In order to be successful, you have to be at the right place at the right time.
Recently, I was just told by someone I respect that I have been lucky to have been at the right place at the right time.
I may not be a Ph.D. on mathematics but I can add those 2 things up to indicate that I am successful. Coming to that deduction, I smiled. But only for a little while. Cos the pessimistic person that I naturally am made me question...Am I really successful?
Okay so I was at the right place at the right time when my wife was thinking..."Maybe I should get married... but where is the guy?" and PLOP!! I had dropped from the sky and on to her feet on my knees.."Will you marry me?"
I didn't actually know where I was at the time but that's how it happened. I have many more versions of that to tell to our younger ones as bedtime stories. I guess I was in the right place at the right time in that case. I couldn't say otherwise even if I wasn't. This blog has an eye being kept by yours truly's wife. So lets leave it that.
On the professional front, I think I have NOT been in the right place at most times cos I may have done lots of good things professionally but not really getting the money's worth for it. So if you say successful means rich as well, this doesn't count. If successful means making a difference to the organization one works for, well yeah ok, I am successful. Why don't organizations understand that money is important too? That is the best form of appreciation and motivation.
What else? I have been lucky, yes. But that's only when I am in an optimistic mood. On a day with pessimism lurking, I have not been that lucky. Its just about perspective in such life evaluations. Like I could have been born in a real rich family and would never have to work to make a living. Why wasn't I there? That was a right time and place to be, isn't it?
One elderly person in the family once told me, one generation earns and the next one spends and the next one earns again and so forth. That was supposed to make me take a different perspective of life. Too bad, it didn't work. In fact I curse myself on some days for not being part of that generation that was supposed to spend what the earlier one earned.
I think being at the right place at the right time is just another one of those coined phrases to try and explain "FATE". Whether you believe in it or not, it's there. Some things just have to happen in a particular way at a particular time. So if something good happens just know that it wasn't you who was there to make it happen. There were forces to ensure that you were there and you did what you were supposed to do to make it happen.
If something bad happens it doesn't mean that you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. It's those same forces that ensured that you were there at the time and did what you were supposed to do. You were still in the right place at the right time but for someone else to have his moment of success.
We humans have been trying to understand life since many years and trying to explain things like luck, fate, and trying to find explanations through astrology, lucky stones, palmistry, fortune cookies etc etc. Its just a simple one if you ask me. Fate. Its all already written whether its in your fate or not for something to happen or not.
Everybody has to do a few things in life which just have to happen in a particular way at a particular time. This is because somebody else's fate is linked with that. Its all a well-written script that just keeps playing and we being the actors keep making our entrance and exit, play our part, say our lines and go and wait for the next scene.
There are 2 ways to digest the above post. From the perspective of optimism or pessimism. Its on you. Everybody has to live this life in a particular way. It's on you how you want to live it.
Inspired by a dialogue from the movie, Men in Black...
The only difference between you and me, I ll make this look good.
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