We often make the mistake of treating
success as a single accomplishment or event, a light at the end of the tunnel.
It may be that we are wrong. It is actually a multidimensional construct- ok,
concept, if you want to be jargon-free.
What does that mean? In life, we go through
various stages. We are expected to study, work, marry, have kids, care for
aging parents, marry off kids, be grandparents if we live long enough, and have
successful careers. So that’s about half a dozen different things already. I
have not included relations with siblings or cousins or other relatives. If you
add these up, the list of things we do (at least most people do) is a pretty
long one.
Being a good parent may mean different
things from being a success at work. And
being a good employee is quite different from being a good husband (or wife).
Also, we may have preferences for certain roles, tasks out of the multiple ones
that we have to perform.
It may be essential therefore, not to put
too much pressure on oneself measuring only one aspect of yourself (or others) to the
exclusion of all the other dimensions. It is quite possible that your kid may
be bad at Maths or Science, but could be good at, and interested in say, arts
or physiotherapy. Good parenting needs to look at these aspects of a kid’s
personality and aptitude while counselling him on a path towards
self-sufficiency. Even for your own self, blind pursuit of a particular position
in an organisation may not be worthwhile, if all it does is cause frustration
in every other sphere of life.
It is important to feel worthy, no doubt,
but the measures of self-worth need not be blindly followed because someone
else set them. Rather, you could set them yourself, regardless of what the
world thinks. That may be the route for many of us to be “successful”.
