It was the American tennis legend Arthur Ashe who gave us the words “success is a journey, not a destination”. His statements carried great weight not only because he was black in a white dominated sport but also because he was the first and only African American man to become Number One tennis player in the world. He, therefore, in my opinion, has the right to talk about success.
I tend to agree with Mr. Ashe whether he overcame racial barriers and reached the pinnacle of success or not. Analyzing what he said, I learned that success is merely a journey to pass through not a place to arrive at. Stated differently, you go from one success to another. It will not be a success when you get stuck in one place for a long time.
I am an observer of people and I cannot refrain from looking at those who are succeeding. I have seen and read how success changed their lives. I do not claim to be an expert in psychology or even sociology but success tends to change the behavior of people. Some would become proud, arrogant and look down on others. This is where I came to the realization that success can be good or bad. You can be inspired with your success or you can get drunk with it. One is motivating, the other is devastating. And one positive aspect of succeeding is you are transforming into a better person with better outlook in life.
The first success will not do any good if we do not follow it up with a continuing journey of growing, progressing, and achieving one level at a time. You cannot afford to get too comfortable in just one journey because you will stagnate. Stagnation breeds complacency, boredom and laziness. There will be no desire to level up.
Someone said the greatest enemy of success is success itself. Success can be intoxicating such that you are consumed with your achievements and you never care about other people in your surroundings. I know a lot of co-op leaders got too cozy with whatever achievement they had and never bothered to travel further. Take the case of some co-ops here in Benguet. They were caught sleeping while other co-ops from outside the province came in broad daylight, set up their shop and started recruiting hordes of members. It is a replay of the classic race of the Hare and the turtle.
Pride comes before destruction the Bible says. Pride is one negative fruit of success. It is an unseen enemy from the inside. We cannot be too proud of ourselves for succeeding. Just look at the co-op leaders who thought they know a lot and never bothered to attend trainings. Their co-ops never grow and worse, it never lasted. The Roman Empire became too proud for being the most powerful empire in the world. However, it produced envy, dissatisfaction and impatience that later on bred moral decay. Everybody wanted to be the emperor and they started killing one another until the empire collapsed.
When we understand very well that success is a mere journey, we remain humble. We remain hungry for more. We will always be on our toes watching out for the next mountain to climb.
