In a party
recently, I asked a friend what his wife was doing. ‘She is a housewife’, would
not have ordinarily sounded disturbing had it not been accompanied with a faint
downward movement of the lips gesturing in body language, the words that didn’t
escape his lips ‘She couldn’t do much else. Of course what she couldn’t do was
have a career; a self generated bank account, investments in her name, bought
by her with her own resources. In short an independent financial existence. Had
she had all this her life would be deemed a success.
Though am
wondering what would have been the expression of my friend’s face, if he had then
answered my question. Would he have been proud of her achievements or would
there have been the tonelessness that creeps in one’s voice, when all one knows
about one’s wife is what her colleague knows about her and one has spent many a
lonely evening nursing a drink while the wife has yet to come back from work.
I guess such a
man as my friend would have been deprecating of his wife at all accounts, for
he has no idea what it means to appreciate another human being for her
qualities. And this is not an uncommon issue. It is widespread and all
encompassing. A watchman has much lesser ‘value’ the world as than a CEO. A watchman does not deserve an annual pay
hike, a bonus, a training to do his job better, he has no retirement benefits,
why, not even a free chai. No one would say the watchman was a ‘success’ in life.
Success today
has become the new parameter of judging how much respect a man is due or how
little. The yardstick of success is a tangible and transparent upward mobility in
a person. If your pay scale has not substantially increased and bank account is
not always flush, you risk losing your position in the ladder of ‘success’.
The problem isn’t
with success itself, which just means fulfillment of a goal. It’s the goals
that we pursue and try to attain that one needs to pause and question.
‘You have to
push harder’ say the success pundits. Know your gadgets, your software, your
investment opportunities and its appreciation. ‘Stay abreast’ cry the articles
in the peachy financial newspaper.
Can we all breathe
a bit before we continue on the same track- we were not meant to be herds, or
else would still be bleating sheep? Let’s just view the facts. We are born, we
will die, and we have a short time in between. We are here for some reason. Is
that reason to become ‘successful’ or can there be another purpose to existence?
Was the
purpose of evolution the building of great infrastructure on the speck that we
call earth? Was the purpose of evolution the creation of a being who is
brilliant at crunching numbers or data and generating large profits for his organization
or has acquired a specialized skill at a job which maybe a few thousand years
will become redundant, but currently assures survival and more importantly ‘success’
to the individual? If these goals are not worth pursuing, then what goals are?
Would a
person who conquered anger, be called a successful person, for instance. Would
a woman, who enjoyed gossip but later saw how it hurt the people gossiped
about, learnt to control her urge for this vicious pleasure, be called a
success? Would a child with low self-confidence, later learnt to value his own
opinion of himself more than that of his peers, be valued? Would a person who
once harbored hatred and feelings of vengeance for another, but then learnt the
peace of forgiveness and the importance of moving on, be called a success?
It’s not I am
against pursuing career goals and financial security goals. I think these can
be tools for achieving the other goals of character and mental strength that
will truly spell the next stage of evolving mankind and hence give reason for
our existence in the cycle of birth and death.
If the
pursuing and achievement of all our materialistic goals does not help us become
a more evolved being, one is simply throwing away one’s time here.
And there is
nothing tangible or transparent about such goals, they are subtle and unseen.
So let’s stop
judging people by the herd mentality’s idea of success. Let’s develop our own
parameters and work on ourselves to be truly successful in every sense of the
word.
