What is Success?

With its deformed world-view, the modern world cannot but disparage many of God’s chosen, for them never having seen such earthly, ephemeral milestones, despite having lived and died on the Path of Truth.

Maybe the modern world’s greatest failure is its inability to define success. Detached from Eternal Truths, it has reduced success from being Truth-centric to goal-centric, insisting that tangible milestones are needed to provide for evidence that one is achieving. With its deformed world-view, the modern world cannot but disparage many of God’s chosen, for them never having seen such earthly, ephemeral milestones, despite having lived and died on the Path of Truth.

How would the modern world have seen Jonah, or Yunus ‘alayhi asalām, for instance, whose message only reached and resonated across the far corners of Nineveh after he had departed his people? Consider as well Pharaoh’s sorcerers, whom, after having submitted to the Creator were all hung and dismembered. What says of the ‘Companions of the Ditch’, who all believed in the young boy’s message of Truth, for them to be thrown into a burning ditch. Allah asserts their triumph, despite having been tormentingly set aflame:

“Those who persecute the believing men and women and then do not repent will certainly suffer the punishment of Hell and the torment of burning. Surely those who believe and do good will have Gardens under which rivers flow. That is the greatest triumph.“[1]

We know of no Prophet who called his people to the Message of Truth longer than Nuh ‘alayhi asalām. Despite a relentless 950-year effort, the majority of a life only slight longer than that, he was followed by just a handful of people:

“Indeed, We sent Noah to his people, and he remained among them for a thousand years, less fifty. Then the Flood overtook them, while they persisted in wrongdoing.”[2]

Maybe Nuh ‘alayhi asalām would be seen through the distorted lens of the modern world as having not ‘succeeded’ since he neither hit sufficient ‘reach’, ‘likes’ or ‘turnover’ milestones.

“…But those who had Iman with him were only few.”[3]

To some it may seem strange that Nuh ‘alayhi asalām remains as one of the five Prophets with the firmest resolve (‘Ulu al ‘Azm) – out of around 125,000.

In this age of social media and the many painless avenues of gaining fame and exercising influence, success has become defined by numbers and failure the lack thereof. And if this is such, to see that favour with the crowd is the measure of success insinuates that to be successful, one must follow the crowd, which for one, is often the antithesis of being a person of reform and influence – in short, a demagogue. Such a false notion also presupposes that the by virtue of there being a crowd, it must have chosen the path of success rather than that of oblivion.

In fact, the only measure of success is to embark on the Path of Truth, whether observable ‘milestones’ are seen in this temporal, earthly life or not.

The greatness of Nuh ‘alayhi asalām in the Sight of Allāh not only contests the idea that success is in numbers of likes or followers, but demonstrates that his success came through his effort on the Path of Truth. Anything ephemeral that presents itself, whether an agreeable crowd or a vociferous enemy becomes nothing but to test one’s resolve on this noble journey.

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References:

[1] Al-Qur’ān 85:10-11

[2] Al-Qur’ān 29:14

[3] Al-Qur’ān 11:40