Maulana Wahiduddin Khan I Speaking Tree Website I January 12, 2015

Edson Arantes do Nascimento who is better known as Pelé was born in 1940 in Brazil. From his childhood days he showed keen interest in playing football. However, Pelé grew up in abject poverty and could not purchase a proper football from the market. His father was a footballer too but he could never earn enough to feed his family. Pelé's first football was made of socks filled with rags. Sometimes the stuffing was old newspapers, and then string was used to tie the ball together. In this way, Pelé continued to play football in his youth age and later adopted it as a professional career. Today, he is widely regarded to be the greatest football player of all time.

It is not accidental that a person who was not able to purchase a football from the market reached such high position. There are thousands of such cases in history. The law of nature helps explain this phenomenon in a rationally understandable manner.

The fact is that every human being is born with great potential. One aspect of this potential is the great urge to achieve one's goal. If a person is born in unfavourable circumstances, then this urge gets activated more intensely and acts as a source of great motivation. Self-motivation is so strong a quality that it can make a person achieve great heights without any external help.

Poverty is not deprivation. It is, rather, a challenge. Challenge is greater than everything else, as it activates one's mind. Challenge makes a person capable of concentrating on one point with all his focus. Thus, challenges make a man superman. Pelé's case was not a mysterious miracle, instead it was a well-explained phenomenon of challenge.

Pelé has written in his autobiography: "Poverty is a curse that depresses the mind, drains the spirit and poisons life. It is being robbed of self-respect and self-reliance. Poverty is fear." It is very strange that Pelé failed to draw a lesson from his own experience. He was born in poverty, but in terms of result, his poverty proved to be a blessing in disguise. His poverty became a supporting factor for him in that it motivated him, unfolded his potential and enabled him to work very hard. This was a natural support for him. Had it not been for this initial condition of his, he would never have been able to become a champion. Pelé should have said: Although I inherited nothing from my family, but the law of nature gave me something much more than what one's family can give one.

The experience of Pelé's life shows that hard work can overcome the problem of poverty. Poverty is an external problem, it is not an internal problem. One's inner reservoir has a huge amount of energy which can compensate every kind of disadvantage.