!! Superiority and Loss
Yemeni mp
Ahmed Saif Hashed
I claim that my life has never known arrogance, not even a door through which it might slip, nor a path by which it might pass. On the contrary, I believe that an excess of shyness has burdened me with harsher losses. I have lost much in life because of this shyness that has accompanied me at every stage. I shall speak of these losses later, in different contexts. Yet, despite it all, I hold pride in myself—still echoing in my ears the voice that once told me: “Be proud of yourself. Raise your head—you are a leader.”
I have always admired that saying: “A soldier who does not dream of becoming a general is a stagnant soldier.” And I was enthralled by Milan Kundera’s novel Immortality, with its discourse on the temple of glory and eternity. The grandeur of Al-Mutanabi continues to captivate me since I first read his life story in my early youth. No poet can claim prophecy unless he is great—and Al-Mutanabi was indeed great. Every station of his life was marked by majesty, pride, and ceaseless rebellion against the heavy weight of his reality. The resonance of his verse still lingers in my heart and memory:
“If you venture in pursuit of lofty honor,
Do not settle for less than the stars.”
From seed to harvest, my first journey was in the Faculty of Law—a journey that declared: the more you give, the greater the harvest; the harder the effort, the sweeter the fruit; the deeper the perseverance, the finer the result. My first and foremost goal was to achieve the top rank in my class. To be unparalleled means that none resemble you, and such singularity can only be attained by standing first. Excellence grants you the place you deserve, but uniqueness demands nothing less than the summit. Should you forsake it—or should it forsake you—you risk slipping below, perhaps even sinking to the bottom, should you falter in resolve or loosen your grip on determination.
I aspired to be first in the Military Academy, and I attained it with merit. I aspired again, in the Commando Course, to secure first place, and I did so with worthiness. Now, the first place no longer seems a distant impossibility. Only the one who stands first is pointed out by every hand. I must be at the forefront. I was struck by the truth of the saying: “No one remembers who came second in the race.” To be first is to taste the flavor of uniqueness, distinction, and worthiness. Within me, there is always a voice urging me to ascend higher, toward the summit.
In my first year of Law, I strove with all the effort demanded by the magnitude of my ambition, and the result was my securing the top position in my class—with a grade higher than any attained by students in previous years of the college.
No one is without weaknesses, and I too had mine. Yet I learned to balance them with the surplus of strength I achieved in other subjects. A shortfall in one course drove me to make up for it in another, so I would remain at the top. Even the stinginess and rigidity of some professors in granting grades gave my success a taste more exquisite, more satisfying.
When you see your effort bear fruit equal to your toil, you have every right to rejoice—and joy itself has the right to take its course and overwhelm you with its ecstasy. Especially when you have crossed the stations of failure, setbacks, and disappointments; when you have overcome the hardships and obstacles that stood in the way of your progress or tried to deny you further success and distinction.
Yet, I can also say, at the very same moment: I am not so clever as to boast endlessly of such an achievement. But I dare claim that I was diligent, persistent, disciplined, and fortunate in my stubbornness to reach such a result.
I believe that one of the reasons behind such success was my habit of probing deeper into certain details—sometimes more than the professor himself had, or perhaps more than he cared to recall from the recesses of his memory. Then he would hear it from me, or find it in my answers where others had not mentioned it. Thus, I found myself standing apart from my peers, adding something that drew from the professor either greater approval, or at least a shade of open or silent admiration—for the way I sought to distinguish myself. Or so I imagined.
The essence of what I learned from such triumphs is this: failure at many stations in life can be redeemed at others, where it may transform into real success, even excellence. I learned that grim or wretched circumstances can themselves become a driving force, an inspiration, for great achievement. I learned that each of us carries within something unique, and that distinction can be found if one seeks it earnestly and strives for it with persistence.
Each of us possesses what others do not. And if one fails in a matter, that failure is not the end of the world. The same person who fails in one field may rise to surpass others in another—if only he pursues it with devotion. The essential thing is first to discover ourselves, and second, to work and persevere toward excellence in this or that pursuit—without surrendering to despair or yielding to failure. More important still is that success and distinction must always be coupled with the honor of means and the nobility of purpose.
My great stumbling block in my first year of Law was English. It dragged me backward with such force that my final grade that year did not exceed 74%. Yet I managed to compensate for the loss with higher achievements in other subjects, where I earned the highest marks.
In my second year, three reasons conspired to push me down to second place. The first—and the most crushing—was that the judge broke the fairness of the race. He deliberately failed me in “Family Law”—a strike I felt like a breaking of my back, an assassination of my tender dream. The second reason I admit was my own weakness in English, a weakness inherited from my elementary and preparatory years. My grade fell even lower than the year before—barely 61%, just a “Pass”—which weighed heavily on my overall average. It was, as the proverb says, “Two blows to the head hurt.”
The third and later reasons emerged in my third and fourth years, chief among them the loss of my other half in love, and a failure in that realm so complete that it deserves “distinction with honors.” Yet, despite all these forces combined, I did not fall out of the circle of competition. Though I slipped to second, third, even fifth place, I remained within the sphere of excellence.
As Charles Bukowski once said: “There are many ways to lose a race, but only one way to win it.”
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