What Success Means to You ?

Unambiguously, the time-rested anxioms “Nothing succeeds’ success” and “success has many feathers but failure none”, ha mesmerized human perceptions and practices since ages. The sonorous saga that tells the rise of many a person from “rags to riches”, or from “the ashes to proving a phoenix”, dots the landscape of the world, ignite human impulses of passions, to make them move with the speed a steed on the road to success.

The success syndrome that has come rule the roost determines the status and stature of a successful individual where both competition and competence have become the two sides of the coin. If success, both in the personal and impersonal matters scintillating, failure is equally frustrating.

Although failures are said to be the pillars of success, it is quite naive to be mentally prepared to taste the bitter dose of failure before possessing the Mida’s touch of success.

“He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many founder in their passage, while they lie waiting for the gale.” (Jonson).

Since time immemorial, the success stories of all those who have chiseled the curves and contours of human civilization, speak volumes of their courage and conviction that have gone into moulding the spectrum. To me success is neither a freak of fortune, nor a Luke of chance. It is the result of hard labour assisted by rare luck.

The big names of successful persons, both in the past as well as in the present times, in spite all those who mean to carve a niche for themselves by doing things that are unique in nature, but universal in appeal and application. The likes of Microsoft giant (Bill Gates), the creator of Rock Garden (Nek Chand), the first man landing on the Moon, and the first mountaineer scaling the Everest, etc. etc. are rare species who have eloquently kept the frontiers of success wide-open.

Truly speaking, success is not entirely self-centered, but an august achievement that sublimates the sentiments of self-promotion at the cost of other concerns and considerations.

I share the belief that advocates if success is tempered with the sentiments of service, may of the present-day ills like angst, anger, anxiety and alienation can be subdued, if not completely subjugated. Success if no doubt, is sweet and stimulating. That the means must justify the ends, applies as much to my perception of success as it does to the pursuit of many other aims in the life. Success is one’s life not an unusual or unsavoury phenomenon.

However, the problems begin to vex and worry only when we strive to jump the queue and break all rules of the road to have our way.

It is true that the concept of worldly success begins to take shape at the school level, where the emphasis is excessively put on academic excellence for a conspicuously bright career or future. Both the parents and the teachers direct their efforts towards making their wards some quotable specimens of success, little realising that those who only succeed in making their careers as professionals, also run the risk of becoming conformists. In the race to succeed, these otherwise vibrant young minds lose the grand vision and purpose that life holds for one and all.

What exactly comprises the so much talked about passion for success? Surely, success is a matter of attitude, of what I think I am capable of. It is about futuristic thinking, and planning, as also about doing things carefully. The real secret of sweet success lies in “attitude, learning for mistakes, persisting in the face of adversity, vision, empathy for others, communication skills ” (Arindam Chaudhri).

As thing stand today, economic liberalization, global capitalism and consumerism would continue to pollute the socio-economic-cum-cultural environmental further. The nature of the emergent society is likely to be ruthlessly aggressive and competitive. It is difficult to believe that such a society would encourage a system of education that is soft and dialogic that rests on cooperation. Success should in no way encourage a pattern. that, as a spectrum of thinkers ranging from Antonio Gramsci to Michel Focault would have argued, fixes your mind, inhibits creative thinking promotes conformity and reproduces a hierarchical or expletive society.