What is Succes?

Success means different things to different people. Universally, success is defined by money, power and fame. When you get to the top, you are considered a success, irrespective of how you got there or the fact that you climbed the wrong ladder.

Most of us have not taken time out to make out our personal definition of success. We simply flow with the general conception and media propaganda. More often than not, we have no clue as to what we are after. Time after time, people we consider a success get to the zenith and wander what next. They slide into depression and in go into a lot of funny things, drugs, women, perverse lifestyle, exotic beliefs and all the works.

Some manage to hang on regardless. Some call off the sheer hypocrisy, commit suicide and call it a day. On the outside, they are the epitome of success and have it all. On the inside, they are dying slowly, crying for help. Their cries get drowned in the noise of adulation and star worship. Nobody would have believed them anyhow. They have it all.

If you are born a marathoner, you can never be fulfilled no matter how many Olympic hundred meters gold medals you win or world records you hold. Something will always be missing. You can never succeed at being someone else. Externally you can, but internally, sadly no. in the context of our existence on this planet, success is mission accomplished, being who you were born to be, finishing what you came to this planet to accomplish. There is no higher attainment than this under the sun.

This reminds me of a World War II film I watched way back in college. I have not been able to recall what the title was, but the last scene has stuck in my brain all these years.

The battlefield was North Africa. Germany’s General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps was locked in a battle for supremacy with America’s General Montgomery’s Third Army. It was an armored tank affair. General Montgomery needed to blast through Rommel’s ring of steel to get to Libya. He had to face the dreaded German panzers, their top of the range armored tanks. Erwin Rommel was not nicknamed the desert fox for fun. The battles were fierce. The Americans were outnumbered, outclassed and outgunned. They pushed forward regardless. By sheer guts and ingenuity, the Americans ran a ring round the German panzers, boxed them in and turned the German position into a firing range.

I still remember the last scene as if it was yesterday. The tired but victorious American Colonel stood on his tank and surveyed the smoking ruins of panzers through his field binoculars. As he jumped down, he beckoned on his signals man and dictated a short message:

Report back to headquarters,
that the Germans have abandoned their tanks,
and walked back to Germany

The mission was to knock out the panzers and create a corridor for the advance on Libya. They did it. Mission accomplished. End of story…