I have read the great book My Vision more than 21 times, and I still want to read it again. Why? Because each time I find something new in it, and I discover that the book renews itself on its own.
The book is philosophical, of course, but it is practically applicable, and its philosophy springs from long experience — an experience that His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum described in his own words: "My Vision is a unique book in which I review certain aspects of the development experience built on achieving excellence and moving the UAE from its role as a regional economic hub to its additional role as a global economic hub."
The book is distinguished by being written in a comprehensive, all-encompassing style that brings together history, sociology, thought, philosophy, politics, literature, proverbs, and wisdom. If this tells us anything, it tells us that the author is an encyclopaedic reader who has studied the experiences of nations and the cultures of peoples.
In his book, His Highness addresses minds and reinforces what he says with examples and evidence drawn from transmitted knowledge. He extols teamwork, far removed from authoritarianism, domination, and the narrowing of paths. He welcomes the birth of a second and third rank, and affirms his love of first place with the words:
"If you are not at the vanguard, you are at the rear. If you are not at the front, you are ceding your natural place to another competitor who may be less capable, less prepared, and less creative than you."
My Vision is not an ordinary book to be bought and placed on a desk as decoration. Rather, it should become an engine that drives the great and the small alike, for it is a set of rules of conduct, business management, convoys of hope, and treasures of economics, finance, industry, and technology — all compressed into sentences.
His Highness opens My Vision with the story of the gazelle and the lion, a story that sums up what he wants from you. After narrating it, His Highness says: it does not matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle — with the dawn of each morning, you must run faster than everyone else in order to achieve success.
In My Vision you read His Highness's far-sightedness, the ease of his thinking, the breadth of his horizons, and his love of the past, present, and future. He knows that time is precious and that history is unforgiving, and so he does not content himself with keeping pace — he loves to be ahead of nations, because one who merely keeps pace never achieves progress.
My Vision is a book I cannot do justice to in this brief piece. As for His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid — a giant of thought, literature, and politics, and an expert in economics — I cannot give him his full due, except to say:
By thought you led and surpassed every chief,
And became the pride of the Arab nation.
Live as a ruler, live as a leader, live as the first,
While the people are the last dot on the letter "ya'".