Men are bound by their desire to succeed in their missions that they had set forth to achieve their ultimate victory. For thousands of years, many wars had been fought from Asia through Europe to America. Many victors and losers had been created out of those wars, but what is success?
In the modern world, the criteria for success begin with a set of belief follow by the strong focus on that belief with high standard of mental strength and energy. Success lies not in the “win”, but the endurance in the “challenge” to the end. Jean Babtiste Henri Lacordaire once said, “Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness can do that”. Thus the success lies in the act of kindness to other living beings and things.
The spirit of Challenge is the success of the day. What is “challenge”? Is it an act to oppose for opposing sake? Challenge is an art of skilful creation and display of one’s individual talent in harmony with the intellectual assembly of thought for the external execution of actions.
The aim of the Challenge is not to defeat any one, but to participate in demonstration of one’s skills and talents with complete harmony and balance with one’s mind. In that completeness there is no excess and at the same times no deficiency. Ex-President of USA, Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are”. Life is not in the good cards that one holds, but in the manner of playing well with those cards that one has. “The tragedy of life is not that the man loses, but that he almost wins” said Heywood Brown.
To a wise man, life is only a festival in time. Participation is the aim in time, but winning in a competition is the satisfaction of the man’s ego. Buddha said, “To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.
Life is worthwhile if one is willing to learn from one’s own positive and negative experiences, i.e, learn from one’s mistakes in order for one to do things positively right. Success in life is in the willingness to learn from one’s mistakes as well from others. Human beings learn by observation, paying attention as good listeners to selective input, i.e., accept what one considers acceptable and put aside, but not discard all that one considers unreasonable.
Life is not worthwhile if one has not try on what one has learned. Try will make a difference. It is the “Try” that brings oneself to the next level of success. Without trying one will never know. Albert Einstein said, “I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts” and John F. Kennedy said, “There are risks and costs to a program. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
A man must strong and bold, but he must not be rude and a bully. He must be humble and express his kindness, but must not be weak and timid. He must be proud of his achievements, but he must not be arrogant. These are the ingredients of success. Success in life is not the acquisition of material wealth or one has achieved one’s goal in one’s mission, but the enjoyment of the experience gained and all that one has learned from one’s own mistakes during one’s participation in the challenges in one’s lifetime.
Dragon Ho
16th June 2009
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The success of Man is not that he can manage to overcome his fears or his fallacies, but rather he is willing to learn not to repeat his mistakes, and thus be able to improve and adapt!
ReplyDeleteDragon you have done well.