Stress and Achievement

Hari, a software engineer turned organic farmer, was saying that a mango tree yields fruits when stressed. Deprive it of water for a few days or expose it to heat and it feels the need to yield fruits. If it is in completely satisfactory conditions it will just be happy to vegetate!

How true of people as well! A perfectly content person feels no need to produce anything. It is discontent with one's personality, one's possessions, one's social relationships or creative angst that causes a person to want to achieve something. A person who is content with who he is feels no need to change anything in his condition and, when there is no need to change anything, there is no need to achieve anything!

All stress arises from discontent. It is one of the ironies of life that all humans purport to strive for a stress-free and content life but if everyone, indeed, achieves that ideal, Society will stagnate, wither away and die!

Stress may be a prerequisite for achievement but a lack of achievement is not necessarily proof of contentment in the concerned person. Laziness and fear of failure have been the cause of far more under-achievers than contentment. What, then, can be said about the author who is content in his laziness!