The Joy of Being a Loser and Achieving Nothing

We live in an achievement society which makes us anxious

We live in an achievement society. If we open social media sites like LinkedIn, everyone is achieving something. Some have already achieved a lot.

We value people based on their achievements. Forbes 30 under 30. TEDx speaker. President or CEO of something. Got this award or that. Worked in Google, Facebook, Amazon, and some companies.

Seeing this around us puts us under a lot of pressure to achieve something. If we don’t, then we feel worthless. If you value people based on their achievements, you will also feel pressure to achieve something that you think other people value.

Why should our self-worth be based on our achievements? What if we don’t achieve anything in our life that other people value? What if we aim to achieve something that we value?

A person who has had some job and lived for 50 years but enjoyed life, had plenty of free time, helped people around him, was a good parent or father or mother or spouse. That’s also a life well-lived. What if a person is humble, smiling, and has empathy? Why is that not an achievement? He might not have bought a BMW and traveled to all the exotic tourist places in the world, but if he is happy with his life, why is that not an achievement?

In the past year, my definition of achievement has changed. If I want plenty of free time to read books and I make time to do that, that’s an achievement for me. I define what’s success for me and I will not succumb to what society thinks is success. If I come across people who will value me as a human being only because I achieved something (including parents) then I don’t care. Let them think I am a failure and it doesn’t change anything in my life because I don’t want anything from them, not even admiration.

Does having a billion dollars make me a successful person? What if I have a billion dollars, but only a few days left to live? If I could pay $1 per second for extending my life span, would I pay that price? Time alive is the ultimate currency.

One minute has 60 seconds. One hour has 60 minutes. One hour has 3600 seconds. Will I pay $3600 for every additional hour I stay alive if I had a billion dollars?

One day has 86,400 seconds. One billion dollars can buy me 11,574 additional days. That’s 31.7 years. If I am about to die and can pay to live for another 31.7 years, will I pay that price? Absolutely yes. I am 37 right now and if I spend more time focusing on my health and stay away from dangerous activities, I hope to live at least up to 69 years. Then I am already a billionaire. A time billionaire. I have a billion seconds left to live.

If you are watching the sunset on the horizon, feeling the breeze, walking in the forest, making love, meditating and feeling one with the universe, playing with a pet, or experiencing the fragrance of a flower; these are some of the best things that life has to offer and it’s free for anyone alive. And for someone dead, there is no amount of price they can pay to get these experiences. The experience is the same whether you have $100 in your bank account or a billion dollars.

We often forget that we are already rich. We are emperors dreaming that we are beggars. We are children of the universe and part of the universe, we are the universe.

Fame demands a huge price. Fame for you is what you think others think of you. And people don’t think about you all the time. If you are famous and achieved something that others value, they don’t value that you have achieved it.

They applaud you because they think that it would be cool that they achieved it themselves. And if they achieve it themselves, they think it’s cool because other people will applaud for them. But other people won’t applaud them because they respect them, but because those applauders want to achieve it for themselves.

So I conclude, that achievement according to the standards of society is a pyramid scheme. You sell your soul to achieve something that you think that others will appreciate and the cost of this achievement is to give up what you want in life and what it means to be successful for you, not for others.

If you do what you love, people will applaud you anyway. But the difference is that you did not do it for the sake of applause. For example, I am writing this while I am sitting in front of a beach in Bali and I am not writing because I want you to appreciate me. I am writing this because I am overflowing with this profound realization of how screwed up our lives become when we chase external success metrics. I am loving sharing my thoughts.

Such writing might indirectly get me some success - in terms of more likes, shares, and followers, but that is again a result of what I am doing out of love, which is to write and share my thoughts. If this post gets 0 comments and 0 likes and if people think that I have a nut loose in my head right now, it wouldn’t take away the joy that I have already gained from writing this post.

I am going to follow my heart and do what I love. Yes I will build a startup, make revenue, and build a team and it might or might not lead to success the way other people define it, but I will do it anyway because I love to solve problems and build things. A successful life is one where you love your work, your family, and yourself, irrespective of whether other people appreciate you or celebrate you socially.

I am not retiring. I am just getting started. But I am starting with a light heart. My focus on my work will not be corrupted by the burden of wanting appreciation for my work. I will be doing work for work’s sake. Ironically most of the appreciated works in history have come from the love of doing the work by the creator, rather than a determined goal to create work that will be appreciated.

Have a great week ahead. Let me know your thoughts in the comments or by replying to this email.

Cheers,
Deepak Kanakaraju