الفلاح
Falah
Strive for success in everything you take part in.
Success, before anyone made it mean money.
Falah is an Arabic word for success. Its root belongs to farmers. It means to split open the earth, work it, and wait for it to give something back.
Nothing about that is fast. You plant. You tend it. You come back the next day and do it again, mostly without proof that it's working.
So falah isn't something you arrive at. It's something you return to.
The three letters underneath the word. Every meaning it carries grows out of them.
حَيَّ عَلَى الْفَلَاح
Hayya 'ala al-Falah
Come to success.
It's called out from every mosque on earth, five times a day, and has been for fourteen centuries. Not come and pray. Come to success.
Fajr
DAWNDhuhr
MIDDAYAsr
AFTERNOONMaghrib
SUNSETIsha
NIGHTSuccess is calling you.
Five times a day.
It'll be back again tomorrow.
Would you miss the call?
The name over the things being built.
MEDIA
Ideas that move.
EDUCATION
Knowledge that compounds.
ENTERPRISE
Things built to last.
Three territories. Nine or so things inside them. You'll get the names when the names are earned.
FOUNDATION
The standard is settled.
BUILDING
The first things are taking shape.
REVEAL
When they're ready, they'll have names.
The internet made being seen feel like progress.
It isn't.
Attention is the easiest thing to get and the hardest thing to spend well. Building loudly is a way of borrowing belief you haven't earned yet. So the work comes first here, and the audience comes later, if it comes at all.
I'm building this.
For years I studied business, money, and the internet, looking for a way to build wealth without compromising what I believe. I found some of it. Then I understood I'd been measuring success too narrowly. There's also faith, character, family, the people you affect, and the person you become along the way.
I've fallen more than I'd like to admit. What I've learned is that falling isn't the end. You return.
Falah is the standard I measure it against. Not things that make noise. Things that leave something behind.
If your life was a book, what would you call this chapter?
You write the ending.
Shabir Husain Ahmed
@shabir_husain_ahmed