Saturday, 15 February 2014

Nothing Like Success : Blog # 165

Nothing Like Success!!!  

    
All of us crave for success. Through my eyes, I can see only two kinds of people who don’t have an urge to succeed. One group who have renounced all the worldly pleasures. The other, those who haven’t got a taste of it yet; for success is like that elusive elixir of which once known the taste of, cannot be given up with ease.

            I was watching a movie and a pattern struck me. Most of the popular films celebrate people who are not successful. People who are successful are mostly portrayed as either nerds or evil or as narcissists.   

Success doesn’t come by easily. It doesn’t call on everyone too. It not only requires one’s dedicated efforts but the nature should conspire for one tooJ. I think we are always biased towards these who have not seen success. And the reason, the plain fact that it is much easier to relate to them. Since the successful kind is such an exclusive lot, people react to them in various ways.

            To begin with, most of us try to avoid them. We refrain from acknowledging the fact that a person is successful. We play it down. We refuse to give them credit. One reason might be the fact that coming in to contact with them and acknowledging their success remind us of our own lack of it which many of us aren’t comfortable with.

            Another approach is to compare it with other areas of their life. That person is successful, but look at his/her family! He/ She couldn’t sustain the marriage and it goes on and on. We look at the pricky leaves and the thorns of the plant and fail to see the rose in full bloom amidst it.

            We find comfort in the crowd. We join hands with the larger lot. I haven’t find success and neither have you. Let us be happy and celebrate the mediocrity. Since the unsuccessful lot is the larger one, this has a lot of acceptance in our society.

            Also, we conclusively decide that the person must have done something out of the way to become successful. We forget that there are many people who have found success without walking down the wrong path even once.

            Then there is this rhetoric of success making people self-obsessed. I feel that is just a stereotype. If success makes one a narcissist, so does failure. The only difference is the former stems out of contentment and the latter from frustration.

            What we conveniently overlook is the toil the person has put in to achieve that stature. The only thing that should concern us is the lessons to be learned from that toil. It is the milestones that one passed that we should look at for only that will guide us when we walk down that road on our own.

Arun Babu.

2 comments:

  1. At times the reason why successful people are not duly acknowledged is probably because, success is a very relative concept. What I think of as success need not be success in the eyes of the society, friends and family.

    When we congratulate someone on their success, saying "you have been gifted with the talent", are we trying to overlook the effort the person had put in to reach there ?

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    1. even though success might mean different things for different people, what stops them from appreciating others?

      and about talent, I disagree..when someone says you are gifted...it just means you are lucky and you don't have to try very hard :)..and if at all you do, there is no limit for your success :)

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