That moment in life when you feel you have made it

One of my favourite pastimes is reading interviews of distinguished people. The one question they are often asked is — what was the moment you knew you had made it? In a recent edition of a magazine it was creatively termed “your greatest pinch me moment”. This strikes one as a way of measuring success in terms of discrete achievements and significant milestones, which undeniably has practical merit. But it also feeds into a fantasy of instant success and oversimplifies the nature of the beast that is accomplishment.

Succeeding at something doesn’t happen in a day, it is a process. And when the first target is achieved, the next one appears, as if out of nowhere. In that sense, it is a moving goalpost. Occasionally, certain ambitions take us very long to realise. And when the fruit of our toil is finally ours to enjoy, it doesn’t taste as sweet as we would have imagined. In this way, the mission to ‘make it’ can become illusory and deeply dissatisfying. What if success wasn’t about checking some pre-determined boxes? And a person wasn’t only as good as her updated CV?

At some stage we would come to conclude that what really matters is the ability to enjoy work without any care for accolades. This is when the process of creating and realising the full extent of our potential would become our main motivation. Our unique preferences would then have space to unfold. The so-called rat race would no longer apply, freeing up much energy for meaningful pursuits. And then interview questions might just begin sounding more like this: “At what point did you stop caring about making it and start following your passion?”