Between the devil and the deep sea

I walk down memory lane and stumble upon these lines I once crammed

“How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought
And simple truth his utmost skill!”

The tranquility in me is perturbed by a question in my head ‘ if you were to choose between professional success with fame and recognition for the work you do and a simple life of a middle class person who lives with a utopian belief of simple living high thinking what would you choose?’
It is easy for most of us to say ‘simple living and high thinking’ but the truth is quite different. The urge to make it big in life is so powerful that sometimes it can drown the simplest and basest of values we used to read about.

This urge, which some people define as ‘my dream’ and some say ambition is by far one of the most powerful tools our mind has that drives our lives. ‘I want to be a star performer in my company.’ ‘My business is my life. I want to be the best in my profession and I want to be a name, people recognize and swear by’

The adrenalin rush to get somewhere to achieve something in life sometimes saps out the simplicity we are born with. The simple core that all of us have is not just hidden but somewhere is lost by the hardened layers of ambition.

Success is intoxicating. Especially when it is in its nascent form, it bedazzles you. The appreciation, the love and the recognition that you get from this newly found audience is overwhelming. The glare of success sometimes blinds you and you are unable to see or remember those moments when you struggled. Those people who held your hand when you were struggling. Simple values of humility that we all know and supposedly believe in, get faded.

Hence passages from a poem that we all crammed at one point in life sometimes emerge like a blast from the past and we all get stumble. Pull the reins, do a reality check, the passage of the poem you once crammed mindlessly will eventually make sense.