Failure of the Successful Person

Azim Hashim Premji (b. 1945) is among the biggest industrialists in the world. He is considered to be a super-achiever. He once remarked that the most interesting thing about life is that when you begin to understand it, it gets closer to getting over.

          Many successful people have expressed similar views about life. The truth is that while a person’s lifespan here is limited, his desires are unlimited. When he arrives at the age of maturity, he encounters various sorts of experiences—negative and positive. Passing through various stages of learning, he arrives on a plane where he feels that he can now move towards his destination in a better way. But at that very moment he begins to feel that he has become old and that the time of his death is near.

Arriving at this stage, a person’s conviction turns into frustration. He feels that he is dying without having reached his final destination. The noted poet Rabindranath Tagore expressed this feeling in these words: “I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”

Many people begin life with great enthusiasm but then die in utter frustration. There is only one reason for this tragedy—and that is, seeking to obtain in this temporary, ephemeral world what can be obtained only in the world of the Hereafter.

To save oneself from this tragedy, very early on in life one should learn what the Creator’s creation plan is. In this world, true success is decreed only for that person who leads his life in accordance with this plan.