Success is such a Delusion...

                Yeah, success is such a delusion. Before you click or get angry and stop reading this post…stop for a moment and tell me "what is success?"

I asked my divas (primary school graduates) the same question. Here are some of their answers:

Success is : having what you want, being the best in all you do, having a good paying job, good friends and a stable family, being better than people you schooled with, having enough money to see you into retirement, being in Forbes list like Oprah and Bill Gates.

So, think back again did you attribute any of what they said to success? Do any of their opinions feature anywhere in your definition of success? If they do, well….you are not wrong. I thanked my divas for their remarks and also stated that they are not wrong. One of them immediately raised her hand and asked, "So if we are all right, why did you ask the question?"

I responded "success is such a delusion." They had got me. All their answers were right, but the best of them was "being better than people." Success is seen by people as always being a step ahead. Always being the best, and having some people if not most people inferior to you. Success is a competition where the ego rules. If the ego is happy and at peace then you are successful.  So is this what success is? How much money must you have in the bank in order to be successful? If a millionaire in Kenya is seen as successful, while a millionaire in France is considered middle-class or seen as struggling to make it, what does this say about success? Must success have levels that each person needs to go through? From the 16^th Century success has been deemed material. Success is measured by how much stuff you have that people can see. Even in tradition the large number of wives, children and cattle all of these are material.

So why do I insist that success is a delusion? Well, the success we are made to seek is a delusion and that's why no matter how much money, cars, friends, clothes, food, houses or properties you have you cannot fully claim to be happy. What you have is tangible, visible and envied by someone-and chances of it being stolen from you or being cheated out of it makes you lack sleep.

We have been fooled into believing that we can become successful. We seek to dwell in that state, not to simply experience it and get moving. Becoming something means dedicating your whole being, time and understanding and constantly radiating the same energy. When you become you live in that state-it intertwines with your personality as such being innate. We can only be successful. This is at a certain point in time. A moment only. A good job, house, friends, lots of money, family are only by-products of success. By products do not last a lifetime….so what is success to you? Is it something you seek to become or do you look forward to living it in a certain moment. I am successful in that I have typed this article from the beginning to the end without losing my trend of thought. You are successful in reading it thus far.

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How can one change the world if one identifies oneself with everybody?