Resilience is the master hack

Auto-generated transcript:Resilience is the ability to be resilient. The ability to get up from a fall. And as the Chinese saying goes, if you fall five times, get up six times. The ability to get up from a fall, the ability to deal with failure. This is one of the most important things for success. Because failure is very much a part of life. Everybody fails at something or the other. To be able to get up from the failure, this is what spells success. Now in that context, I read a beautiful story recently, which I want to share with you. That's called the Hershey School. I call it the Hershey Chocolate School because we know Hershey from the chocolates. It's very interesting. I'm just reading what was posted. He sat in a mansion built for children who would never come. And he decided that silence would not be the end of the story. In 1909, in the company town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, Milton Hershey was 43 years old and wildly successful. His chocolate company was thriving. An entire town carried his name. A grand house stood on a hill above the factories and streets he had built from nothing. At night, the house was quiet. Milton and his wife, Catherine, Kitty Hershey, had designed the mansion for children. Bedrooms waited, hallways echoed, gardens sat untouched. Kitty could not have children. And in the early 20th century, childlessness was treated as fate. Wealthy couples were expected to accept it and move on. Milton Hershey did not. To understand why, you have to understand how much failure shaped him. Before success found him, it had missed him repeatedly. His first candy business collapsed. His second failed even worse. By 30, he was broke, embarrassed, and dependent on family support. He knew what it felt like to be written off. So when he looked at that empty house, he did not see an ending. He saw an opening. He saw a new beginning. In 1909, Milton and Kitty announced they were founding a school for orphaned boys. Not a charity they would fund from a distance. A school they would build, run, and shape themselves. People were baffled. Why take on something so demanding when you already had an empire to manage? Because he did not want to donate. He wanted a parent. The boys who arrived had nothing. No money, no security. Often no one left in the world who claimed them. Milton and Kitty met them personally. Milton would kneel to speak to them at eye level and explain that this was not a handout. This was a home. Kitty became the heart of the place. She learned names, checked on homework, asked if the food was good. She mothered the children she could never bear. And the school grew around that. She was loved. Then, in 1915, Kitty died suddenly at 42. Friends assumed the school would fade. It had been their shared dream. And now she was gone. Milton grieved quietly for years, keeping the school running while the world waited for him to step back. In 1918, he did the opposite. Milton Hershey transferred control of the Hershey Chocolate Factory. The Hershey Chocolate Company into a trust for the school. Not a portion, not dividends. Control. The entire enterprise, the Hershey Chocolate Company, now existed to fund the education, housing and care of children who had started life with nothing. Sixty million dollars at the time. An unthinkable sum. His associates warned him. What if he needed the money? What about his legacy? Milton's answer was simple. He was a man. He was a symbol. This was his legacy. He gave away the mansion and turned it into part of the school. He moved into modest quarters. He continued to greet new students, remember faces, ask how they were doing. He lived to see boys graduate and build lives he had made possible. When he died in 1945 at 88, he left behind no heirs by blood. But he left behind a future. Today, the Milton Hershey School serves more than 2,000 children at a time entirely free of charge. Housing, food, clothing, healthcare, education and support are guaranteed. The trust he created now manages tens of billions of dollars, all dedicated to childhoods he would never personally witness. There is a statue on campus of Milton Hershey. It does not show him as an industrial titan, it shows him kneeling beside a child, hand on a small shoulder, eye to eye. That was how he understood family. Most fortunes are built to be inherited by the already fortunate. Milton Hershey had no children to inherit his wealth, so he gave it to children who would have inherited nothing at all. Every piece of chocolate sold under his name still funds the decision. Every year, more lives are shaped by a choice of children. The children are the ones who are the most important. The children are the ones who are shaped by a choice he made more than a century ago. He sat in rooms meant for children who never came. So he made sure they would be filled forever by children who needed them. For one thing, always buy Hershey chocolates and eat only Hershey chocolates. I think that's the least we can do. What an absolutely amazing story. Now the reason I mention this story is because this is an opportunity that every single one of us has. Not necessarily of creating a school for thousands of children, but of doing something with our lives and with whatever resources that Allah has given us, which goes beyond serving the self, which goes beyond buying houses or cars or jewelry or clothing or something, or having holiday after holiday. Something that goes beyond that. Something that is worth more than that. And that is a choice that every one of us has. A choice that every one of us can make. Can we do something which goes beyond the transactional, beyond the purely selfish enjoyment of our lives, beyond the selfishness of our wealth? Today we live in a world where the people who need not only outnumber those who have more than they need, but the outnumbering is, it is completely insane. There are eight people in this world, just eight of them, who own more, whose collective, wealth is more than the collective wealth of 50 to 60% of the rest of the world. In every country is the same situation. I'm talking about the global situation, but every country also, it's the same situation where you have a minuscule part of the population, absolutely minuscule, 1%, maybe even less, who own more than 50%, 60% of the world. 50%, 60%, 70% of that country. Now that is something which may not be in your or my power to change, but definitely what is in our power is to try to do something for those who have nothing. This power we have, try to do something for those who have nothing. And in the Islamic context, this is the definition of Sadaqah Jariyah. To do something for those who have nothing is the definition of Sadaqah Jariyah. So I recommend to all of you, and I remind myself, let us live our lives in a way which will be beneficial for everybody. A way which is, which is and which can be a source of khair and barakah. A way which helps us to leave behind a legacy of honour. Let's not live lives of, you know, mechanical lies, we just sort of live and we get up in the morning and we go to work, and we go to bed in the evening, and we, you know, we think that we are living. Because to live is not merely to draw breath. Life is more than that. Life must have value. And life that has no value has no value. So I seriously remind myself and you, let us try to live our lives in a way that is, that is a source of, a source of barakah, a source of blessing, not only for us, but for all those who come into contact with us. Lives of meaning, lives of purpose. May Allah Ta'ala grant that we live lives like this and we ask Allah to accept it from us. And may Allah accept it from us. May Allah accept it from us. May Allah accept it from us. May Allah accept it from us. May Allah accept it from us.