Success and failure

Over the last few months, I have been extolling the merits of thinking about ourselves as businesses; about how the theories of business can be massaged into theories of life and how many of the opportunities and risks that businesses have to manage are similar to what we too face in life. But ultimately, will the successes and failures of our lives be defined and measured the same way they are in businesses? What does it mean to succeed in life, and how does it compare with what it means to succeed in business?

When I left home in my early 20s to come to Australia for my tertiary studies, one of my aunts gave me a little plaque that read “Success is a journey, not a destination”. I always kept it on my desk and believed what it said. Or so I thought, because I don’t think I still have a clear idea of what 'success' means.

There can never be an objective definition of success for a number of reasons.

One is because success is a relative term. Getting shot and starving are not experiences we normally associate with ‘success’; but most of the highly decorated soldiers are hailed precisely for how they have faced such situations. Which leads us to another reason why there cannot be an objective definition of success, because it is often based on consensus. No one gets to call themselves ‘successful’ – there must be a social consensus on whether someone is considered ‘successful’ and on what grounds.

The philosopher Alain De Botton says: “Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first – the story of our quest for sexual love [which is well known and celebrated in art]… The second – the story of our quest for love from the world - [which] is a more secret and shameful tale.”

The conditions on which society will bestow love on us are vague and varying. War heroes, entrepreneurs and celebrities earn their ‘love’ from society in different ways and are ‘loved’ – however fleetingly - for very different reasons. Highlighting that insight, De Botton points out; “…if a future society were to offer love as a reward for accumulating small plastic disks, then it would not be long before such worthless items too assumed a central place in our most zealous aspirations and anxieties.”

Businesses have it relatively simpler, because they only have to worry about two kinds of success; the short-term and long-term varieties. Even then, those measures of success are misleading because they are based on the contentious assumption that ‘success’ can be defined at a given point in time or a specific period. That doesn’t make sense because ‘success’ and ‘failure’ are not permanent states a business or a person can achieve and preserve. As Rudyard Kipling warned, they are both ‘imposters’ that enter our lives and leave as they please.?

If we only consider the present moment, we are likely to find that each of us are both successful in some respects and failures in others. It is even truer in business; where short term profits can be bolstered or undermined using clever accounting. That is why Warren Buffett was able to make his wealth and reputation by looking beyond short-term profits or losses – and choosing to invest in companies that had unique products, great talent, robust processes and a culture of innovation and improvement.

Looking at our own life experiences can be equally useful. Each of us may recall moments when our own assessment of what seemed like a success or failure at the time, may have changed when we look back at them with what we have learnt since. If we have enough memories and the time and wisdom to learn from them, we may realize that sometimes we only succeeded because we were failures before, or couldn’t have failed unless we were successful to begin with. Some successes must necessarily be built on the pillars of failure. Most often however, we succeed and fail constantly in a perpetual cycle, all our lives.

I am not saying that the meaning of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ are transitory or that they have no meaning whatsoever. But rather that judging our relative success or failure require a more sophisticated approach than merely counting our wealth or comparing social media posts, cars, or houses.

What I have learnt from that little plaque and my limited life experience so far is that assessing our relative success or failure at any given point in life is a meaningless distraction at best. In a very rational sense, it is only with the finality that our deathbeds offer us (since we will surely die one day) that we would be able to recognize what our true successes and failures were and their magnitude; to be in a position to know for sure whether we succeeded or failed. Ironically, that would be too late for it to matter anyway.?

It is one thing to conclude that the purpose of life is to live it well. But what does that even mean? How can we think that through and understand - as impossible as it may sound - what we can practically do to 'live well'?

Most of us have not had to grapple with such questions because our education was designed to integrate us into the economy - and not to seek answers to these great questions of life. That may be because being gainfully integrated into the economy can bring us wealth, fame, respect and admiration of others. It is unfortunate that most of what we learn and train for is focused on winning a superficial love or a sincere envy of the world. To be fair, being well integrated with the economy is very much complementary to the goal of living well, but it is woefully inadequate. It is possible to be considered 'successful' by people who barely know us without even meditating for 30 minutes in our entire lives about the virtues and character traits that foster deep and meaningful friendships, and how to discern between those who motivate us from those who manipulate us.

The ancient Greek philosophers knew this. So, they argued that to live well is to live in ‘Eudaimonia’. And great minds for over two millennia, have built upon ideas on how we can act purposefully and live meaningful lives. They may not all agree on the formula, but there is great consensus that virtue, character, truth and friendship are all essential companions in our journey. And 'success' is what we call each step we take towards that meaningful and purposeful ideal. Failure is what distracts and divert us. If Aristotle was into merchandising, he may have produced plaques like the one my aunt gave me, but with a slight modification that may have read “Success is to be found in each step we take towards Eudaimonia”.