I’ve recently been in a position where I’ve had to contemplate what I define as success. At the age of 45, I’ve walked away from the “corporate-existence” that had fed me for the better part of five-years because it boiled down to a choice of being on the job or spending time on creating memories that money can’t buy. I tried to convince myself that I had responsibilities to my employer but in the end my sister came up with the most important argument of all – “You’re 45 – do you want to spend the rest of your life behind a desk,” and with that, I walked away from my corporate existence.
I know that a few people would argue that I took a dangerous path. I’m a late starter in the corporate rat race. While I had a few corporate gigs, most of my time was spent freelancing or waiting tables. Then, at the age of 39, I got myself employed in an accounting firm that specializes in liquidations. Though lacking in the necessary paper qualifications, I survived in the job, learnt a great deal, earned a few rounds of an annual wage supplement and had a few bonus payments and the boss deemed me worthy enough to discuss promotion. You could say that on paper, I had found security, stability and success and all I needed to do was to carry on the same path.
Yet, while I knew I was secure, I didn’t feel successful. While grateful that I had a salary and regular contributions to my pension fund for five-years, I didn’t feel that I had a particularly good life. It took going away for a week and cutting off ties with the rest of the world for me to realise that I was on the wrong path in life and although I’m back in a position where I don’t really know what will happen with my life, I have a strange sense of clarity of what life has to offer. While technically in a more precarious position, I feel more successful than I did a few weeks ago.
I talk about my personal situation here because it brings into the question of what defines success. What makes one person successful and another not. Most people would argue that success involves the material. A man with a particular car and house is defined as successful while a man without is often defined as not. We look at signs of success in terms of status and situations.
What is true of individuals is also true of nation states. I’ve lived in Singapore, which is the definition of a “successful” nation. As a child, I thought Singapore had it all and when I moved to the West, I found it very hard to accept that Singapore was part of the “developing” world for the simple fact that all the physical stuff (buildings etc) that I saw in the West, were not better in any shape or way than what I saw in Singapore.
When I returned to set up my life in Singapore and got into the national sport of complaining about the place, I often found myself being ticked off by people from the Western World for not appreciating the good things around me. Singapore is safe (no worries when my teenage girl takes a late bus home), rich (a Singapore dollar exchanged at one point something against global currencies like the Greenback, Euro and Pound and many times more in third world currencies) and clean (there is no reason to buy bottled water in Singapore – it’s the only drinkable water in some Western cities). So, what’s there not to like?
We are the very definition of success and yet, we, the people seem downright miserable. I feel it whenever I travel to a third-world backwater. Returning from places like Vietnam, Thailand and Bhutan makes me feel that I’m returning to a place that lacks something important. Why do people who have so much less than what I have, seem to much more ease with the world. In their eyes, I must have everything. Yet, I’m envious of them.
I’m well aware that life in rural Asia is tough. Outside of Singapore and Hong Kong, the facilities are awful. I remember my favorite Bhutanese tour guide telling his tour groups to “use bottled water to brush your teeth.” I am aware that farming by hand is brutal work. At the age of 22, I understood why the Thai girls in Geylang (Singapore’s red-light district) were selling their bodies – Kanchanaburi Province in Thailand was dirt poor. Yet, and yet I couldn’t help but feel that had something very important that I didn’t have.
I guess you could call it hope. People there face hunger and so they work hard to get over it. Yet they remain human and I can’t help but feel that this is the factor that makes them more at ease with the world. For us, it’s a case of joining a machine and being part of the machine. The system apparently looks after you and gives you “success” but after you achieve it – what do you have?
I know that a few people would argue that I took a dangerous path. I’m a late starter in the corporate rat race. While I had a few corporate gigs, most of my time was spent freelancing or waiting tables. Then, at the age of 39, I got myself employed in an accounting firm that specializes in liquidations. Though lacking in the necessary paper qualifications, I survived in the job, learnt a great deal, earned a few rounds of an annual wage supplement and had a few bonus payments and the boss deemed me worthy enough to discuss promotion. You could say that on paper, I had found security, stability and success and all I needed to do was to carry on the same path.
Yet, while I knew I was secure, I didn’t feel successful. While grateful that I had a salary and regular contributions to my pension fund for five-years, I didn’t feel that I had a particularly good life. It took going away for a week and cutting off ties with the rest of the world for me to realise that I was on the wrong path in life and although I’m back in a position where I don’t really know what will happen with my life, I have a strange sense of clarity of what life has to offer. While technically in a more precarious position, I feel more successful than I did a few weeks ago.
I talk about my personal situation here because it brings into the question of what defines success. What makes one person successful and another not. Most people would argue that success involves the material. A man with a particular car and house is defined as successful while a man without is often defined as not. We look at signs of success in terms of status and situations.
What is true of individuals is also true of nation states. I’ve lived in Singapore, which is the definition of a “successful” nation. As a child, I thought Singapore had it all and when I moved to the West, I found it very hard to accept that Singapore was part of the “developing” world for the simple fact that all the physical stuff (buildings etc) that I saw in the West, were not better in any shape or way than what I saw in Singapore.
When I returned to set up my life in Singapore and got into the national sport of complaining about the place, I often found myself being ticked off by people from the Western World for not appreciating the good things around me. Singapore is safe (no worries when my teenage girl takes a late bus home), rich (a Singapore dollar exchanged at one point something against global currencies like the Greenback, Euro and Pound and many times more in third world currencies) and clean (there is no reason to buy bottled water in Singapore – it’s the only drinkable water in some Western cities). So, what’s there not to like?
We are the very definition of success and yet, we, the people seem downright miserable. I feel it whenever I travel to a third-world backwater. Returning from places like Vietnam, Thailand and Bhutan makes me feel that I’m returning to a place that lacks something important. Why do people who have so much less than what I have, seem to much more ease with the world. In their eyes, I must have everything. Yet, I’m envious of them.
I’m well aware that life in rural Asia is tough. Outside of Singapore and Hong Kong, the facilities are awful. I remember my favorite Bhutanese tour guide telling his tour groups to “use bottled water to brush your teeth.” I am aware that farming by hand is brutal work. At the age of 22, I understood why the Thai girls in Geylang (Singapore’s red-light district) were selling their bodies – Kanchanaburi Province in Thailand was dirt poor. Yet, and yet I couldn’t help but feel that had something very important that I didn’t have.
I guess you could call it hope. People there face hunger and so they work hard to get over it. Yet they remain human and I can’t help but feel that this is the factor that makes them more at ease with the world. For us, it’s a case of joining a machine and being part of the machine. The system apparently looks after you and gives you “success” but after you achieve it – what do you have?
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