Chasing Success
The pursuit of success is a place where wins and pressure grow side by side. It can steal your spark away, motivate you to work harder, or perhaps both. At this point, who isn’t chasing success? But what does success really mean? I think everyone has their own definition of what success looks like to them. Of course, I can’t speak for everyone, and I’m not in a place to say just how exhausting it can be, because I don’t think I’m quite there yet.
But from what I’ve seen, it’s a father working two jobs just to put food on the table for his family and provide a roof over their heads. He wakes in the early hours of dawn with no time for breakfast, but always time for coffee, perhaps just enough to wake him up before he makes his way to work. To him, it’s simply part of his daily routine, but to me, I see the tiredness in his eyes, the aches in his body from lifting heavy items, and the quiet exhaustion hidden behind his cheerful smile. Not a day goes by where he shows his hardships or dwells on the bad days. He goes through each day making sure he can provide for his family and see them happy. Perhaps his definition of success is his family.
A mother rarely speaks of chasing success, yet in many ways she is always within its reach. It is present in the quiet rhythm of her days, in the way she gives before she considers herself and in the way she continues even when no one notices the weight she carries. Her life is often measured in small, unseen moments, early mornings that begin before the world wakes up, and nights that end long after it falls asleep. Somewhere between exhaustion and devotion, she builds a life for others while setting pieces of her own aside. Perhaps success for her is not something she reaches for, but something she slowly becomes through everything she endures and everything she gives. And still, there is a question that lingers quietly beneath it all, what does success mean to a woman who has already given so much of herself to others? Maybe it is not in the pursuit at all, but in the meaning she finds within it.
It’s a man in his twenties doing everything in his power to stay afloat beneath the weight of endless workloads. He does his very best to hide his pain, the heavy weight resting on his shoulders. But once again, the eyes never lie. I don’t think there are words in the vocabulary that could soothe his tired soul, but I do hope my presence can ease his heart, even if only a little. He does not give up, for the life and future he wants to build and pursue; he keeps moving forward no matter how tiring it gets. Maybe that is the pursuit of success, sacrificing a part of your life in order to succeed? Although I hope you don’t lose yourself in the pursuit of it all.
So I find myself wondering again; what is success? if not the lives we build, the people we endure for, and the parts of ourselves we choose to keep or let go?
Perhaps, in the end success is not something we define clearly, but something we come to understand slowly through the lives we witness, and the weight we learn to recognise in silence.