Personal Development Blog

What an affirmation, what a belief, a paradox to reality, you might say.  If you are willing to read further you might just as well believe in this truth, that there dwells the pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow. 

Are you willing to reach for it or just hope that it may be true? 

The proverbial statement made many generation back, might have proven itself untrue to many who first heard it and believed it, but somehow just did not make it to the end of the Rainbow.

Who is this insane person, you might ask, who says that there exists the pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow. But I say dear reader, that it is true, not just a fanciful statement made to raise our expectations by some philosophical guy.

The Gold can be anything that you might consider just as precious to your very being.  It is the value that you attribute to your desire, which turns it to Gold.  Your consideration of value is what is important.  The Key words are attaching importance, your being and the value attributed.

Just as much as a seeker of change see and undergoes a series of differences that makes him/her a more complete being, so does the journey to the end of the Rainbow, bring forth various changes to the explorer in his/her journey to success.

This brings us to the next word, Success.  What is success? A belief of conquest, a surmounting of odds to reach a desired goal, a state of happiness, What ever it can be termed, there is but a Desire, a Want, a Willingness to Achieve, which forms in the person a feeling of having reached his/her level of goal.  

In the earlier times when a person had to leave the convenience of his home, his hearth to fend for his family, he did walk many miles, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of his family, when he did find what seemed comfortable, he did pitch his home and begin a new life.  What and how much, in the new surroundings, if his desires were met, was the Gold at the end of the Rainbow.  

You may go forth and chase a Rainbow, but before long, you will find yourself in an entirely new area, new surroundings.  May be it would be too late in the day to retrace your steps, you may want to call it a day in your new surroundings, and when the new day dawns, you will see the new area in an entirely different way.  Maybe the new surroundings will throw up limitless opportunities that would make you feel Great, Happy or just about make you an Adventurer, an Explorer.  

That feeling of happiness or successfulness is the Gold at the end of the Rainbow.

This brings us to the statement made earlier in the article, Why do so many lose faith in this proverb.  Why do people seem critical in their later years to this proverb, what they did consider, at one time of their life as true.

The difference is in the Determination.  

A baby learns to turn on its side, to crawl, to stand, all on it own.  There is an inborn virtue of determination in each of us.  As we go through life, taking and absorbing all that life gives us, we are prepared and are determined in our exploration, but so long as the ground is even we accept our determination to succeed, however, when the incline to make it to the top of our goal starts, we seem to lose our determination to reach our desired goal.  

Success is not external to us but very much a subject, internal to our very being.  Determination is what is needed to succeed in what we perceive as Gold.  The value system is what we have attributed to our desire, a culmination of our efforts. 

Why then, do we settle for a poor bargain of what we set out to achieve.  

In earlier times when the population was not so large as today, we do find very few people who voiced their opinions to our quest, our desire.  They did not weigh the alternatives that may have been present, but looked at their dreams, or desires in isolation.  This attitude did bring forth many discoveries, new insights, new achievements and success.  Today, we sacrifice our desires by putting it for evaluation to many who may be not judicious enough to appreciate our desire and the more number of changes or evaluations that we carry out, our dreams and desires just about gets knocked out of our scope of determination to succeed. 

Take a look at another proverb that brings forth this truth.  The Road To Hell Is Paved With Stones Of Good Intentions.  Note the two words in this proverb, Hell and Good Intentions.  Strange and paradoxical you may feel.  How can there be Hell when there is Good Intentions. 

Oh! Yes it is true.  We all have dreams and did some work on its achievements with determination but then as life and age progresses we start to evaluate them through others whom we see as more competent and then discard the very desires that had much meaning to each one of us. These then form the stones of good intentions. 

But why Hell you might ask. Isn’t Hell supposed to be a bad place you might say?   Hell is more a figurative word in this proverb.  What do we do with the desires that we could not succeed; we throw them out. Out were? Hell!  Hell meaning, the internal bin in each of us, which stores the waste, the bad, the rotten things that we  discard. 

When determination to success is lost, we are left with discarded dreams.  Sometimes, even the best of desires are skewed in our search for success that we go awry and reach Hell instead of a successful life.  It is important that not only the desire to succeed is kept in focus but also the result of our success that should be beneficial to humanity in general. This is what it takes to make a recipe for a successful pot of Gold.

The pot of Gold need not be, at a distance, it can be anywhere, right next to you, but, yes, it is at the end of your enterprise, the Rainbow.  It is not the journey what counts, but the outcome of your determination that is important.  Look at the number of successful leaders, leaders in any form of enterprise, be that politics, corporate, education, science or may be just about any form of vocation.  What do you find in them, a steady unwavering focus, a desire that is not diluted, and a hard determination to succeed?

Keep the focus on your desire, absorb the various alternatives, amend the paths to reach your goal, but do not change the basic desire.  Be determined in your search for your pot of Gold, you will surely find it, next to you or anywhere, just as the rainbow which has a start and a finish.   Reach for your Gold! it is there for each one of us. The area of our activity and the span of the rainbow is not what the gold is, but it is the fruit of our determined effort that is waiting for us when we succeed.

You have the capability with which you were born, a virtue that has been instilled by nature, nurture it and you will find the Pot of Gold at the end of your Rainbow. 

by Sushil Baboo
sushil.baboo#yahoo.com (replace # with @)