Ambition and Success

How can one define ambition?

How do we measure success?

From what I have seen in the Indian context at least, ambition and goals are built by parents, peers and society. For example it was always certain that the students with higher percentages in the tenth board exams would opt for Science followed by Commerce and Arts.

Doesn't India need good students in commerce and arts, I wondered.

Then almost all students in the Maths-Science section wanted to appear for IIT, the lesser ones for the state entrance exams, and become engineers.

The higher ranked ones took Computer Science and Electronics, then Mechanical and Electrical and finally Civil and the other branches. It almost seemed as if the latter branches were "bad" branches, people never thought who would build bridges if not Civil engineers. '

I have never seen an engineering entrance exam topper taking Civil, Mechanical or Architecture out of sheer passion.

Then finally almost all of them end up in software. Mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, ceramic, plastic...all engineers write obscure code in multinational software companies.

Everyone keeps slogging like we did for the tenth board percentage, the engineering entrance rank, percentages, jobs without stopping for once to decide as to what was our ambition.

Did we ever had an ambition in the first place?

Even more tricky is 'success'.

Ok now we are into a profession, we get married, have kids, own cars and houses and strive hard to grow in our professions.

However who is a successful person?

A CEO at 35 with a divorced wife because he could not give her time? Someone who is unanimously believed to be a rogue and does not have many friends?

Or a business tycoon worth millions with a son who is heavily into drugs and a daughter who is seeing a psychologist because she feels lonely and left alone?

What is the measure of success? Money alone?

Well one might argue that money and overall wealth is the only tangible measure of success in the real world. But then is everything in the world tangible? Is success tangible? Or is it that the non tangible things are actually the decisive factors for success?

In my opinion there are two kinds of successes.

One is the success in the eyes of the world. The rank in the entrance exam, the percentage in engineering, the pay packet and designation.

The other is the success in the eyes of oneself which may or may not include parts of the first success.

The problem with the first kind of success is that you are governed by the rules of the world to be happy and content. You are successful only if you stand up to the collective definition of success by the inhabitants of the society you live in.

The second kind of success is in the mind. You decide your goals and aspirations and decide for yourself whether you were successful in achieving them.

For me success has to be journey, a well rounded journey, where the various aspects of human life are given due weightage. Aspects like personal, professional, social, spiritual, passions et al.

To be successful for me means to be successful in all these important aspects of life. Otherwise it would be like scoring 90+ in two subjects and less than 10 in three others. That gives one an overall rank of a failure.

For enjoying the second kind of success we need to be able to set our own specific goals and ambitions first with as much detachment as possible from outward pressures.

Sadly many of us are not able to form that in the first place!

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God plays video games!

It seems that God or whoever runs this imperfect world is very fond of playing video games with us. I remember those days when I was hopelessly fond of playing Super Mario bros, Contra or Spartan X.

So God puts all of us in different video games where each one of us is a protagonist.You would strive hard, jump over obstacles, kill enemies, swim through water with a reverse current, win over castles and forts and suddenly when you are just about to reach your a new castle the entire rules of the game would be changed.

Then you would have new challenges, new weapons, friends(and enemies) and new castles to be won. And one fine day when perhaps you would be in pursuit of yet another castle he would suddenly turn the main switch off like my dad used to do sometimes!

GAME OVER!!

All dreams, aspirations, loved ones, struggles, responsibilities, joys and pain over in a whiff, like Mario used to vanish in the black and white TV screen.

Now don't get me wrong. No I am not a pessimist. Just being practical and sort of...well, philosophical!

Actually I wanted to live a life that would not end when I am medically dead.

I am very fond of Kishore Kumar and Rafi. They would always live with their melody and versatility and would keep inspiring generation after generation.

Kids still read stories of Dickens and Tolstoy. Dhirubhai Ambani lives on with Reliance(ok the two companies of his sons) even though he is dead.

I have always been inspired by these people and wanted to live a life that would be creative, would add value to this world in the real sense and wanted to create things that would not end with me!

Since as of now I seem to be completely sucked into a run of the mill and routine life, I decided to use the internet to share my feelings with the world and in the process create something good in my small way that would still be there after God says, "Game Over!" :-)

Finally started a blog...

Blog created... Feeling too sleepy to write anything else!