"There is only one definition of success — to be able to spend your life in your own way"
The author would like to have her readers believe that the only person successful in life is the one who is able to spend life in his/her own way. I would say that this is a very nice observation by the author and I fully agree with her.
To begin with, I would like to discuss the case of different types of people such as people called very successful in life by the world and people called not so successful. A businessman who has achieved all the material gains in life such as a big mansion, a wonderful car, goes for international vacations every year, is the one called successful by most of the people. But if we look deeper into his life, we are sure to find that such big guys are not always the happiest people around. They live under constant pressure of producing better results for their business. Their every step in life is targeted towards maintaining even in future the luxuries they enjoy currently. Thus they are very less likely to spend their life in the manner they want. Their lives get guided by factors and things they might have never wanted to do, but cannot escape today. Can we call such person successful ? I would disagree.
Now let us consider a working woman who gets married at some point of time in her life and then goes on to have kids. She quits her job for the sake of her kids because she wants to make her children one of the best in the class, in the society and everywhere they go. Thus she lets go the material benefits, which her job would have given her, for the sake of the life she wants to live. If she is a good mother and is able to get her kids the best in their lives, shouldn't we call her a successful person ? She can be termed as equally successful as any other corporate strategist.
Thus when a person is able to spend his/her life the way he/she wants, it gives him/her a sense of happiness. And happiness is the real goal of any success. All of us start with this idea of achieving happiness when we start our pursuit of success, but forget about it somewhere on the way. The result is one becomes successful in the eyes of others, but is never successful for oneself, because of the fact that he could not achieve the ultimate goal - happiness- for which he started. Hence in my opinion the author is perfectly right in saying that the real meaning of success is to be able to spend the life in our own way.
