People always ask me what I want to do with my life. My response: to be successful. However, there are a million ways to measure success and it was this thought that captured my attention for the better half of the gym session. I naturally came up with the most obvious answer of a million dollars.
But what is success and how do we measure it? Would a person be consider more successful if they won a million dollars through a lottery than another person who earnt a million dollars working their way up the corporate ladder? Or the person who was bequeathed a million dollars compared to someone who married for and then murdered for money? Or the multi-millionaire and the billionaire, both having more money than one spends in a life. Who is more successful? It is quite a slippery slope argument where there are multiple gradients of success.
Furthermore, can success be measured as notoriety or public awareness? Examining politicians and celebrities; is the person with the most television/magazine/newspaper exposure the most successful. Or perhaps the one that orchestrates the greatest controversies, a la demise of a political leader or the sexual exploits of a morals/family-oriented campaingner. And what yardstick do we use as a benchmark?
Ignoring materiality and greed and all of its supposedly evil forms that propagate consumption of wealth, luxury, cuisine and leisure; can success be measured by the person who has found true love and happiness, as taught by all those old world stories, Disney and Sex in the City and parodied in Seinfield and Desperate Housewives? Or perhaps the sadist who has managed to capture a foreigner and hold them hostage, eliciting feelings of terrorism and fear?
Success, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. However, venturing onto the SMH website, I came across an article that places an universal definition of success (available here): immortalisation by Madame Tussauds as a wax figure. And who has achieved this success? Politicians, celebrities, great thinkers and shakers of their contemporaries and now, joining the coveted list; Paris Hilton.
An inspiration to those who have an aspiration for success.
posted by tykang @ 5/03/2005 12:49:00 PM
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