This is a very old incident. I went to visit my brother’s friend who was very close to our family. He was a simple, religious and a business personality. Coincidentally, the late Abdul Sattar Afghani, the former mayor of Karachi, had come to visit him. Our friend was very happy to see me and enthusiastically introduced me to Mr. Afghani. I remember a sentence of this introduction which was like this. “He is a worm.”
It seemed an insult of mine in front of a big man, but in fact it was a compliment. Our friend actually wanted to express my intellectual tastes. The interpretation he adopted for this was of a bookworm, and in intense emotion, this interpretation omitted the word book. Thus the sentence uttered was that he is a worm. So I did not mind his statement and Mr. Afghani understood without any explanation what he was trying to say.
The reason was that we knew him. The people we know, we never get their impression from their superficial words, outward behaviour or any particular event. Rather, we determine the purpose of their words and actions based on their overall personality and positive qualities. That’s the quality of a positive character. On the contrary, a person with a negative character is like a hunter who is also on the lookout for people who have been associated with him for years. He finds the negative aspect in every straightforward thing. Where two opinions can be formed, he always sees the negative. And if someone comes up with something like “he is a worm”, he attacks the other person with full force. Then he put every aspect of the relationship in the corner and takes revenge and thus human relations deteriorate. In fact, the key to survival of the social relationships is to have a positive attitude towards people and to look at things from a positive perspective. Otherwise no relationship in the world can survive.