What we call as
success depends upon our angle of vision. It also depends upon how we define
ourselves and believe in who we are. Success, for a tiger may mean the power
and strength to catch its prey whereas for a deer it may mean the ability to
run faster and swifter. But this is surely a very narrow way to understand
success. The life of a tiger and of a deer is not just about personal survival.
Each has its own beauty and charm. Perhaps in trying to see in different
species merely a struggle for survival we are missing an important point about
the very origin of species. By misreading thus the intentions of nature we end
up misplacing our priorities of life and believe that a cut-throat competition
and somehow winning the race is the real purpose. By doing so we create
artificial situations and lead an artificial life full of false hopes and
needless fears!
Take the story
of the hare and the tortoise that we read as children. In this story we are
told that a Hare and a Tortoise ran a race. Quite naturally the hare was way
ahead of the tortoise. But then because he was leading, he becomes complacent
and sleeps off. However the tortoise continues to crawl steadily and eventually
reaches the goal faster while the hare is still asleep and dreaming. The story despite
its merits is a very limited conception of life. Besides it is artificial.
Though we have begun to believe in this artificial reality, a closer truth
would be that the hare is an expert in its own field of action, that is in
digging burrows and running on the ground. A tortoise, on the other hand, is an
expert in its own domain. It can breathe in water as well as on land. Though
the hare runs way faster than a tortoise, it lives much shorter.
If we look closely we will discover that nature endows each species with something special, something unique that makes it stand apart and adding to the total beauty and harmony and balance of nature. Nature creates differences for a greater joy just as a mother may like to have more than one child for experiencing the joy of children in different ways. But children may end up sometimes fighting and competing with each other as rivals. But in reality they are not rivals but brothers and sisters and each add to the strength and joy of the other.
We are each
different and each of us have something unique, something special, a special
strength, a special capacity, a special possibility, even we may say a special
place in the great concert of life. We are not in any competition. Rather we
complement each other. Take another example from nature. The grass is the least
attractive plant in a garden and yet one cannot quite imagine a garden without
this humblest of species. Put in its place, the grass adds to the beauty of a
garden and to each of the different plants. If we too could find our unique
place we shall fulfil our role on the universe. But instead we are busy
competing with each other. Now that is what is called an artificial life,
leading someone else’s life. But we can lead a true life, a life our own. All
that we need to do is to discover our own unique capacities, our unique
strengths, and our unique place in the world and then allow this discovery to
unfold in our life.
We may regard
life as a puzzle created for fun and there is a unique place for each piece. We
have to find that place, that unique space waiting for us. The closer we move
towards this place, the truer our life begins to become.
Success is not winning over someone else. It
is about winning over us. By winning over our fears we begin to grow in our
strength. By winning over our hopes and expectations we further conserve our
energy for the work of discovery demanded of us. Fears and hopes both distract
and deviate us. By winning over our urge to be someone else we make it easier
to be ourselves. By winning over our desire for instant success we ensure our
long term success. This is the first rule of the game of life. The race of life
is not about who wins it first but who endures until the last. It is not about
who gets first but who is in his rightful place. It is not about who got the
maximum but about who felt more deeply fulfilled and satisfied.
There are other
facets of success as well. One concerns not so much with achievement but with
the journey one undertakes, not so much with the end-goal one has in mind but
with the joy of the road one travels. Another is not about achieving one
particular thing in life but about the wholeness of life. It means living a
life of harmony wherein different facets of life are in a wonderful state of
balance. A third aspect of success relates to simply improving upon oneself.
Here we do not compete with anyone else but with ourselves. We can also see
success as various kinds of fulfilments- material, psychological and
spiritual. Finally success can be seen as a progressive development of
consciousness, in other words, in realising our full evolutionary potential.
Let us leave
with these thoughts from the Mother whose pioneering work at the Sri Aurobindo
International Centre of Education, Pondicherry is well-known and is a source of
inspiration, the world over:
There are
innumerable categories of “successful” people;these categories are determined
by the greater or lesser breadth,nobility,complexity, purity and luminosity of
their ideal. One may “succeed” as a rag-picker or “succeed” as master of
the world or even as a perfect ascetic; in all three cases, although onvery
different levels, it is one’s more or less integral and extensive self-mastery
which makes the “success” possible.
On the other
hand, there is only one way of being a “failure”; and that happens to the
greatest, to the most sovereign intelligence, as well as to the smallest, the
most limited, to all those who are unable to subordinate the sensation of the
present moment to the ideal they wish to achieve, but without having the strength
to take up the path—identical for all in nature if not in extent and
complexity—that leads to this achievement.
Dr Alok Pandey
Proffessor
Sri Aurobindo Asharam
Pondicherry
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