How success could actually cause depression
Success is more often associated with happiness, joy and our ultimate destination rather than beeing seen as a part of the journey. Success is one of those highly overvalued metrics in today’s world, which pretty much explains why everyone’s in the rat race to success.
From a very young age, we are always shown successful people and taught to be like them. How many times has anyone pointed out a person who failed in life and told you that he/she was a hero too? Sounds quite odd right? But when you look deep, you would realise that each and everyone of us are heroes in our own ways. We all work hard and struggle to achieve what we believe is right irrespective of how the world judges it. Each one of us have our own reasons and justifications for doing something, both good and bad! That’s why each of our paths is unique and exactly why judging others is unfair. Next time you meet a little kid, teach him/her that a hero is not really a successful person, but someone who fights hard for what he/she deeply believes in.
Coming back to our topic, our world is full of judgements, accusations and much lauding, a one-sided lauding. We celebrate the successful ones for many different reasons, but fail to appreciate the efforts of a failure. Success will not be so much significant without failures, in fact the failures are really what make success unique!
In the end of the day, we are all taught, in fact trained to associate success with happiness, greatness and a lot more surreal metrics. We are really made to imagine and believe that success is the goal of life, not a part of life. Eventually, we all want to taste success in life one day and we toil so hard for it. This is when we start losing our purpose in the pursuit of a mirage. We forget to enjoy the journey, to be compassionate, to be empathetic and kind, because there can be only one successful person and you start seeing everyone around you as your competitors!
But what really happens when you achieve that coveted success? Is it really your destination? Is it the end of the world? Is it a guaranteed ticket to heaven? Not at all! We set goals and toil so hard for the major part of our lives to reach there and suddenly when you taste success, you realise that it is just a barren land. A land with less kindness and less happiness, a lonely land meant for winners alone. What next? That’s the really hard question. All the while you were taught to focus on just this goal, this moment, this success and suddenly you are dumbstruck about what next to do. Something you toiled so hard for, now seems void and you really don’t know what is bigger next. Of course, there could be larger goals next, but in the end, where does it all lead to? Is it an unending ladder? Not really! At one point, when realisation strikes that success is not as coveted as it seemed and it is just a mirage, you really don’t know what to do next. No longer does success seem luring. You are in a completely confused state.
This is where people really differ. Some people discover their purpose and move on in life without giving much thought to success and failure; they realise that compassion and unity and kindness are the real invaluable metrics and learn to make peace with their surroundings and live well. A few others who don’t really realise this, learn to start living with that empty feeling, carrying the mirage of success all along.
Some others, who have been consumed by ambition all the while get absolutely confused when they realise that all that struggle was not actually worth it and start a downward spiral into depression. They don’t find anything interesting anymore because of the emptiness that success actually is. They find it hard to accept the truth and that is when they are completely depressed. Without the right people around them, the situation could turn out worse. But the poor world around them that is still thirsty for success is just stunned and flabbergasted seeing someone in the peak of their career, someone who has been absolutely successful succumb to depression and start wondering how they could let go of such a seemingly perfect life! The world has seen many such instances and this article is a tribute to those souls that had been clouded by the mirage that others taught them to be wonderful and finally succumbed to depression.
We have seen enough people around us going through this situation, but we really don’t realise the actual problem here. At least, let the next generation know that success never guarantees happiness and joy. Let us teach them that kindness, compassion, empathy and unity are much greater than success itself. Let them understand that failure is equally valued as success, because you can’t fail without trying and those efforts are what really matter more than the result! Let us build a less ambitious, but a much happier and safer place to live.
