SUCCESSFUL LIFE, UNSUCCESSFUL END
Lessons from Super Achievers
THERE was a man in a western country who believed that wealth could give him all the happiness he desired. He accumulated a huge amount of wealth. He built a palatial house for himself. He accumulated all kinds of comforts and luxuries around him but, even then, he failed to find real happiness. Then he grew old and became weak and bed-ridden. In his last days, he wrote these words in his diary:
Now, I am 90 plus and bedridden. My story can be summed up in these two words—successful life, unsuccessful end.
This is the story of all those people who are known as achievers or super-achievers. Achievers of great successes, they find little happiness in this world. Finally, they are destined to leave the world in frustration. This is so common that very few people are exceptions to this rule. One of these super-achievers in India is the celebrated singer Lata Mangeshkar. She has now turned 80 and has acquired everything in life that worldly people aspire to—wealth, popularity, fame, great honour, etc. She has had the opportunity to shop at international malls, possess plenty of jewellery and has all that a person could desire. But, having reached this stage of her life, she feels she has not found what she wanted in life. The English daily, The Times of India (New Delhi), September 30, 2007 published an interview with Sudheshna Chatterjee, in which we learn that Lata Mangeshkar, despite all apparent successes, lives in a state of dejection. This interview was published in the supplement, Times Life under this heading: “My dreams have never got fulfilled.”
The interviewer asked Lata Mangeshkar what her answer would be if God asked her what was her greatest desire at this last stage in her life. Without any hesitation, she replied, “I would like to leave this world.”
The unsuccessful stories of successful people have a great lesson for every one. The lesson is that people devote their entire lives to achieving a life of happiness, without realizing that they have been pursuing something which was not achievable at all in this world. Having desires, but not having a life of fulfillment of these desires points towards a great reality. The reality is that whatever man wants to achieve in the temporary pre-death period, the Creator of the universe has placed it in the eternal post-death period.
In such a situation wisdom lies in making ourselves deserving of success in the world Hereafter. For this, man should devote himself to the preparation of the eternal life of the Hereafter which will come after this temporary period on earth. He should not endeavour to fulfill his desires in this world itself.
The reality is that whatever man wants to achieve in the temporary pre-death period, the Creator of the universe has placed it in the eternal post-death period.
Man is an idealist by birth but, in the present world, everything is less than ideal. This is the actual reason for a life of tension. Whatever man achieves—having exerted himself to the full—is always less than his desired standard. Therefore, he becomes stressed.
Therefore, having a foreknowledge of the place of the fulfillment of one’s desires is a matter of necessity. One who has this foreknowledge will plan his actions realistically and will then be able to reach his destination. Such a person will never live in a state of tension.
Faith and Reason
It is reason which transforms
blind faith into a matter of
intellectual choice.