"Success is not about buying adequate number of Lottery tickets & Failure is a series of Mistakes "
Many people have quoted success in numerous ways…In words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Success is To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To give of one's self; To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - This is to have succeeded.
Was Emerson able to summarize all that we mean by “Success”? Or for that matter who has?? Bhaskar Borah a young corporate executive from a well-known MNC says “God did not define success to make our lives interesting”. If that is true then let’s agree that success is always contextual. There are no ‘absolutes’ when it comes to success, in other words one man’s fruit could be other’s poison.
Now let’s delve on other phrase ‘buying adequate number of lottery tickets’. As we understand buying lottery tickets is equivalent for covering one’s chances or bases on the journey to success. A high number of lottery tickets buying customer reflects a risk averse behavior and minimizes chances of failure. This again boils down to who will decide what’s “adequate” for anyone rather than the individual him/herself. Doesn’t everyone give the best shot for the ‘desired success’ within the circumstances that are prevailing? Circumstances that one is in and the choices that one makes is a vicious circle. We get into certain circumstances because of the certain choices and then make choices which lead us to specific circumstances.
So, Success definitely requires buying lottery tickets. But as we know, ‘There are no free lunches” the price of buying lottery tickets is any or all of these-time, money & energy. But, is that all what it takes for success? One buys lottery tickets spending time, money, energy and perhaps something more and success dawns upon his/her world?? Guess not, don’t we all know of someone or the other that despite paying the “price” and still been deprived of success? The ingredient still missing for success to shine are the transcendental forces or what we normally refer to as destiny. Robert Boyle’s Academy winning picture of 2008 “Slumdog Millionaire” was a about a child from slums in Mumbai winning 20 million rupees in a tv game show. The film’s tagline was as “It’s all written”. As someone said “Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either - your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.
Having got the interpretations, here is what the discussion is about: Is Success about objective, and everything else is secondary; or, do the efforts engaged in achieving the objective have a prominent role. Going for the former, a school of thought would be that success, by its basic connotation means achieving the objective against a certain context: a set of circumstances and defined time frame. In a marathon, how fast you ran did not differentiate you unless you were the one to finish the race, and ahead of others. If a slow moving tortoise is able to finish ahead of rabbit, we at the end of the day, have tortoise as the winner. Similarly, by putting a bet against all the possible directions, if I am able to catch the one which takes me to the goal, is that any less worthwhile than someone else’s success who put lesser number of bets?
Well, it does, so says the other school of thought. They say, success is not just about achieving the objective. The very meaning of success, according to this view, is picking the winning bet. This essentially means that you are picking it from a sizeable pool of potentially failing bets. Now, if you were to be given an opportunity to pick and check all of these bets, what is success quotient there? Where is the risk and reward of picking the winning bet? The very concept of success got diluted here. It just moved from a potential success-failure proposition to a mundane task of going through all the alternatives. Unless there is risk of failure, does success really completes its meaning?
How about some examples and intriguing questions? In generic meaning of success for a scientist, from the eyes of society at large, is John Nash a successful scientist? Is he more successful than Ramanujam? Nash wrote one paper and received Nobel Prize vs. Ramanujam worked through his life to come close to one. Is a B Grade movie maker who makes sure that every movie that he releases gives him 50% RoI successful? Is an A+ movie maker who comes out with one movie in 3 years with 25% chance of 1000% RoI more successful? Are they comparable in the first place?
How about taking help from the other part of the statement? Since Failure is largely perceived to be an exact opposite of Success, it may give us some way forward.
What is failure? First of all, we do have it in a specific context. Failure of someone could be decent level of success for someone else. As understood at the basic level, failure is referred as “not achieving the defined objective”. Do you call someone a failure the moment the first thing goes wrong? Doesn’t our own experience tell us that many a times such wrong-things are substantial learning experiences and game changers. In other words isn’t failure a stepping stone towards success. Guess, it is repeat of such mistakes. Not a one off recurrence. Rather, a series of them. But when do we know that a failure is conclusive? When is the “series of mistakes” complete? When an ant tries going up a hill and falls down umpteen number of times before finally conquering it, isn’t that a complete series of mistakes? Isn’t that failure, success defined in some other way ?
It takes many to fail for one to succeed. One Narayan Murthy has thousands of other entrepreneurs having tried and failed behind him. Doesn’t that mean that the very connotation of success, as we understand it, is defined by these failures. Well, that seems to indicate success and failures are just about perspectives. Would you spend the rest of your life in prison as a rich or famous or powerful man or a free man on the road as just anybody?
Well, we are still inclusive. Why are these two statements together in the title? Maybe they have an interrelation and complete each other. Or, maybe they are there just to tickle the intellectual nerves. Let’s reflect. While the former is conclusively inconclusive about the importance of process, the later is inclusively conclusive that process is important, in achieving the objective. (If that sounds like an oxymoron, it meant to say that in the later statement, it is sure that process is important, but we are still not definite how that gets defined. And when is the definition complete). The definite interrelation between the two is about the process vs. objective.
Essentially that translates into the eternal debate of destination vs. journey. What is more important? While the spiritual souls will jump on the simple conclusion that it’s the journey, haven’t we heard by lesser mortal, which definitely outnumber the “high sprits”, that destination is more important. Only when we move up in the hierarchy of needs you can even think of importance of subtler elements. And many of us pass over the world in achieving those small little objectives.
