims.
Marriages are,
they are not sinks.
Uh,
they also give you some benefit,
but materially in terms of money,
time,
energy,
they are a sink.
So you,
and I’m speaking here now,
both parties,
both the spouses,
you,
you,
you,
you,
you,
you,
you,
you,
you,
you,
you,
you,
the men and the women,
and those are all the un Graduate classes and start when you’re older and uh,
but you’re not going to be a Koh Kesar and be taken into a farewell one.
You have to consider that you are going to be a Simen and never you have been epitomized
for example a
continuative
romantic sticky
artist
Hardy or
So you are going to
you’re looking at
spending a lot
and putting it into
that relationship
material stuff,
which is time,
mostly time money energy,
um,
and getting
some emotional,
So, ask yourself, what is your ambition?
If your ambition, for example, is to build a dynasty and an empire, if your ambition
is to build a great organization, to be an entrepreneur, if your ambition is to, you
know, people say retire at 40, if your ambition is material in any of these ways, and all
of these are very good material ways, if your ambition is to invent a cure for poverty,
for example, which is, I think, people talk about inventing a cure for cancer, I think
inventing a cure for poverty is even more important than inventing a cure for cancer.
So inventing something.
If you’re…
If your ambition is to solve some of the big problems of the world, believe me, all of
those things are going to take a hit if you’re married.
Now I have some of the…
If your ambition, for example, is to do some deep research, whether it’s into religion,
whether it’s into science, technology, art, whatever, write books, create teaching and
learning methodologies.
You know, all of that sort of things.
If your ambition is to do all these things, then your marriage is going to be a liability
for you.
Once again, I mean, this is…
Sounds like, tayyabhoili piyarka dushban hai hai kind of thing, which is not what I intend
to be.
I don’t think I am.
But I think I’m trying to be as pragmatic as possible.
I’m trying to be as pragmatic as possible.
I’m trying to be as pragmatic as possible.
Without being defensive, which I think I’m beginning to sound a bit defensive, so let
me not get into that.
So now, so all of these things are going to take a hit, because for the simple reason
that your ambition and your marriage both require the same things from you.
They require your time, they require your energy, they require your emotional involvement,
they require dedication.
They require your love.
They require your love.
They require also resources.
So you can’t say, I will give to both, because nobody has enough to give to both.
One will get precedence over the other.
One has to get precedence over the other.
That’s the reason why, for example, people like Jack Welch, for example, if you look at him, he’s a great man.
He’s a great man.
He’s a great man.
He’s a great man.
He’s a great man.
If you look at him, one of the greatest CEOs that ever existed.
I think he had in the wake of his tremendous and amazing career progress were three broken
marriages.
You have, I can give you lots of examples of people like this who had career wise, amazing
careers.
They’re not married.
They’re not married.
They’re not married.
They’re not married.
They’re not married.
They’re not married.
They’re not married.
They’re not married.
They don’t seem to go together.
But, you know, marriages, they don’t seem to go together.
You will also have people who are very happily married, lots of children and grandchildren,
and so on and so forth.
But career wise, you know, so what did this person really achieve in terms of career?
Whether it’s money, whether it’s jobs, whatever, whatever.
Fulfilling the needs of the person you are looking for.
And I know that it’s not just about the career.
It’s about the family.
It’s about the business.
authority
whether it is
creating
you know
thought processes
methodologies of living
and
so on and so forth
you will find
almost nothing
so you say
well you know
so
it gives the message
gives the message
pretty clearly
so I would say
the first thing
to do
is to decide
which one is
more important for me
a
good marriage
or
a great career
which one
as I said
more than likely
the two will not happen
if you are one of those
exceptional individuals
who
manage to make
these two happen
together
then
all power to you
now you might say well
if I push the question
back in my face
and say what about you
what about me
because
as I just said
I began by saying
that I have
been married happily
for 40 years
and I think
as far as my
career is concerned
in the field of
business management
in the field of
you know
leadership development
I started off
my career journey
consciously I started
working
in体육
even before that
but I started my
career journey
consciously
two years
before
I got married
in 1983
and
I started out
by
saying to myself
that
and actually
writing it down
I wrote a
you know
large
big letters
with a
marker
and stuck it
on the wall
of my
study
and I said
I will
be
going to be
in the
an internationally recognized leadership consultant and trainer.
And I wrote that in 1983.
I got married in 1985.
So, and I started working actually in 1979.
So it’s five years before I wrote my aim in life.
So I did all this.
Now my point is, you might say, well, you know,
you did all of this and you’re telling me that marriage and career don’t go together
and that marriage is a career.
And if you choose to be married, then you are choosing not to have a career.
How do these two, how does it work?
And I say to you that it doesn’t work.
In my case, the reason I was able to do that is,
all thanks to God,
all thanks to my wife.
My wife was and is and continues to be the most undemanding person
that you could possibly have hope for as a wife.
She is a person who allowed me,
literally, I’m saying this with the greatest humility
and the greatest love that I can possibly bear for her.
She allowed me,
to follow my dreams.
She allowed me to give precedence to my career
over the time that our marriage would have required.
