I have been very much inspired by my father. He always told me “ take a step forward, and then take two backwards and watch yourself succeed.” I never really understood what he meant by this until i actually moved away from home. In order to understand why my dad is such a role model, i would need to tell you all a little bit about myself. I grew up in a little city in Morocco, called Tangier, right across from the ocean. My father works for the government as an international consultant and my mother has a cleaning supplies manufacturing company. I have a brother who is a sales engineer, married and has a little one year old boy and is happily married. I also have an older sister who has recently got engaged, and works for the human rights department in Morocco. My family are by far very inspirational, insightful, smart and above all have a lot of experience i hope to learn from.
My father has always been there for me. He has worked his way up in society and i strongly respect him for that. He grew up with four other siblings in a poorer household where his father died at a young age and his mother was left to take care of all of them. As the oldest member of the family, he started working at a young age and managed to get the highest grade in his generation’s reasoning test. As a consequence, he was selected to go to France to pursue his education with a full scholarship. He never gave up on his education and thus continued his studied and achieved his doctorate’s degree from University of Pennsylvania. He is a blessing for me to have in my life. Sadly, my dad has been sick for a few months and this only made me realize how much i cherish him. He always persuaded me to pursue my education regardless of his condition. I will always look up to him as my ultimate role model and would be proud to be half the person he is.
My mother is as important to me as my father. However, she has a different place in my heart. My mother is also very hardworking. She , however, never attended college. She worked hard and her professional skills made her a valuable asset to every job she ever had. She has a very strong personality and is very ambitious. My mother always pushed me far beyond my limits and had me fight for my beliefs. She was persistent about seeing me blossom and be achieve my full potential. Unlike my father who had a soft spot for me, my mother actually served me with tough love. She was the first person to motivate me to start kickboxing. When i first decided upon this idea, everyone was making fun of me and telling me i was too small to fight or participate in spars. However, she believed in me and pushed me to attend every practice even when i felt like giving up. Thank to her consistent support, i actually started doing really well and even spared for the regionals in Morocco. Sadly, i had to stop the sport upon my departure from Morocco. However, that experience will forever be a memory i will cherish and thank my mother for her constant support.
It is very hard to describe in words how much i respect and love my brother. My older brother survived a lot of hardships and still believed that the grass was greener on the other side. My brother is ten years older than me and yet we have a very strong bond. He is the closest member in the family to me as we are sort of very similar and different at the same time. My brother had to fight a drug addiction and was able to cleanse himself and head back to school and pursue his education in engineering. Everyone doubted in his capablities of achieving success, except for me as i looked up to him as my everything. My family and I are really close, but my brother and I are tied together through a strong bond of love and commitment. The hardest thing i had to leave behind in Morocco was my brother, as we would spend most of our time together. Now, he is a succesful man with a little baby boy named Mehdi, who i love more than anything in this world. I wish him the best of luck in his future and am simply thankful to have a brother who could be so smart and rise above his superficial urges. He is not a role model to me but a hero.
My sister, similarly is someone i deeply cherish. She is however very tough on me. She implements on me what i like to think of as “ tough love.” She has pursued her education in the United States at the University of Maryland and her masters degree at the London School of Economics. She is very smart and is by far my parents most loved child. She is overprotective of me and can not stand seeing me sad. I really do love her and care about her but sometimes wish she was not so hard on me. However, as i started growing up, i realized that her love has served me well, as she has only wanted the best for me. I know i can count on her for anything. She is my soul sister, we fight and argue but we love each other. My family makes up my role models, my heroes, whatever you want to call them. All i can say is i simply love them.