DEFINITION OF SUCCESS
For many centuries now, humanity has defined success from the place of comparison and competition. Having more, better, faster, seems to be the norm.
Materialism, desire to possess, fear, greed , and wars are still going on because we forgot the definition of success.
True success is to know oneself and be oneself. Forgetting this we deceive ourselves and fill our inner emptiness with possessing things.
We teach children to compete against each other. From academics, science fairs, honor roll, to sports, painting, reading and so on, success is equated with winning, to outdo another person. We bring competition and comparison in everything the child does and ultimately make everything look like it is a means to achieve a goal.
This leads to enormous stress, children are made to view other children not as friends but as obstacles to their winning. So right from childhood they are made to close their hearts from sharing, caring or loving.
Every one of their acts, painting, singing, reading, sports and even small games played with their friends are devalued and made burdensome, instead of giving joy to the child the winning and proving thought brings them enormous stress. Even great educators are of the opinion that competition is a motivator to build self esteem.
We now know that competition and comparison does not support us at all, instead they create negativity and stop us from evolving, from knowing and being our loving, joyful, caring selves.
True success is not to be better than anyone else, it is to know oneself and be oneself. It is the capacity to celebrate life, to enjoy life situations and acquire the art of dealing with situations in a most positive way.
I am reminded of the Ubuntu story. Ubuntu is a tribe in Africa. An anthropologist who was studying the tribe, at one time bought a basket of fruits and kept it under a tree, he created a competition for the tribal children like a running race to see that who reaches the tree first will get the basket of fruits as their prize. Surprisingly the children all held their hands and ran together and enjoyed the fruits by sharing with each other. Being very puzzled , this anthropologist asked the children why they did not run so that one of them could win. For this, one child simply answered, "how can one of us be happy if all others are sad?"
For me, this is the true essence of success, this is the true spirit of humanity. We are sad, stressed, depressed, living in fear and greed because we forgot the true essence of success.
We are loving beings, and anything we do against who we are will definitely create stress.
We are ONE! I am, because we are! I am another You!
Blessings!
Premlatha Rajkumar
© PRajkumar 2018
