Success in Life

Life is not always smooth-sailing. It is full of struggle. It is unwise to expect the path to be always covered with roses. Even great people are not spared the difficulties of life. It is not by running away, but by facing them with a Lion's courage that one can overcome them.

Struggle of life is very severe, rigorous and relentless. Man fights for this struggle for life from three fronts. In one, he fights with nature, his second struggle is with his fellow beings and in the third he battles with himself. The strategies of these three fronts a different from each other. In order to fight with the first front, he takes the help of physical science, for the second, he seeks the help of social science and for the third he wants help from psychological science. In these fights sometimes he finds himself crowned with success and now and then fails to get desirable results.

When he fails to get desirable results he wants to get rid of these struggles. He thinks that this world is a place of conflicts  and confusions, and therefore he wants to stop his struggle and run away. Wrongly, he thinks that the change of the external situation may give him peace.

If a nail enters his foot and he wants to destroy all the nails in the world, he is completely mistaken. He must put on shoes to walk without hindrance. When he finds it difficult to walk in rains, he must use the umbrella and should not think of stopping the rains. Therefore in order to struggle for existence, he must change the set of his mind, he must change the angle of his outlook.

There are two fighters inside us. One is divine and the other devilish. There is continual fight between the two forces. One way is worldly pleasure, the attractions of sense pleasure, the life of excitement and the life of luxury and comforts. The other is the way eternal value, the way of mastering over sense pleasure, the way of renunciation and truth and the way of service to humanity to live for others

The way reminds us of the great sayings of Swami. Vivekananda, "He alone lives who lives for others and the rest is more dead than alive." 

Jesus Christ said, "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." If you knock the door will open; yet it sometimes so happens that the door opens of itself, if you have that intense yearning. If you have longing, everything becomes favourable. A difficult obstacle  that you could not cross over suddenly vanishes. 

The impossible becomes possible. god holds your hand and takes you forward.

If you ask me whether you will succeed in life or not, I will ask you a question in return. Have you developed that impatient readiness to find the truth by study, enquiry, self-disciplineand service-the first step in creative power? If not, are you prepared to acquire it as speedily as possible?

If this readiness is quenched, you will cease to grow; decay of the spirit will set in, creative power will never be yours. And this applies not only to you, but to every one of us, old and young.

                                                                                                                

Compiled