SUCCESS IS A LOUSY TEACHER














“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people
into thinking they can’t lose.”
-       Bill Gates
-        

Many years ago – yes, when I was very young and untested – an elderly professor, who had experienced life far more than I had, gave me a hard lesson. He asked me, “What do you mean by ‘the lasting success’?

Obviously, my young and untested blood had made me coin that phrase – ‘the lasting success’…

That was the last time I used that phrase… The dressing down came to me quite early in life… to keep reminding me of that illusion called ‘Success’…

Ever since then, ‘Success’, to me – if at all anything – is a ‘fleeting moment’ of immense satisfaction and joy… Yes, a moment of fulfillment… but, one that comes with a ‘shelf life’… Momentary, fleeting… what the enlightened souls call – ‘Transient’!

Everything in life – every success story – comes with a shelf life. The so-called ‘Golden Period’ loses its shine with passage of time… The Fortune-500 list keeps rolling like the fortune wheel in a casino… The Super Stars of the silver screen come and go… The Miss. Universes and Miss. Worlds pale out into oblivion… The Greatest Empires fall… The Mightiest Monarchs lose their thrones… The most powerful political leaders and their parties simply fade away into oblivion…

And, yet, when victory comes our way – yes, when we are successful – it goes into our heads and intoxicate us into believing, that it’s going to last for ever and ever…

Forget!

In life, our defeats and failures are better teachers… The most valuable lesson they teach us, I think, is this: “Everything in life comes with a shelf life… There is nothing called ‘the lasting success’.”

Today, Mr. Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party have emerged clear winners… In fact, for the third time in a row. Before him, the Congress Party had achieved the same feat. In West Bengal, for decades, the Communist Party and Mr. Jyoti Basu ruled… Today, there are Ms. Mamata Banerjee and her Trinumul Congress in power. For decades, the Congress Party ruled at the Centre… Now, there is BJP headed by two strong men – Mr. Narendra Modi and Mr. Amit Shah… And, such is the familiar scene everywhere else in India and around the world…

The awareness, that we and our achievements are going to fade away, sooner or later, will help us grow spiritually… It helps us become better human beings. Therefore, when a person like Bill Gates says, “Success is a lousy teacher; it seduces smart people into thinking they can’t fail,”… yes, when he says that,  we should listen to him.

GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: Anil Bedi

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