“OH, finally, the Asian Champions League tournament is over! I am so happy, simply because I can now see more of you, my sons.” These were my mother's words. According to her, this Asian club football competition, hosted annually by the Asian Football Confederation, prevented us, her sons, from seeing her as often as we used to. Another incident that I would like to mention to illustrate my main point involves a meeting of Arab-American students at Carnegie Mellon University in the US to discuss the agenda of the current academic year. But first, the Asian Champions League tournament. I closely followed the media coverage of the preparation of the qualifying Saudi football club for the final game in the tournament, the Al-Ahli Club. One thing I noticed was the stress that was put on going there and playing exceptionally well, which suggested that our team, Al-Ahli, would no doubt be the Asian cup champions. Compare this to the student meeting where the attendees discussed their top-priority goal: To change the negative American attitude toward Arabs. With the Saudi soccer media coverage in the back of my mind as I listened to what was said in the students' meeting, I could not stop myself from stating openly and firmly,
“Please, be more realistic!” We often, collectively and individually, do not set reasonable goals and instead look for aims beyond our existing ability and reach. Then, when we fail, we are hard on ourselves and everyone involved. Let us take Al-Ahli's advancement to the final of the Asian Champions League tournament as an example. It was the fourth appearance in the new version of the Champions League final for Saudi teams, and for Al-Ahli, it was the first appearance. However, we still had a long way to go, especially in light of the current performance of the Saudi team as compared to that of the more advanced Korean team in the competition, Ulsan Hyundai. If we had taken that into consideration, our major objective probably would have been to show the world that we were there to play well and might lose, but not without making a tremendous effort to rise up to the world-class level. Unfortunately, the media – the sports columnists — the players, the officials, and, to some extent, the public determined that the main goal of the Saudi team was to win the Asian Champions League title. Of course, we had the right to want that to happen, but our dreams were unrealistic because we simply did not have what it takes to compete for the title. We ought to have said that we would go there and show the world that we have a great team that plays well and is very difficult to beat. Perhaps if we had worked toward achieving such a goal – by putting our desired goals into perspective and determining what would work from where we are right now – we would have fared better. As for the Arab-American student meeting, I told the organizers that, while the stated goal was idealistic and while we should do whatever we could to achieve it, we ought to, nonetheless, be more realistic. How can a few students with limited resources accomplish such an enormous task? What are the mechanisms that we can employ to get there? I told them we needed to be humble in our hope and set reasonable aims that were attainable within our capacity and endurance. I suggested that we work toward the ideal on a smaller scale, within our surroundings – the environment of our school. We could do that by organizing cultural events and inviting our classmates, American friends, and professors to come and join us and then find a way to pass on our message or goal to the gathering. We need to learn the art of effectively setting more realistic and obtainable or achievable goals for what we intend to do so that we will not be easily discouraged and give up or procrastinate. Goals that are completely out of reach or those that are too low and do not require hard work and challenge must be avoided and disregarded. By the same token, we need to consider the fact that realistic, effective goals must be attainable, important, and taken seriously.? — The writer is a Saudi academic who can be reached at [email protected]
