What is success and what is failure? Is success an absolute or is it an idea we pursue? Because the moment you arrive there is always a point further ahead at which you have yet to arrive. In the chase of success we are faced with challenges and conflicts. Even when you have “arrived”, there is no
rest for you because now you want more and more. A mind that is constantly demanding ‘more’ is not an intelligent mind, it’s a mediocre, stupid mind because its demand for ‘more’ implies a constant struggle in terms of pattern which society has set for it.
What is contentment, what’s discontent? Discontent is desire for ‘more’, contentment is the cessation of that struggle; but you cannot be satisfied without understanding the whole process of the ‘more’, and why the mind demands it. If you fail an exam, you would perhaps take it again. But your performance don’t really reveal your true worth. Passing an exam is largely a feat of memory, or may be a matter of chance.But if don’t succeed even after striving to pass your exam, you keep at it. With most of us it’s the same process in every day life. While struggling to achieve something you have never paused to inquire if the way you are dealing with it is the right way. It’s only when you understand.
We are all afraid to fail, to make mistakes. To make a mistake is considered terrible because we’ll be critisized for it. The ideal of success is held up for us to follow success is always in terms of respectability. So we are always thinking in terms of success, in terms of ‘more’ and the ‘more’ is a relative ideal dependent on what prevailing social norms considered to be respectable. If you don’t live up to that societal ideal , you are likely to be called a failure. No one thinks this way. Didn’t a wise person say;” success is a relative term: there’s nothing absolute about it?” What we think of as success today might be thought as failure tomorrow. So treat both success failure with equanimity…