What is your definition of success?

Just wrote a feedback to TODAY. Wonder if it would get to see the light of the day. Haha!

I refer to Michael Loh Yik Ming's "Beyond transcripts, all else is trash" and "Lighten school load..." by Anne Jeffery.

If success is simply defined as having a good career or getting "higher-calibre jobs", then yes, "a good degree" would suffice.

Yet, as the truth bears out, some of the successful businessmen in society, the ones the media cover, the ones we look up to, do not neccessarily have one.

Perhaps the fear of failure has permeated every level of society and consciousness that we allow our children to be mediocre, simply to conform. And for most of us, being a "failure" would include being a sportsman, an artist, or entertainer (unless we have legions of fans, or earning lots of money). It even includes those who have decided to start something on their own. We would have failed, unless proven successful (ie. made money). Or, "well-wishers" will warn of calamities and wish us luck.

I'm grateful for changes already in motion, and I applaud the setting up of the Singapore Sports School, but are the rest of us ready for it?

One very good reason why our birthrates are falling could simply be that potential parents-to-be do not want to put their children through the same pressures they have been through. Enough is enough. Let the children realise their potentials and write their own success stories.

According to Bessie Stanley, Success is
To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

I believe there are many definitions of success. What is yours? I look forward to receiving and compiling letters and articles on the subject and youth activism. We are certainly not as apathetic as most people think. Please send them to sophia.tan@pacific.net.sg.

Sophia Tan