His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, may God bless him, insists on being number 1, even though achieving it is difficult. When asked why he insists on it, he replied that no one knows who came in second place, or tenth place, or any other position.
He then said: How many of you know the second person to climb to the summit of Mount Everest in the Himalayas, or the second person to walk on the surface of the Moon? The answer is no one.
Indeed… the philosophy of number 1, or first place in everything, means the ambition to reach the top. Number 1 is a motivator to exert greater effort in order to attain the pinnacle of excellence. Were it not for lofty aspirations, mankind would never push to achieve the impossible in pursuit of the impossible. As the poet says:
Be a man whose feet stand upon the earth,
yet whose ambition soars to the Pleiades.
I am firmly convinced that whoever does not think about reaching first place has no ambition, for in his eyes there is no difference between being second or tenth. What is remarkable is that the person who never thinks about number 1 calls himself content, yet contentment, to my mind, has a different meaning: you strive for the highest, you compete with others in a honourable way, and if after all that you do not reach first place, you are not to blame — because you took the necessary steps.
People differ in their abilities, and luck plays a role in human life. The Holy Quran states: "…Indeed, he is a man of great fortune" (Verse 79, Surah Al-Qasas).
The difference between the content person and the lazy one is that the content person tills the soil, sows the seeds, and then waits for the rain to fall. The lazy person, however, shirks work and says he asked God but was not given, calling his inaction reliance on God, when in fact it is mere dependency.
Such negativity must be addressed with positivity, as Napoleon did when he was asked: How do you instil confidence in your soldiers? He said: I meet three attitudes with three responses — to the one who says "I do not know" I say "learn"; to the one who says "I cannot" I say "try"; and to the one who says "it is impossible" I say "attempt it".
A little ambition generates self-confidence, and the self-confident person is optimistic about life; the optimist's heart and mind do not age, even if his body grows old and his bones grow weak.
Furthermore, the number one is the very essence of faith in the Abrahamic religions. The Quran states: "He created you from a single soul…" (Verse 6, Surah Az-Zumar) — perfection resides in the number one.
We agree with His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum when he says: "There is no alternative for us but first place, and the word 'impossible' is not in our dictionary in the United Arab Emirates."