True Success

True success comprise basically of two things, in varied proportions. 

1. What we want?

2. What others want from us?

The first is very important because it defines the criteria of our happiness. A person not doing what he wants or not achieving his own desired goal is never able to be at peace with himself. Such a person will, at best, be sad and disappointed, and at worst melancholic and depressed. To a person who fails the first question the whole world's acclaim seems useless. An example of such comes to my mind- 'Michael Jackson'. If there was one man who had it all, it was him. But, was it enough? He is considered one of the greatest music creators of this era by almost everyone and yet, what we most remember him in his later period was for child molestation, plastic surgery and weird things like changing his religion etc.

What happened? I am guessing the answer to the first question came out wrong for him. I read some obituary of his by another famous man and he said that the problem with Michael Jackson was that though the whole world loved him, he hated himself. He despised being black and thus ensued the plastic surgeries and the fake-falling noses. I do not know whether it is true and I guess no one besides him knows it either. My speculation though is this only. He was not happy and did not believe himself to be truly successful.

A person can not be truly successful unless he is successful in his own life. It is a necessary condition, if I may say so. What makes it not sufficient is the presence of psychopaths, sociopaths and really evil people in this world. After all their beliefs are destructive to the world and their vision of success is in itself skewed. To check the inclusion of these kinds I would say that the question two becomes a necessity. Of course, it does not have the same weight as the first question but to exclude the Hitlers and Bin Ladens of the world the people who are successful in the eyes of the people matters as well.

In conclusion, I would say that any person who went making the world a better place and himself or herself satisfied is a truly successful person. He could be an old man breathing his last breath in a hospital somewhere with his whole family outside holding their breath or a teenager with his girlfriend, in love, dreaming a life full of hope and happiness. A mother with a new born child is as truly successful as a mother seeing her child getting his college degree, all proud and teary. A women just getting a promotion and believing that she holds the baton of whole womanhood is as truly successful as a man fighting real hard to provide for his family and winning at last. They are all truly successful if they are all truly happy.