I Bought An Expensive Car… I’m Finally Successful!
Everyone preaches jargon on ‘how to be successful’ and blah blah (myself included).
Before that let’s talk about a much deeper topic today.
What is success?
Photo courtesy: Mats LindhLet’s define what constitutes ‘success’ in today’s generation:
1) Owning several high-tech gadgets including a SmartPhone, SmartTablet, SmartTV, SmartFridge, SmartOven, and basically any techy item that’s ‘Smart’.
2) Owning an expensive car. Or a Harley. No, owning a Maruti does not even come close.
3) Owning/Renting a magnificent house. Either a top notch apartment with top notch furnishing in a top notch locality of a top notch city. Or a huge mansion (if you’re into all that)
4) Millions in the bank.
5) A wardrobe consisting of all sorts of fabrics of the top fashion designers.
6) Lots of gold lying about the house. Earrings, necklaces, rings, nose-rings, toe-rings, crowns, or just plain gold bricks.
7) A high paying job in an MNC. Or your own wildly successful business with dozens/hundreds of employees.
You see where I’m going with this?
When fathers want their daughters to marry a stranger, they look for most of these checkpoints.
When you tell people about yourself, they consider these checkpoints for labelling you a success or not.
When YOU look at other people, you look at these checkpoints for labelling them a success or not.
Yes, I qualify on almost all these checkpoints and yes I just boasted about it, but that’s not why I wrote this post.
You see how everything is about money and material objects nowadays. I tend to think a bit differently though.
Let me ask you a question:
Would you consider an honest and hard-working primary school teacher who has been teaching little kids for three decades, a successful person? What if they have little to no savings, and don’t check on any of the checkpoints above?
Don’t know about you, but for me that’s a glorious success. Just imagine how many lives that person has helped shape over the years. For thousands of kids, that single teacher was an inspiration and a motivation to keep moving forward.
Do you know who was the primary school teacher of Mark Zuckerberg? If you follow the guy closely, you probably know his college professors and his key company people, but you don’t know anything about that one person who taught Mark how to read, write, spell, and probably left a deep impact on his entire life.
Let me ask you another question:
Would you consider Ranbir Kapoor a bigger success or E Sreedharan?
If you did a pan-India poll, guess who would come out on top? Most of you probably never even heard about E Sreedharan because he never sang or danced at the movies, or came up in TV or fashion magazines, and he definitely didn’t play cricket for India. So why would you care?
Well you should. Read this article when you have the time. And thank me later.
You came empty handed on the planet, and you’re going empty handed as well.
It don’t matter boy how much monies you be makin’. Only thing that matters is how many lives you change for the better and how internally happy you are doing so.
A successful life is about the experiences. The little moments. The ‘priceless’ moments with friends, family, significant other, and strangers.
The morning coffee. The one hour phone call with your girlfriend. The discussion with your parents on how naughty you were as a child, the visit to a new city/village/country, the dhaba da khana, the drops of rain on a hot summer afternoon, the warm heat of the sun on a menacingly cold day, listening to that song on the radio as it comes up unexpectedly, closing your eyes and not thinking anything for 5 minutes, and of course: butter chicken.
These, and a million little things make me happy. I let these define me and my success.
Success is internal. If you’re happy doing what you’re doing, you’re successful.
Don’t bother how other people define success. They don’t matter. Its your life. Live it your way. And stop letting material objects define who you are.
Let your ACTIONS define you. Not the car you drive.