So has the whole discourse been started for the reader to contemplate and choose which category he/she falls into? Or is there propaganda to promote one over the other? Is there more to it than what appears on the face? Is there an attempt to change the way think? And change the people at large? So essentially a societal change.
Maybe yes, maybe no, but we definitely shall sum it all with….
“Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself. !!”
Now let’s delve on other phrase ‘buying adequate number of lottery tickets’. As we understand buying lottery tickets is equivalent for covering one’s chances or bases on the journey to success. A high number of lottery tickets buying customer reflects a risk averse behavior and minimizes chances of failure. This again boils down to who will decide what’s “adequate” for anyone rather than the individual him/herself. Doesn’t everyone give the best shot for the ‘desired success’ within the circumstances that are prevailing? Circumstances that one is in and the choices that one makes is a vicious circle. We get into certain circumstances because of the certain choices and then make choices which lead us to specific circumstances.
So, Success definitely requires buying lottery tickets. But as we know, ‘There are no free lunches” the price of buying lottery tickets is any or all of these-time, money & energy. But, is that all what it takes for success? One buys lottery tickets spending time, money, energy and perhaps something more and success dawns upon his/her world?? Guess not, don’t we all know of someone or the other that despite paying the “price” and still been deprived of success? The ingredient still missing for success to shine are the transcendental forces or what we normally refer to as destiny. Robert Boyle’s Academy winning picture of 2008 “Slumdog Millionaire” was a about a child from slums in Mumbai winning 20 million rupees in a tv game show. The film’s tagline was as “It’s all written”. As someone said “Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either - your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.
Having got the interpretations, here is what the discussion is about: Is Success about objective, and everything else is secondary; or, do the efforts engaged in achieving the objective have a prominent role. Going for the former, a school of thought would be that success, by its basic connotation means achieving the objective against a certain context: a set of circumstances and defined time frame. In a marathon, how fast you ran did not differentiate you unless you were the one to finish the race, and ahead of others. If a slow moving tortoise is able to finish ahead of rabbit, we at the end of the day, have tortoise as the winner. Similarly, by putting a bet against all the possible directions, if I am able to catch the one which takes me to the goal, is that any less worthwhile than someone else’s success who put lesser number of bets?
Well, it does, so says the other school of thought. They say, success is not just about achieving the objective. The very meaning of success, according to this view, is picking the winning bet. This essentially means that you are picking it from a sizeable pool of potentially failing bets. Now, if you were to be given an opportunity to pick and check all of these bets, what is success quotient there? Where is the risk and reward of picking the winning bet? The very concept of success got diluted here. It just moved from a potential success-failure proposition to a mundane task of going through all the alternatives. Unless there is risk of failure, does success really completes its meaning?
How about some examples and intriguing questions? In generic meaning of success for a scientist, from the eyes of society at large, is John Nash a successful scientist? Is he more successful than Ramanujam? Nash wrote one paper and received Nobel Prize vs. Ramanujam worked through his life to come close to one. Is a B Grade movie maker who makes sure that every movie that he releases gives him 50% RoI successful? Is an A+ movie maker who comes out with one movie in 3 years with 25% chance of 1000% RoI more successful? Are they comparable in the first place?
How about taking help from the other part of the statement? Since Failure is largely perceived to be an exact opposite of Success, it may give us some way forward.
What is failure? First of all, we do have it in a specific context. Failure of someone could be decent level of success for someone else. As understood at the basic level, failure is referred as “not achieving the defined objective”. Do you call someone a failure the moment the first thing goes wrong? Doesn’t our own experience tell us that many a times such wrong-things are substantial learning experiences and game changers. In other words isn’t failure a stepping stone towards success. Guess, it is repeat of such mistakes. Not a one off recurrence. Rather, a series of them. But when do we know that a failure is conclusive? When is the “series of mistakes” complete? When an ant tries going up a hill and falls down umpteen number of times before finally conquering it, isn’t that a complete series of mistakes? Isn’t that failure, success defined in some other way ?
It takes many to fail for one to succeed. One Narayan Murthy has thousands of other entrepreneurs having tried and failed behind him. Doesn’t that mean that the very connotation of success, as we understand it, is defined by these failures. Well, that seems to indicate success and failures are just about perspectives. Would you spend the rest of your life in prison as a rich or famous or powerful man or a free man on the road as just anybody?
Well, we are still inclusive. Why are these two statements together in the title? Maybe they have an interrelation and complete each other. Or, maybe they are there just to tickle the intellectual nerves. Let’s reflect. While the former is conclusively inconclusive about the importance of process, the later is inclusively conclusive that process is important, in achieving the objective. (If that sounds like an oxymoron, it meant to say that in the later statement, it is sure that process is important, but we are still not definite how that gets defined. And when is the definition complete). The definite interrelation between the two is about the process vs. objective.
Essentially that translates into the eternal debate of destination vs. journey. What is more important? While the spiritual souls will jump on the simple conclusion that it’s the journey, haven’t we heard by lesser mortal, which definitely outnumber the “high sprits”, that destination is more important. Only when we move up in the hierarchy of needs you can even think of importance of subtler elements. And many of us pass over the world in achieving those small little objectives.
So has the whole discourse been started for the reader to contemplate and choose which category he/she falls into? Or is there propaganda to promote one over the other? Is there more to it than what appears on the face? Is there an attempt to change the way think? And change the people at large? So essentially a societal change.
Maybe yes, maybe no, but we definitely shall sum it all with….
“Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself. !!”
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