Now, the way she did that was because,
and, you know, early enough, I think,
without attending any training classes and marriage counseling classes and whatnot,
early enough, I think, I was able to do that.
After three years ofraising,
I started to think there were more than enough skills to take which I had lost of the kind,
and I became very comfortable in my life with my own race,
and then I had four and a half wives,
and about a year and a half in life,
my wife, my daughter and I both were teaching atallo,
and we really had a REALLY good relationship.
Well, what make me feel
and what makes me very aware of it,
And then,
talented and does some fantastic work and so she did that so she would be busy and into this day I
work from home I’ll be working from home for the I don’t know last 30 years at least and the way we
work from home is that she is in her studio I’m in my study we meet for breakfast we meet for lunch
and we meet for dinner we don’t hey we don’t take appointments to meet but but we meet so we have our
together time but the together time is interspersed with large amounts of individual personal time
when she is doing her art and I’m doing my writing in
designing and and so on so forth so I think this is the thing so one of the great secrets of how to
manage the career and a marriage is to keep the two separate and give both of them enough time
which brings me to the point I made earlier I said that a marriage is the purpose of marriage
it’s procreation is have children and this is what people do as soon as they get married they
have a child they have another child another child two three four whatever um sometimes it’s deliberate
many times it’s accidental but deliberate or accidental this is an accident that you can’t
wish away uh this is an action this is an accident that there’s no insurance against so
and they’ll let you have beautiful children and
like give you a particular but they come with a huge price tag and that price tag is your life
it is your time your wife’s time your energy your wife’s energy
and all of that
hopes and dreams yours and theirs and many times again not always but many times these times they’re pretty amazing
what we can do is me one of the two ways one is right but other way when you pass yourself I do that and then我再回來
Again, not always, but many times, far more than less, they are contradictory to each other.
Your hopes and dreams and your children’s hopes and dreams are not the same.
They will not be in consonance with each other.
You have to choose one or the other.
As a rule, and again, there are exceptions to the rule, but as a rule,
the minute you have a child, you have kissed goodbye to 20 years of your life.
Because the moment you have a child, you are saying to yourself, and you better say to yourself,
that for the next 20 years, me and my dreams and my priorities
and my decisions will be the same.
And you will be the same.
This and my that will take a backseat, if not go into the trash can,
in preference to my child’s smallest need.
I may have a chance, if I’m working in a corporate organization,
I might have a chance of getting a phenomenal promotion,
or I might get a job offer from the company of my dreams,
or there might be an option of setting up my own company.
But that requires me to leave the town in which my wife and children stay,
my husband and children stay, and these children are now in high schools.
They’re doing well.
They have good friends, and they’re happy.
Now, if I want to take advantage of this offer,
then I need to approve this.
And I need to take them out from there to wherever I’m going,
and where I’m going might not be the best place in the world
as far as schools are concerned.
And you might say, well, you know, I will homeschool them.
But who’s the I?
You or your wife?
So again, you’re looking at choices.
Either you give up your career or she gives up her career.
Because if you think that you’re going to take your children,
which a lot of people do,
and raise them between daycare centers and iPads and smartphones,
that’s not very smart, to put it politely.
That is not very smart at all.
You’re going to end up losing your children.
That will hurt.
That will hurt in more ways than one.
You might say that you will have your parents,
and many grandparents,
and many parents who have become de facto and unwitting babysitters.
Well, you know, good luck to you.
If you have parents who are willing to dedicate their lives
to raising your children, well, I would say good luck to you.
But that’s not a smart thing to do,
because first of all, your children are your children.
They’re not your parents’ children.
You cannot agree with the final output.
Secondly, it is not for nothing that women reach menopause,
and men reach their menopause.
Allah, subhanAllah, knows how much energy,
how much capacity to deal with children that people have.
And so He stops the procreation,
the procreation process
for people after wine.
And
they are no longer able to have children
even if they want to.
So,
because they can’t manage.
Now you come and you
put your children
in their care and you expect them to
run around behind them and take them to
this and that and activity,
this activity, that activity and so forth.
Well, good luck to you.
Something has to break at some point
and it will break.
So, that’s not something that I
advise you to do at all.
So, weigh this
very carefully
and say,
do I want a career
or do I want a marriage?
Because like I said,
it’s a very, very important choice
and for
the vast majority of the world
it’s
you cannot have both.
You will either have a great marriage
and a mediocre
career
or you will have a
probably a great career but
a broken marriage and that
obviously is more than likely
to affect your
career as well.
So, in the next episode we will talk about
marriage itself.
I think this is important enough to,
to dedicate a whole piece to this alone
that you make the right choice.
One of the,
I’ll give you an example of only one
but there were many such people.
Imam An-Nawawi Rahatul Ali,
the great Islamic scholar,
the great Shafi’i scholar,
never married.
And he said specifically for this reason
because he said,
I do not have time to do justice to a marriage.
It was a,
a religious decision.
He said, I’m not getting married because I don’t have enough time
to do justice to the marriage.
If I get married then I will not be able to do justice because
I’m so involved
and so engrossed
in my studies,
my writing and,
and reading and
so forth that
I have no time for
a family.
And that is a wise decision.
It’s a very wise decision
if your career is that important to you.
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