Question: For an ordinary person success means family, an orderly life, financial security, safety, or in short, everything that is attained through competition. But he has already grown tired of this chase. How can he reach a simple normal life that he can consider successful?
Answer: It is becoming very simple in our world. If we are speaking about a corporeal body, we have to provide it with healthcare [1], a pension, and a good environment. But one person cannot achieve success that way. It is attained by society, by all its members together. This is the reason that a person has to create an environment that will provide him with healthcare and a stable life, with everything that he needs.
Question: But in our society success is attained through competition. Can it be attained differently?
Answer: In our society success is attained through competition because our egoism [2] has two directions. One is to dominate others and to be above them, which puts a person under great stress and leads to great waste of energy and constant pressures. The other direction is the attraction of the corporeal body (the same egoism) to complete rest. These two opposites exist in us and make competition a necessity. It awakens us and forces us to work hard.
What is more, the conditions of competition can be very different: the competitor can be my rival or my colleague. I am basically for competition when it comes to good deeds, when a person struggles to do something for the sake of society.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 6/17/15
Related Material:
Success Is A Relative Concept [3]
Useful Competition [4]
The Most Useful Occupation [5]