If a glass on a table is half full, there are two ways to see, understand and explain it. One is that the glass is half empty and the other is that the glass is half full. The two cases do not seem to differ, but in reality they represent two types of thinking. One negative and the other positive.
Understand a negative and positive attitude from an incident that a gentleman told me some time ago. He was sitting in a gathering one day. There was talk of young people leaving Pakistan. A man in the sitting room began to draw a sad picture of the whole situation. He told how thousands of highly educated and skilled youth are leaving the country and the brain drain that is taking place in this way will soon make the country barren.
The statement created an atmosphere of frustration in the session. In such a situation, my acquaintance intervened in the conversation and showed a completely different side of the situation. He said that it is an undeniable fact that educated youth are leaving the country. He quoted a report in the same day newspaper as saying that despite all the strict visa policies of the British government, thousands of Pakistani students went to the UK last year. While a large number of immigrants also take British citizenship. He said that the same was the case with Pakistani youth going to other countries. But that’s one side of the picture. The fact is that these are the outgoing Pakistanis who have saved our country from bankruptcy despite the worst of circumstances. This is because the families of those who go abroad live in Pakistan. These people send billions of dollars in foreign currency to their people every year. This amount has been increasing every year and due to this amount Pakistan’s trade deficit remains within a certain limit.
On the other hand, Pakistan does not suffer from this situation because the vast majority of our country consists of youth. So no matter how much brain drain there is, there are still capable people. Rather, other people come immediately to take the place of the departed. It is not the case that the country is facing a shortage of capable people in any sector but the unemployed are also getting jobs because of those who are leaving. In this way, the country is benefiting from both aspects.
The third and most important benefit of this economic migration is that those who go abroad become more deeply attached to their religion. They are not good Muslims living inside the country but a large number of them go abroad and lead a life of goodness. Such people become the introduction of Islam. Many of them convert non-Muslim women to Islam and marry them. Thus the call to Islam is spreading rapidly among non-Muslims because of these people. In this way, this migration is also indirectly helping the religion.
This incident shows that there is a way to look at every issue, both negatively and positively. People who have a negative attitude only look at things in a negative way and spread frustration. While positive minded people find goodness in everything. They see the light themselves and show it to others. That way, the people and their hope are always alive. This is the kind of thinking that we desperately need today.