When success is worse than failure. Kinchit Bihani
Some stories guide you forever. Some stories stay with you forever. What if a story does both?
Not the first time. Not the second time. I can’t even say how many times I have asked myself this question, in the past. Maybe since the time I began to make meaningful sense of my life.
But, yes, I definitely want to ask it just one more time.
The question seems straightforward but it has kept me awake night after night. My answers have fluctuated like a pendulum, while my life became a vacuum.
I have always searched for an objective answer, all along, but failed. So, this time, I have decided to do something different: I will dig deeper not into my mind but in my soul.
So, I close my eyes and ask myself one more time, “Has my life been a success or a failure?”
The first thing I realize is that I need to define success or/and failure. I try to remember the definitions that I have read in books and heard from people (only a few talk or write about failure). However, soon I find out that no standard definition of success and failure exists.
So, I decide to make my own definition, but only end up asking myself more questions, “How can one measure success and failure? Can a successful person still be a failure? Is success relative or absolute? Is there a ceiling to success?”
I remember those times when everyone tagged me a failure. I motivated myself and proved them wrong. I shouted about my success to everyone, from friends to family members to strangers. But, now, I wonder why I wanted my success to be stamped by the same set of people that everyone (including myself) thinks has become insensitive, dark, brutal, intolerant and selfish.
Is that the reason why my success, that gratifies my mind, does not touch my soul and leaves an emptiness, loneliness in my heart?
The questions stir up too many worries in me. Why? I don’t know. What do I do? Whom to ask? Sadness begins to flow in my mind and heart. I feel like I am drowning, getting sucked into a sink hole. I need someone to hold my hand. Please! Please!
I am lucky. My parents sense my troubled soul and ask, “What worries you?”
“Oh…nothing.” I feel reluctant to tell them. I don’t know why. May be I don’t want to show that I am mentally weak. May be I don’t want to trouble them. May be they won’t understand me.
But they insist, until I open up myself to them, in layers, in pieces. They listen to me with patience and then take me up to the terrace, where they make me stand under a clear, moonless sky.
“Pick one thing in the sky that you want to become.”
Is this some kind of joke, I think.
But they are persistent. I reluctantly peer up towards the sky to randomly pick a star. But then take time to search for the brightest one, until I find one. Raising my index finger towards it, I say, “That one. Now what?”
“That’s it. Nothing more. We will talk about it tomorrow.”
“What? This isn’t funny.” My face turns red-hot.
They stay silent, with a smile on their face, which only adds to my frustration.
The next day, at the break of dawn, my parents wake me up from my sleep, “Can you come to the terrace again?”
I feel like kicking myself, but control my emotions, and do what is expected of me.
On the terrace now, they ask me the same question, “Pick one thing in the sky that you want to become.”
I reluctantly rub my eyes to kick the sleep out, and see a clear sky, with the sun climbing up from the horizon. The sun’s light is all pervasive in the sky. Powerful and soothing at the same time. My star from last night is nowhere to be seen. It has gone, and gone with it is my illusion.
I fall silent but my soul speaks.
I realize what has gone wrong with me. I had read, seen and heard about stars, since my childhood. I also wanted to be a star like them like everyone does. However, in my quest for success, in my single-mindedness, to prove my worth to others, I had ventured too far away and ended up becoming a star of the night sky, distant and aloof from my loved ones, from society; stars whom everyone admires but whose shine hardly benefits anyone. I had become completely self-centred. The death of such stars is nothing but a spectacular event. When I actually wanted was to become a star, like the sun, whose presence and absence matters to everyone; someone who can give life and happiness to others too.
My parents break my chain of thoughts with one more piece of advice.
“Remember, every problem has an answer. If you can not find the answer yourself, your problem is then to find that one person who can find the answer for you.”
I only recommend my book (below) to Earthlings who worry about the state of the world we live in and want to make a difference.
