Friday, December 13, 2013

Redefining Success




“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”
― Bob Dylan

For long,our perception of success has been defined by what society terms as "high achievers". Success has been regularly been labeled with materialistic gains, accolades and of course our belief that the person has achieved a seemingly difficult task. Confident men and women, living a life of extravagance, flaunting their wealth and achievements as a symbolic mean of leading a life that is successful.

I am all for excellence, I am all for achieving high goals, without which human life would not have evolved for better.  Yet recently when someone's 15 year old committed suicide, because of failing grades, it broke my heart. 

Success is not just reaching your goal, but how well you cope with downfalls, and setbacks too. Each of us have some impediments that are blocking our way to lead a happy and fulfilled life. Success  for me is recognizing those blockages  and working our way either by removing them or working around it. 

We need to teach kids not only to value  excellence, but also the art for living life to the fullest. Learning to deal with setbacks, failures, is part of leading a successful life. It is not what happens to you that defines your character, but how you react to it.  Having grown up in an environment where success was etched out in very specific terms,  where your whole identity was defined in numbers , marks,or money, I still struggle to label my  life as successful.

Life is beautiful, life itself is an opportunity. A successful life is one that has learnt the joy of giving,loving  and thanking.Smile in the face of  life, laugh with it, feel the pain of fellow beings, share your passion and above all be true to yourself. A heart that can hope in despair situations, eyes that can see the silver lining in the clouds, and the  mind that is not ready to give up dreaming constitutes a successful life.

Add colours to your life, teach the kids that life is more than numbers, that success and failures are relative. Gift them the  key to living a complete life.





 

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