Wings of Fire

by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

When a person looks at himself, he is likely to misjudge what he finds. He sees only his intentions. Most people have good intentions and hence conclude that whatever they are doing is good. It is difficult for an individual to objectively judge his actions, which may be, and often are, contradictory to his good intentions. Most people come to work with the intention of doing it. Many of them do their work in a manner they find convenient and leave for home in the evening with a sense of satisfaction. They do not evaluate their performance, only their intentions. It is assumed that because an individual has worked with the intention of finishing his work in time, if delays occurred, they were due to reasons beyond his control. He had no intention of causing the delay. But if his action or inaction caused that delay, was it not intentional? Looking back on my days as a young scientist, I am aware that one of the most constant and powerful urges I experienced was my desire to be more than what I was at that moment. I desired to feel more, learn more, express more. I desired to grow, improve, purify, expand. I never used any outside influence to advance my career. All I had was the inner urge to seek more within myself. The key to my motivation has always been to look at how far I had still to go rather than how far I had come. After all, what is life but a mixture of unsolved problems, ambiguous victories, and amorphous defeats? The trouble is that we often merely analyse li...