Success is relative.

Nearly a decade back a quite popular advertisement took rounds on TV, which sought an answer to this question - "Hum kamate kyon hain (Why do we earn?) " And then precariously assuming that nobody could answer that question, the lead in the ad , with a mouth full of delicacies presented the obvious answer - "Khane ke liye ( To eat )". I bought that answer easily ten years back like any other high-school student for whom working and earning are two big words in themselves. But ten years down the line that answer seems to have lost its convincing touch.

I have never not even once I guess given a thought to why and what for am I working. Definitely my work pays for my bread and butter but unlike the prominence it had in that advertisement, earning my livelihood is not the prime and sole objective of working for me and likewise for others. Because today we don't work and earn only to eat, today we work and earn - to earn more than others, to get an edge over others in terms of financial security. For us pay packages now weigh more than the kind and quality of work they associate to. One has to work hard enough to maintain what s/he continues to earn and strive to look for better opportunities which pay more so that others are behind them in that rat race of eating more than what they can chew.

So, What amount should qualify as a limiting, respectable, good and complacent earning for anyone? Well the answer to this correlates somewhat to the definition of limit of functions and might look something like this with very slight modifications :

For every δ > 0 there should exist ε > 0 such that f (x) − L > ε
whenever x E D and 0 < |x − c| < δ.

Where ε and δ are as always real numbers, x defines your skill set, f(x) defines your expectant salary (which evidently is a function of your skill set). However very interesting are the numbers defined by L and c. L is the salary which others are getting and c represents their skill set. So what I've written above can be rephrased in simpler words as - The difference between the expectant package or cash one thinks one should get and what others are getting should always remain positive even though the difference between one's skill set and that of others can be negative at times.( If you remember the exact defintion of limits you can notice that the modulus has been removed from the first inequality in view of that.)

I guess what Eliot meant in his quote 'Success is relative' - that you are not successful unless you are more successful than others is a much simpler version of exactly the same idea what I am trying to put across here. But should that not be seen as a perptual and eternal effort on one's part. Because there's always someone ahead of you and someone behind you, which although projects a linear view instigating one to incessantly invest their efforts to reach the front end of it , only to realize that it is essentially behaving as a vicious circle.

~ Untill next time happy circular running !!