Some Sadhguru type gyaan on success, and if it gets measured as opposite of Schadenfreude—people unhappier for others’ happiness, than their own!
I think success equals: confidence. Which, in turn, is best gauged by feeling secure about oneself enough, to obsess less and less about how you feel about others
No, I’m not a Grammar Nazi. Also, those who are, seem to proudly worry much about usage of language, but hardly enough about history, to care for what German for Nazi stands for. That said, if I find you referring to the words, envy and jealousy, interchangeably, I tend to interject; it’s a pet peeve.
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Envy, in my head, means casually wishing for something that someone else has. Whereas jealousy is directed with fuller force at someone with something that, you believe, you deserved more—also a consequent fear of losing what you already have. It’s real. Which is why there are jealous, and not envious, lovers.
You can be envious of Mukesh Ambani’s wealth. Hardly jealous. The lack of his Antilia adds nothing to your bank account. To be fair, you can hardly be envious of Ambani either. For, envy, like empathy, is usually experienced among equals.
Suresh is more likely pained by pure envy from a middleclass classmate from school, who turned out to be the successful Mukesh! What follows, you’ll notice, from Mukesh’s former classmates, are loose talk about what a loser he used to be: “Used to be right there in my house, borrowing money, doing nothing…”
As if anyone ever air-dropped to the proverbial top. Everybody was a nobody, doing nothing, as a child, or incrementally moving up as an adult, by fluke or crook. Deal with it. The issue with Suresh and the conventional idea of success is it’s inevitably measured against others.
The closer, the worse. Fake proximity derived from social media making it infinitely worse still. Since nobody is as happy and happening as their public self on Facebook/Instagram, nor as accomplished as on LinkedIn—just as nobody can potentially be as round-the-clock angry as they appear on Twitter.
By himself, Suresh is better than fine, too. Only that he’s left to others, where his personal measure of success seems the opposite of Schadenfreude—the more helpful German word for deriving happiness from people’s miseries. In which case, Suresh seems unhappier by other people’s perceptible happiness, than his own.
Which is also success, lensed by a ‘scarcity mindset’, with natural envy often getting interchanged with unnatural jealousy. As if a peer doing better at anything, takes away anything from you. Obviously not, no?
Strangely, Suresh should only feel proud of his friend. He is more likely to be invited to Mukesh’s dhokla party, than if he didn’t know him at all!
Unless they were actively vying for the same position/job. Over there, it appears, jealousy’s fair. But that’s also looking at success as a hierarchical, vertical notion, whereas the sum of accomplishments—social, familial, personal, professional—add up horizontally, making a lot of us equal, while it isn’t so apparent.
This is deeply grounding. Fellow travellers, the closer and longer you’ve known them, help establish that, in fact. You’re mentally screwed, if they think you’re “successful”, no matter what you’ve done.
So how exactly do you define success? I ask this because my friends and I talk about it a lot. We wish strangers did the same. I’m sure, through social conditioning, you’ve obsessed over it all your life. No matter what your age. The fact is, success, like joy or sex, is inescapable. Everybody finds some, whether or not they show off is another matter.
So, what is it? Money? That, like good health, appears paramount, only when you’re in desperate need of it. Most, after a certain income bracket, aren’t. No end to greed, of course.
Thereafter, is it power? For which, the general notion is you ought to get your head, heart and hands dirty, in order to obtain it. And that it can be as easily snatched away by schematic trickery, instead of merely the competitors’ luck + talent.
The latter two, besides farming, is more honestly embodied only in sports, where you run as fast as you can, on your own track, to win; rather than looking to trip those parallel to you. Is success a measure of public validation for personal talents then? Where someone will always garner greater personal fame than you do. And be more talented, always.
Is that dispiriting, while you stick to perseverance over perfection; time/energy spent, over inherent gift? Do you stop playing cricket, because Sachin already exists? Can you also merrily quit playing cricket, with professional ambitions, and start looking for other things to do, knowing that it takes a Sachin to make it, and there are only 11 players in a national team? In most other spheres, there is inevitably greater space for all.
Would love to know about you, here’s what I think success equals: confidence. Which, in turn, is best gauged by feeling secure about oneself enough, to obsess less and less about how you feel about others, or others feel about you. Let alone perennially hoping to impress.
The others are too busy feeling/thinking about themselves, all the time. We forget that, foremost. Can the success of all that I’ve written above then be judged by how many will read/like/share this? No. That I really wanted to write it, and did?
Yes.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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