Al-Hamdullilah, our nation celebrated its 58th Independence Day this year with traditional zeal and fervor. There are memories attached to these 58 years both happy as well as bitter - occurrences and actions, achievements and failures, joys and sorrows. This is perhaps the same for each country or nation. It’s never a fully happy set of events neither is it a completely negative set of memories. For under developed countries, the journey has been more troublesome and loaded with incidents that have kept them

from progressing as well as the developed nations. Unfortunately, this is true for Pakistan as well. The great gift and potential that Almighty Allah had bestowed upon Pakistan warranted that we should have developed at a much faster rate and become a true FORTRESS of ISLAM in a very short time soon after gaining independence. However, we may be on that path but are still very far from reaching it.

Instead of going in to the politics of it all and blaming the decisions and actions of the people at the helm of affairs throughout Pak history, I would like to point out its one basic differentiator and it is the “optimum” utilization of one of the most valuable national asset: TIME! If we analyze our behavior from that of an individual to groups to society and then the nation as a whole, we will come to this bitter realization that we waste TREMENDOUS amount of TIME at every level. There is no such thing as Time Management. Not to talk about the illiterate and not so literate citizens even the professionals among us fail to do optimum utilization and indulge in very wasteful actions, be it blocking of traffic when a VIP is passing, to hours and hours of unnecessary delay at wedding ceremonies and other functions. Even our professional seminars and conferences fail to start and finish on time. It is indeed a pathetic and shameful state of affairs.

It truly is an era of accelerated development. IT has greatly boosted this pace. This means “time” is all the more important. Today wasting 1 hour is like wasting a whole month say 10 years ago. This importance will only increase. Individuals as well as societies and nations, who realize this and work very hard to ensure optimum utilization of this extremely valuable asset: TIME, will survive and progress. And those who loose this race will be destined for oblivion. May Allah Almighty give us the guidance and wisdom to avoid wastage of this valuable asset which is an “Ammanat” of the nation with us and use it in an optimum fashion in areas which are constructive and productive- Aameen!