Success: Why it should never be compared
Success is perhaps the most used english word. This is one word that is understood by majority of non-native English speakers because this is something that is discussed in every age group, every household and community. Parents citing examples of the successful people to their children to motivate them (also to demotivate them sometimes). It is surprising that though this word is used everyday by almost everyone yet this word doesn’t get thought upon much. It has wide variety of meanings and mostly it is misunderstood. Neither the speaker nor the listener gives much thought to it.
If i were to ask “What is success?”. The question will attract hundreds of answers which will be different from each other and yet no one will admit they are wrong or need correction.
The word actually is different for each individual and for each time. For a high school student who hasn’t prepared for the exam, passing the exam means success and for someone who has done revision for the entire quarter scoring less than 90% wouldn’t mean much, it will still count as a failure. For a athlete success could be finishing the race 1 second earlier and for a druggie leaving the drugs and stabilising his life would be success. There are countless examples and i assure you, all of them are correct. Success has no general meaning, in fact this word is dependent on individual and time.
You must be thinking by now, i know this. Yes, you know it most of the times. But the issue is, you are not aware of it all the times and thus you feel unhappy, happy, joyous, sad at different times. You try to generalise success everyday. You use it everyday in general sense because you become unaware of the individuality of this word. The harm that is done to the humanity is huge. Majority of population is unhappy, dissatisfied because they treat the word generally, not understanding how their lives were unique and their success were different from others around them. People are running toward a certain outcome to succeed and when that outcome is achieved they are not sure why they were running for it, now they run for some other outcome and they keep running their whole lives. Unaware of what they are doing, why they are doing that, they spend lifetimes in dissatisfaction and envy. Envious of not being good enough, dissatisfied of not being successful enough.
In a layman language you can call success as getting results which were desired. So, if you made an effort for a certain outcome and you achieved it, it should mean you succeeded. But when a person starts generalising success based on what they have achieved as compared to their peers/ relatives and any other individual, they astray from the common understanding of success. How can one complete a race if they didn’t participate in it. Participation is basic minimum requirement. No one can participate in everything, the participation in multiple events of our life is limited. Some of us participate in reading, some in exercises, some in wealth creation. Thus you can only compare yourself to someone who participated in the same events and not with others. Also, mere participation doesn't necessarily guarantee success. Even if you participate in a race, doesn't mean you can be among first finishers. In order to finish first, you must run better than others and of course the starting point of everyone should be similar (if not same). Because someone having a head-start of 30m in a race of 100m is going to win unless they are a tortoise and you are a hare.
Thus, everytime anyone generalises success they discard the difference of resources which participants had, the absence of participation in many events. So next time you ever feel you didn’t do well as compared to anyone else, please review the result in light of resources you had, the choices you made and the outcomes that you expected. The same is applicable to every time you generalise success and compare two individuals.
Simply high earnings, better physique, better memory, higher bank balance, more net worth, better relations than anyone doesn’t necessarily mean people are more successful than you. It only means that they gained in a sphere of life where they did some work. Perhaps others one never worked on these parameters, or they didn't have access to enough resources, or they didn’t have a head-start or may be any other reason. Success is the result of actions, randomness of nature and multiple other things in life and every time we compare it we disrespect it, we disrespect the uniqueness that nature has given to us.
