The Building of a Personality

Man is born with great potential. He has to turn his potential into actuality on his own. By facing life’s difficult situations as challenges, man reaches high levels of progress and develops a purified personality. This makes him deserving of Paradise.

Chapter 90 of the Quran says, “We have created man into a life of toil.” (90:4) The word ‘toil’ here has been used in a positive, rather than in a negative sense. When we look at it from this aspect, we find that here it means ‘struggle.’

That is, the condition of man’s stay in the present world is such that he has to lead a life of struggle. He has to pursue a difficult course in life. This is essential for the building of a positive human personality. It is a fact which has been expressed in this saying of Samuels Smiles: “It is not ease but effort, not facility but difficulty that makes man.”

Man is potentially like an ore. Machines are made from steel but it requires a long industrial process to produce it. Iron ore has first to undergo a long process of being heated in a blast furnace, and only then can steel be produced. Even then the metal has to go through various stages before it can take the form of machines.

The same is true of human beings. Man is born with great potential. But to turn nature’s potential into actuality, he has to undergo various difficult stages in life. It is by going through these stages that man is able to develop himself intellectually and become a mature person. Without undergoing the processes of hard struggle, no one can become a man of high calibre which makes him deserving of Paradise.

Every difficult situation serves as a challenge in this world. By facing these challenges, man reaches high levels of progress and development which makes him deserving of Paradise.