Success and Failure Don’t Matter!
I get obsessed with being successful as a person-of-knowledge and a creative.
Successful = having good money, prestige, etc.
And I understand this obsession — I didn’t finish college, I didn’t settle at a job, I didn’t go abroad — I did none of those things a normal youth from a developing country is supposed to do.
This is because, a decade ago I got bit by a bug — of knowing and creating. Ever since, I have been saying to myself and others that I will make it someday this way.
I am overdue. A good amount of time has passed. Yet, I haven’t been successful. Yes, there have been moments of glory here and there, but as a whole, success has been elusive. This means I have failed! I have been a failure!
Life feels like a boat in a lake. A boat I am supposed to row between the two ends of the lake — On one end is Success and on the other is Failure. I am headed towards the Success by default (I don’t know who taught me to do that) but my skills and the nature-of-things keep pushing me backward. Yet, I persist.
This is where I tend to ask myself questions: Why am I looking at this lake from only two dimensions? What if I went to the left? or to the right?
And then I look around and steer the boat towards the horizon I find most sublime. Suddenly I find that direction to be way more natural to my skill and character — with less adversity and obstacles. Although the boat doesn’t just float with ease, I find myself having immense courage to take everything head on. I start to get warm on the inside. I start to figure out the solutions. I stop feeling weak. It is as if I was always destined to go that way!
This is when I realize — Life isn’t about success and failure. Life is much more:
Life is about looking around. Life is about taking in the beautiful. Life is about being brave enough to head into territories others haven’t told you about.
In other words, Life is about exploration, experience and adventure.
The last decade for me has been tough. Really tough.
But I have never felt stronger and more secure than I have since heading into this direction.
I can see from here: The horizon towards which I am headed is so wide that Success and Failure exist in it like two small dots of stars in a night sky. This horizon has so much more. Life has so much more!
