Success

Everyone who has become successful in their life has endured a long stretch of struggle; stressful days and sleepless nights, the tough rides against the forces of unseen gravity. The irony of the story is in the fact that the struggle is never in the distant past, and more often illustrated in present continuous; a fiction in the making, and what appears in front as the climax is but just a pause between chapters with little space in time before the next is begun.

The exhaustive struggle continues with an end never in sight.

And is it worth?

It all depends whom you ask, and when.

Robert Edwards - the British scientist whose pioneering research with his colleague led to the birth of the world's first 'test-tube baby' in 1978, won the Nobel Prize for medicine. That indeed is a great recognition to what must have been a very challenging and time consuming work they did in their prime-time as scientiests. They must have cherished dreams in the pursuit of making this breakthrough happen. And towards the end, his colleague Patrick Steptoe didn't live long enough to receive this news of recognition. And Robert Edwards is reported to be too ill to even make a comment on this recognition, let alone break a bottle of champaigne with his living colleagues and friends and families to celebrate the success.

"Begin With The End in Mind" is one of the 7 Habits of Highly Effecitive People. Perhaps to be seen as noble and modest, one might argue that winning a Nobel Prize was never the 'end' these scientists visualized but the achievement in the field they worked. Yet, I would have liked to think of it as hypocritic that they never dreamed of a global recognition for what they would have realized from the beginning as a breakthrough achievement in human science.

Success. Everyone is in pursuit of success. But is success that one is unable to celebrate worth pursuing?

My thoughts stand a chance to be influenced by this moment's situation while writing this, and perhaps might change when I am at the height of motivation! But for now, I believe, success is something that one must be able to celebrate, cheer, and run with like a boy with his toy!

Shahir
05th October 2010