Success - an illusion ??

I’m 27 years old, initial 4-5 years, don’t know what I did, spent around 17 years studying and since last 5 years I am earning and spending my own money.

I am thinking of buying a house, a house of my own !!! My father and mother saved money all through their life and managed to build a house, of their own, only after they got retired from their work. And look at me, I am planning to buy a house at such a young age. I am in hurry !!!

Why am I running ?? well, I am running because everybody is running.

Why everybody is running ??? because everybody wants to be successful.

successful !!! what does success means ? A billion dollar question !!! right ?

The concept of success I had, during my school/college days, was entirely different, what I believed was that, ‘you have to do your karma and whatever result comes is your success.’ for example, if you get 80% marks in your exam, that mean you are succeeded 80% and there is nothing to get excited. you still don’t know 20% of the things. But then I learned; success is not absolute, its relative.You are successful as long as you are better than other, no matter how bad, you think, you are. This is true in our personal as well as professional life also. Like, you will get more increment if you outperform your colleague. Your opinion will count more if you are a well-to-do member of family.

Going by this rational ,I can say, I may be successful in one company but not in some other, I may be respected by my family but not by neighbor. So what should I consider of myself ? am I successful in life or not ? well, the problem is, we are not allowed to be the judge of our own success or failure, its the society who judges us, and society has only one scale to measure the success and its; the material possession we are having. And if that is the case then nobody can really be successful in one way or the other. then what is success ?

Success is software not hardware, you can feel it but can not touch. The day you start looking at yourself from others eyes, its over. You will lose your individuality and will try to fine tune yourself to meet others expectation and the day you think you have or you are very near meeting their expectation they (the society )will have some more expectations and the cycle will continue and its very difficult to come out of it.

I remember one of the Miya Fuski stories, I have read during my school days. Story goes like this

“Miya Fuski, a very wise man, was having a donkey, it was very lazy. One fine day miya decides to visit one of his relatives, living in some far place. He took his donkey and started his journey. After covering some distance, donkey refused to go any further. Miya Fuski was intelligent and he quickly thought of a solution. He knew that his donkey likes carrot very much so he took one long stick, hung a carrot on one end with long thread and sat on the donkey with other end, of the stick, in his hand, holding it in front of donkey. then asked his donkey to get the carrot and free himself . that’s it, donkey started moving forward to get that carrot but he couldn’t get it and eventually miya reached his destination.”

I didn’t understand the moral of the story at that time and laughed at the foolishness of the donkey. But now, when I think of this story again I see a great meaning in it. With little exception, we all are running, throughout our life, to get the carrot called success and the carrot is being held, in front of us, by someone else.