Asjad Shahzad
BROADLY, I have come across two types of people in my life. Pragmatist and Idealist. How to differentiate them? Ask them two questions.
For example, Question 1: What type of job you like?; Question 2:What is your biggest goal in life? If the responses are “I want to do a 9 to 5 job with 2 lakhs a month salary” and “My biggest goal is to build a house for my family”, I straight away deduce “here comes a pragmatist”.
On the contrary, if the responses is “A job where I can develop something innovative so that it can serve the people of my country” and “My biggest goal is to provide free quality education to every person in the country”, then my mind says “I have found an Idealist”.
For me, none of these types of people is bad or wrong. You can never have all the people in the world having the same viewpoint or way of thinking.
It depends on how you train your mind to be or what type of mind you are born with (this is debatable). Similarly, people are different based on their culture, country, schooling, upbringingetc. Actually, it is a trade-off.
For example, let’s look from the perspective of Question 1. The answers are based on the trade-off between “chances of success” and “the value of success” from the person’s perspective.
For example, for a pragmatist, the chances of success maybe 90 by 100 and the value of success is probably 10 by 100.
However, for an idealist, the chances of success maybe 10 by 100 while the value of success is probably 90 by 100. So, it all depends on what choices a person wants to make in life. Either be more number of times successful (with small successes) or be one time successful (having huge success). Same goes for failure.
Based on the two extreme reactions I read on Ali Sadpara’s attempt to conquer K2, I learnt that these people are either Pragmatist or Idealist. For one type of people, Ali Sadpara is a hero attempting to make the country proud. For the other type, Sadpara is a mad person who lost his life for nothing.
Although, only God knows about true intentions of a person, however, can you imagine a person trying to summit K-2 in winters without having extreme motivation, passion and love for his country? Should all dangerous sports or games be banned such as wrestling, boxing, sky-diving or bullfighting – considering the risk involved? No! Never! But I will leave a basic point for all of you to ponder.
Whether in movies or reality, when a boy loves a girl, deeply and truly, however, despite great effort, he does not succeed to be with her (boy may even die in the process), still we consider him a hero or at least perceive him as a hero.
On the contrary, when a person loves climbing the mountains, deeply and truly, (either for his country or otherwise, it does not matter) however, despite great effort, he cannot succeed (he may even die in the process), what shall we see him or perceive him as? Yes, a Hero, who is now with his Heroine (K-2) forever! Ali Sadpara was, Brave, Courageous, Passionate, Patriotic, Determined and a HERO. Yes, he will always be my HERO! May his soul RIP.
—The Author is an Electrical Engineer and currently doing PhD from Swinburne University, Australia.
