By Waheeduddin Ahmed
All of us have had role models growing up. Boys look up to their fathers or other older males in their families. Girls observe their mothers and copy their behaviors. A boy in the class or a girl claims our admiration and esteem with some quality extraordinaire. We wish to have those qualities ourselves.
All of us have had role models growing up. Boys look up to their fathers or other older males in their families. Girls observe their mothers and copy their behaviors. A boy in the class or a girl claims our admiration and esteem with some quality extraordinaire. We wish to have those qualities ourselves.
Celebrities:
There are some who dominate our dreams, like a musician, for example. We all like music. It plays on the strings of our souls and puts the turbulence of our minds into relaxation. Therefore, the image of a rock star rides on the tide of our emotions. Sports are an outlet for our competitive and combative expression --- a basketball player or a quarterback walks on the turf of our appreciation and personifies what we wish we could be! A boxer --- a Mohammad Ali throws punches at the opponent, knocks him down --- giving our own ego a proxy victory over an imagined adversary.
There are some who dominate our dreams, like a musician, for example. We all like music. It plays on the strings of our souls and puts the turbulence of our minds into relaxation. Therefore, the image of a rock star rides on the tide of our emotions. Sports are an outlet for our competitive and combative expression --- a basketball player or a quarterback walks on the turf of our appreciation and personifies what we wish we could be! A boxer --- a Mohammad Ali throws punches at the opponent, knocks him down --- giving our own ego a proxy victory over an imagined adversary.
All these role models are stars twinkling far away in the horizon, symbolizing our fancies and our aspirations. We want to be like them --- on the guitar that we may never play, on the turf that we may never tread on and in the boxing ring that we may never step in. We live in the world of our dreams, which may never cross the threshold of reality.
No superstar can be a life model:
Life however, is not just music, nor basketball nor boxing. Life is a complex multi-dimensional thing, posing challenges of different kinds at every step, demanding choices, decisions, judgments, sacrifices, laying obstacles and distractions all the way. The road to success is paved with pitfalls of all kinds. To be successful in life at every step, one has to be either endowed with superhuman qualities or bestowed with superb inspiration and guidance. No singer, no basketball player, no film star can provide a model with so many facets to emulate --- no, not even the father or the mother or that venerated priest in the temple.
Qualifications of a role model:
Just because a man can hit a baseball further than many of us, he does not become a role model for us, for we do not wield a bat while combating the challenges of life. The challenges do not come to us in the form of a baseball. They come to us in various forms and manners. To meet them head on, we need the strength of character, foresight and wisdom. Our role model must be someone, who sets standards in every walk of life. If there is one who excels in the playground or on the guitar but whose life is wreckage at home and a disaster in the community or one who shines as the brightest star and then is extinguished with a drug overdose can hardly be a model for survival, let alone success.
Our role models have to be human beings like us, who have experienced life as we do. For example, a man who has never married will have nothing to offer in terms of matrimony and family matters. Gods incarnate, if they ever walked on earth would not be of human substance and therefore could not exemplify human behavior. Also, legendary miracle makers from remote history could hardly serve as models for us ordinary humans.
My role model:
Let me tell you about my role model. He lived in the full light of history, whose life incidents are verifiable by all modern historians. He was an orphan, shepherded goats, like his peers before him; spent his childhood and his youth in poverty; married a widow, after serving her as an agent in trade, who bore him children; earned the reputation of being the most trustworthy, honest and truthful; rejected the worship of idols, which every one around him worshipped; came to believe that God was One, none other than the God of Abraham; told his people to worship no other than the one, who spoke to Moses on the Sinai and none other than the one, who gave Jesus the powers that he exercised.
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