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My brothers and sisters, there are three kinds of people in the world. There are people who have experiences. Everyone who lives has an experience, some experience, good, bad or ugly. But there are some people who have experiences and they learn nothing. There are other people who have experiences, they suffer, they get into trouble, they have lost, they have gained and they learn something. There is a third kind of person who learns from the experience of others. So who is the smartest? Last one, right? Learns from the experience of others. The way of learning from the experience of others, there are two ways. One is reading and especially biographies because biographies are real. You know what actually happened to the person, this was a real person, but also other things, histories and so forth. So reading. And the other way, second way is by talking to people, by having friends who are older and wiser than you are. Throughout my childhood and growing up well into college, even now, but my childhood, my mother used to joke and she used to say all your friends are at least 20 years older than you, which was a fact. And I said, Hamdhar is good because how else will I learn? If I am 15 and I am hanging around with a whole bunch of 15 year old people, I am learning nothing. Because there is nothing that they know which I don’t know. So what will they teach me? Similarly, I think I mentioned this before in one of the khatras, there is a university in Delhi called Hamdhar University. In Hamdhar University, they have a place where people who are studying for our UPSC, United Public Service Commission exams, which is the IPS, IAS, IFS, Indian Foreign Service, Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service, which is the cream of the government bureaucracy, extremely, extremely difficult examinations. They all gathered there together to study. So I was invited to speak at Hamdhar University once I went and then I asked to see this place. When I went to see the place, I saw there was, you know, it was a hostel kind of thing. There were rooms and there was a reading room and the reading room had some books in it. Not a very impressive library, but it was there. So I said, what happens here? Do you have classes and so on? They said, no, we don’t have any regular classes. Once in a while we get some IAS officer or somebody who is willing to come and talk to them, he talks to them. So I said, how do you get the results you get? Because they had fantastic results. The people who went to study there, they are among the trappers of the whole exam. So I said, you don’t have a particularly impressive library. I’m sorry to say you have you don’t have any regular classes and coaching and so on. People come occasionally. How do you get the results? They said, we get the results because of the quality of students who come to study here. Just being in the company of smart people, that’s it. Everyone has only one focus in their mind, which is to get into the civil service, nothing else. So they are studying 20 hours out of 24. And there is huge pressure, there’s immense peer pressure to study. If you are not studying, they look like you, they look at you as if you are, you know, some creature from outer space. Why do you do? Why are you here? So nobody oversleeps, nobody is fooling around, nothing, because people are completely focused on study. The company you keep is extremely, extremely important in terms of driving your own excellence or the opposite. I want to share three lessons of my life which I learned with, which I learned in my whole life and which I continue to learn, Alhamdulillah. The first lesson is, nobody owes me anything. And I strongly recommend that you think about this for yourself. Nobody owes you anything. Today we have a generation which thinks that the world owes them a living. This didn’t happen, that didn’t happen. You must hand over this to us. On what basis? On what basis? You know, whatever you did, whatever thing, it was an organization or whatnot, no, hand it over to us. Why would I hand it over to you? Do you think I’m looking like a fool? Why would I hand it over to you? Prove to me that you can run it. Prove to me that you won’t ruin it. Yeah? Why will I hand it over to you? So, nobody owes me anything. Now, when you believe that, and that is the truth, whether you believe it or not, nobody owes you anything. But when you do believe that, two other things happen, two good things happen. Number one thing which happens is, then you realize that anything I want, I have to pay for. Payment is not always money. It’s money, but more than likely it is effort, time, relationships, you know, all of that. So, I can have anything I want as long as I can pay for it. Nobody owes me anything. Nobody will give me anything. But I can have whatever I want as long as I am prepared to invest in myself, not anybody else. I want to get a PhD, go study. We have, for example, Amherst College and other places, Amherst, Mount Holyoke, and then Smith College, three I know for sure. We have, they have professors of the department, heads of department of Islamic studies, all three of them are non-Muslim. Why? Because we don’t want to study. We don’t want to get a PhD in, you know, divinity or something. Because that is the basic requirement. The basic requirement if you want to be a professor of Islamic studies or any religious studies is you need a PhD in religious studies. So, go get one. The benefit of that is, then Islam would be taught by Muslims, not by non-Muslims, number one. And number two, it’s getting a tenured professorship in one of these colleges is good money, man. You’re making in excess of maybe 100,000, 150,000 a year. What’s wrong with that? But effort has to be put in. It won’t happen. It won’t come out of the sky. You can’t go and say, you see, you see, you should hand over this to me. Try it and see if it works. So, nobody owes me anything. Nobody owes me anything. I can have whatever I want as long as I am willing to invest in myself, as long as I’m willing to pay for it. And the third thing which happens, which is very, very important, is you get a sense of gratitude. You say, Alhamdulillah, Allah gave me this opportunity. If you sit and talk to somebody who is older and wiser than you and they give you some time, you are grateful for that. You say, Alhamdulillah, this person spent that time, they shared their life learnings with me. Learnings which they paid for in sweat and blood and money and time, they gave it to me for free. They didn’t even charge me anything for it. At least I can say thank you. Right? There’s a sense of gratitude happens, which is a very good thing. You say, you thank me, I will increase the blessing. So, if somebody says, why do I need to thank Allah? Doesn’t Allah know? It’s not a question of Allah knows. It’s a question of your attitude. Are you thankful or not? Allah knows, of course, Allah knows everything. So, three very important things which I want to share with you. Number one, nobody owes me anything. To get this entitlement thing, take it and throw it out. It is not even junk, it is cancer. Number two, I can have whatever I want as long as I am willing to invest in it. That’s the reality. And number three, a sense of gratitude. If somebody gives me something, whether it’s advice, whether it is sharing of life experience, whether it’s a suggestion for to read something, do something, all of this, we need to be grateful for and we need to express that gratitude to that person and say, Thank you very much for helping me to learn and become more effective. We ask Allah SWT to help us to get wisdom, to help us to work in a way where we can live behind the legacy of honor. And may Allah bless the Prophet and his family and all his family.
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