Success. Happiness. Two elusive goals – perplexing and confusing. Does success lead to happiness or does being happy bring about success?
In most of our lives success is as eluding as the definition of it. If definition of success were to be happy, the two goals will be in much congruence. We associate success with accomplishing, achieving, and getting there, while happiness is a function of contentment, satisfaction and being here and now. We are touched by happiness on our journey to success because the sense of achieving makes it desirable to stay with the accomplishment (the here and now) until discontentment seeps in again and we set out yet again on the journey of accomplishment.
Hence pursuit of success gives glimpses of happiness with an illusory hope that somehow we will be able to hold on to the happiness that we have experienced on the way. The momentary taste of happiness makes success addictive. The more we succeed, the more moments we find in our life with which we want to stick and stay (here and now), and more we continue to seek achievements.
But in pursuits of goals, contentment and satisfaction continue to evade us and hence none of our happy moments last forever. And hence the need to accomplish more, achieve more, so that – if only in brief fleeting moments – we can have a glimpse of contentment, satisfaction, of the here and now – all of which, if put together, is termed happiness.
Many of us wonder if we could ever achieve success if we were content. The way we define success, it sure goes to say the answer is probably no. Happiness – if set as a goal – becomes unattainable. Goals create a distance between what is and what we would like it to be. If happiness is contentment, then this distance is the death of happiness.
So does that mean that success and happiness are mutually exclusive for the most part? Does this mean that goals make us unhappy? Does this mean that a happy society cannot achieve? If we associate contentment with non-action, then yes.
However, contentment and non-action are not synonymous. Even though contentment accepts things the way they are, it does not rule out the need for change. It simply acknowledges and accepts the present situation along with its possible discontent. It also acknowledges the need for action, where necessary. What differentiates contentment from ambition and frustration is not the lack of action but the absence of impatience. Contentment is patience. Contentment is perseverance. It is willing to try endlessly in a chosen direction without ever being at war with its current situation.
Underlying all pursuits of success is a desire for happiness. Happiness as an end is non-attainable. Happiness as a means is already available. If we are not happy in our pursuits, we will inevitably find our ends to be lonely, hollow and meaningless as well.
