We all have heard stories of people who got success later in their lives.
But what does that word “later” even mean?
Is there a predefined age to be successful?
What do you think?
I believe these limits are set by the society in which we live. Wherever you live currently the accepted age of success is between 20s and 30s. Do you agree?
But before we decide the correct age of becoming successful, we have to look at what the word success itself means.
There are more than a billion people living in this world in various parts of different countries. Do you think success means the same to every one of them? No. To each one of those people the word success means different things. But if we think it over, the most widely accepted signal across different societies would be being financially wel-off. Meaning, you don’t need to worry about your financial situation anymore. If you have that then you might be considered successful in your society.
This ofcourse is not universally applicable as I mentioned above. The parameters of success vary for everyone but generally if you have money you are considered successful.
Taking that definition into account, what age you think would be appropriate to be considered a success?
Again, as I said above the age between 20s and 30s is considered the correct age to be successful. Right after you come out of a college to prove yourself to the world. You get around 10 years after your college to prove your worth to your parents, and people around you. If you can’t do that in that timeframe, you are considered a failure.
But what this world forgets is that most people don’t figure out their lives right after they get out of college. This world will never take into account your efforts, only the outcome matters to it. If you can’t deliver the results you would be a failure in its eyes.
Even your parents will consider you a failure after a certain age because they live in the same society. Societal pressure gets to them also. They start to feel the weight of their own expectations mixed with expectations of the society around them. It’s hard then to support your children when you have to answer to people around you.
Society celebrates early achievers, over achievers and over glorifies their achievements. That puts more pressure on all of us to achieve success early in our lives. What if one doesn’t do that? He or she is bound to get depressed.
There is no respite for people like that in this world who have nothing to show for their efforts, or just didn’t get the right guidance at the right time in their lives.
Sometimes I think the reason why people become successful is not known to the people who become successful. So why do we attach a particular age to success in our society?
These implicit expectations of our society costs us our happiness.
We as adults are constantly worried about success all the time. We forget to observe life around us. We forget to live our lives only focused on one word “success”.
And, if we don’t get it by a certain age, there is no other way provided by the society to deal with that scenario. We are doomed forever to listen to sarcastic commentary of our parents, and our relatives.
This is pathetic state of affairs.
We need to lift people up, and not judge them by their material gains. But we do in this world.
And that is why this world is unhappy on average.
We are the most unhappy generation of the earth. Inspite of all the gains in every field, we went downhill on happiness, joy, and inner peace.
It’s all about success now.
This is my blog, where I write daily about life. This is day 70.