It is not easy to live faithful to one's values. When a person chooses some rule for himself as a value,…

It is not easy to live faithful to one's values. When a person chooses some rule for himself as a value, attacks begin in order to separate him from that value. This is a very simple law. If you say, I want to possess something, there will certainly be those who want to snatch it away. You certainly need to prove that you are worthy of the value you desire. In this way, everyone in this world is obliged to draw his own boundary and to guard it. No achievement or find is ever given for free; in the life of this world everything has its price. You must live defending everything in your hands; if you do not defend it, you will undoubtedly lose it. In the eyes of others, a milestone or achievement someone has reached may seem to have come easily. That is not so at all — behind it there are struggle and suffering, only we do not see them. And even if it was reached easily, there is no need for envy — it will soon slip out of his hands. For a human being is very indifferent to what he did not attain through hardship and toil. Values are exactly the same. A young man — a bright and diligent young man, for example — sits in the company of various scholars, reads books, gets acquainted with all kinds of biographies, and draws for himself the beautiful patterns of humanity: I will be honest, I will be truthful, I will put the spiritual above the material, I will be loyal and not a traitor, I will be responsible and strong, and so on. In this way the young man has chosen values for himself, sorted them out, and, puffing himself up, proclaimed to the world, “I have values.” An attack on this wealth begins at once: life puts you in such a state that it becomes hard to be honest; you suffer such oppression that you have no way left but lying; you fall into such need that you slowly turn away from your spiritual values; the ego and Satan play such tricks that, caught in a whirlpool of temptations, you heedlessly become a traitor; you grow so tired and exhausted that responsibility becomes like a dream to you; visible and invisible loads are piled onto your shoulders until your strength runs out and you have to say, I am weak. And when this moment comes, you look and see that your values have been plundered; not a single value is left — this is what they mean when they say that the wealth in your hands will certainly be assailed. It follows from this that you must choose values thoughtfully; once you have chosen them, you must always be able to defend them; for this it is proper for you to heed the guidance of the great, of some perfect person who truly cares about you. If on waking in the morning a person makes the intention, “Today I will spend my day with good conduct,” and in every situation takes one deep breath before speaking, he will probably prevent a good many hardships.

Akrom MALIK