What makes a grain of sand or a drop of water, a pearl? What does it take to witness the most magnanimous experiences of life? Is the sky always sunny or do we behold the beauty of the rainbow without going through the arduous journey of rain?

Nothing happens out of the blue and all of a sudden, until and unless relentless efforts are invested in it. This is the law of nature and no human knowledge or experience can defy it. You cannot harvest if you have not sown. Having known all this, why is hard work a road less taken and lesser reached to the end?

Every great thing has its ways paved with tough and appalling barriers. The lack of courage to overcome these obstacles and the fear of failure bar a person from venturing on this glorious path and this, itself, is one of the worst experiences of human lives.

As people say that you cannot be strong as long as you have other options, likewise, we cannot believe in greatness of hard work until we do not have any other option. Such is the rarity of hard work that its innate urge develops only when no other way seems working. This uniqueness of hard work remains evident that hard work will bear fruits what no other process can yield. When the roads are tougher, the gains are sweeter and certainly with no pain, there is no gain.

Having developed the stamina to work hard and chase the goal with unflinching determination, greater challenges await your path. But as stated earlier, the person who fears, vacillates and surrenders to these omens will either end up somewhere in between or give up the effort entirely in a miserable manner. To enable yourself to chase this pattern, the pattern of hard work and faith is required.

Uncertainty of success drains all the energy that could have been used for chasing your dreams. Getting out of this uncertainty, not with absoluteness of success, but with the courage to face whatever may come, is the first step to chase one’s dreams with hard work and persistence.

The harder you work, the more fruits of your efforts pile up to welcome you in the future. In this situation, don’t get hasty to have it all and that too, at once. Keep on working hard and leave the rest to time and space to define the commencement of fruits.

Once hard work becomes your lifestyle, its luxuries, both in present and future, will shower untold blessings. All that you need to do is to put your faith in hard work, because even if it does not pay off instantly, it will certainly do in the days to come.

In the end, always remember, Rome was not built in a day. Things require time to manifest and come true. Give this time and space to your goals so that they can manifest in the finest of their shapes and, in the meanwhile, fuel them with your hard work.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 24th, 2021