Maulana Wahiduddin Khan I Spirit of Islam

Every man and woman wants peace of mind. But it is hard to find an individual who can say that he has attained such a state of mental equilibrium as will allow him to live a life of tranquillity. Peace of mind is a distant dream for all of us. What is the reason for this? The reason is that people hanker after ideal peace, that is, pure peace-a peace that is free from all kinds of non-peace items.

But this kind of absolute peace is not in nature's storehouse. Let us take the analogy of the rose. The rose is a very beautiful flower, but every stem has its thorns. Indeed, thorns are an integral part of the rose plant. A poet has rightly said that thorns serve as security guards for the flower. The translation of his Urdu lines is: 'The safety of the flower would become impossible if the thorns were silk-like.' So, flowers must be accompanied by thorns. There must be hard thorns along with soft flowers-that is, there must be non-peace items along with peaceful items. A peaceful mind is a very precious aspect of human nature and it too needs safety to maintain its sublime quality.

Studies in psychology show that an untroubled mind very soon becomes stagnant. It loses its creativity. For this reason, nature always leads people into challenging situations. It is a non-peace item which acts as a challenge for the mind ensuring that the creativity of the mind never comes to an end.

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It is a common phenomenon that one who is born in affluence and has a problem-free life, very soon finds his mind becoming dull, while one who is born into a life of problems and hardship, has an active mind. Such a person develops creative thinking and his intellectual development continues unhindered.

The human mind, not being like a stone, needs constant challenges. In the environment of challenge, it continues to grow till it becomes a super-mind. On the other hand, in an environment where there is no challenge, the human mind becomes like a stunted plant and gradually, it shrivels away into a state of underdevelopment.

Peace is not a ready-made item. It is a self-managed item. One should be intelligent enough to develop one's mind along positive lines so that one may deal effectively with unwanted situations. A peaceful mind is only the other name of a positive mind.

The Scottish author Samuel Smiles has rightly said: 'It is not ease, but effort, not facility but difficulty that makes a man.'

It is a fact that ease and facility are constant obstacles to intellectual development, while effort and difficulties are like steppingstones to the sharpening of the intellect.