Wednesday, May 21, 2025

What constitutes Success in life?

 

Dr. Umar Khan

khanmomar@hotmail.com

Dr. Khan belongs to a Lahore based Think Tank.

18-5-25

 

 

What constitutes Success in life?  

 

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success” Albert Schweitzer

 

The first serious lesson the society, including parents, hammers on a newly arrived baby is that he/she must succeed. Life is short and competitive, and he/she must struggle hard to succeed, unfortunately not much is taught about what constitutes success. This lesson well learnt makes many competitive but also ruthless and unscrupulous. After nearly half a century’s efforts a very few come out apparently happy while the vast majority remains unsatisfied, guilty and remorseful for not performing and achieving enough scared of being labeled a failure. This vicious circle is going on from times immemorial while increasing in intensity.

 

The most common sought after symbols of success are the following.

  1. Money. It makes life easy and comfortable while making influencing other’s and their attitudes possible. Control over earth’s resources through money has always been the most popular symbol of success.
  2. Fame. Its desirability has increased manifold with the development of modern means of human interaction. Fame now plays a significant role in achieving monetary targets too.
  3. Power. Assuming control over others through power has always been sought and fought after throughout history. What the proponents get by this is still unexplained. No person with a healthy psychological makeup is known to have special affinity for controlling others.
  4. Achieving acknowledgment of excellence/zenith in their fields. This appears most popular among professional middle classes ready to go to any extent to achieve. This excellence and its acknowledgement also help achieve wealth and fame.

 

For the sake of limited time and space we will focus on these four only.

 

After making a person comfortable by providing the basic necessities there isn’t much money can do apart from resting in the bank. Fame and power have even more limited scope like achieving acknowledgment of professional excellence. Looking a bit deeper in these popular success symbols one point stands out, its approval of others and the validation through their opinion that is being pursued. Basically it boils down to impressing others, mostly unknown strangers, bizarre, isn’t it?

 

No matter how much money you accumulate, fame you get, power that you exercise or professional excellence you achieve everything in this world is temporary. The good lord appears deeply socialist ultimately ensuring equality at the end where everyone experiences the same, wise and unwise, rich and poor, powerful and the weak. Ultimately it’s the small time span in the mid that is the play time for the life on this small piece of a huge universe that is hardly noticeable, significant, meaningful or consequential,

No wonder an old sage commented, “Problem with people is that they take life too seriously.”

 

If these sought after aims are so temporary and meaningless then why these have been sought after and fought for needs exploration.

 

Ever wondered why the derby winning horse runs so fast and exerts so much that many times collapses during the race? One thing is for sure he isn’t aware or concerned with the trophy that his owner covets. According to experts the winning horse runs only to avoid the physical pain his rider might inflict by lashing him while a minor concern might be expectation of food. No wonder most of the hard working worldly achievers never get enough time to think and reflect about what they really want in life. Most of us just start running in the race of life that the society imparts on our innocent minds when we are young, a bit like the race dogs trying to bite a mechanical rabbit. It’s only after successfully chasing and achieving that futility of the objective is exposed resulting in depression and sorrow.

 

Mark Twain explained it beautifully, “To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence."

 

 

Ultimately success is self-defined. What matters most is whether a person feels his life is meaningful and fulfilling on his own terms.

 

I also ran and ran in the race of life until I had some time to think and reflect coming to definite conclusions about what constitutes success in life.

 

My take

Since times immemorial people have been trying to answer this question without any trace of consensus. It appears foolish to even try, hence we proceed.

 

With the help of successive approximations and elimination have come to the conclusion that the closest to the definition of success that we can achieve is the answer to a simple question,

“Is the world a better place to live for others with or without you?”

 

Looking through this lens we see many apparently big achievers turn into failures and vice versa. Unfortunately our history books have glamorized and defined success totally differently.

 

How can we call the murderers like Alexander, Genghis Khan or more recently Harry Truman or Stalin successful achievers when they caused so much pain and sufferings? Neither can we call the unscrupulous business tycoons successful like Rhodes or Rockefeller. Third world is full of crooked extra rich influence peddling politicians that fulfill all the prevalent criteria of success but would be doing a favor to this world by leaving it.

 

We still don’t know who invented the printing press that revolutionized the world. Selfless geniuses like Tesla, Jonas Salk, Tim Berners-Lee and many others refused to patent their achievements dying in utter penury. Mother Theresa and many others like her died penniless after leading a hard life. Many might call them foolish failures but according to my criteria they were the most successful although recognition or ignorance by an ordinary person like me would have hardly mattered to them.

 

Ultimately you are the best judge of your success in this world and not the many you work so hard to impress.

It is interesting to note how using this criterion of success can change our perception of the people we considered successful and heroic.

 

 

Life’s fulfillment emerges from individual participation in the service of humane ideals. Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness. (The Humanist Manifesto)

 

 

 

khanmomar@hotmail.com

 

 

 

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