Success

For lots of people here in Tunisia, as elsewhere, success is measured by the work you have, the house you build, and the car make you have. Once you have those three things you start “enjoying” life, showing off, making your presence felt wherever you go, looking down at others who were not lucky enough and did not have what you yourself had.

I remember a friend of mine who passed the CAPES in 2003 and was supposed to start a teaching career in the following year. He was a heavy smoker and he spoke of the attitudes of his town folk towards him when they know there was a job in store for him. Now, they acknowledged him with a smile and even offered him a cigarette and treated him to a cup of coffee in the local café.

This reminds me of a passage I read a few years ago. In A Pair of Blue Eyes, Thomas Hardy, a great novelist wrote about the change in attitude toward a young man who comes from a poor family but managed to become the architect of the neighborhood church. Now the young guy is looked at with reverence and he is treated to a cup of coffee with a saucer.

It is strange how people perceive others. We always introduce ourselves to others saying we have this job and that car. We want to show others how important we are, may be without any thoughtful sympathetic regard for their feelings. We sometimes enjoy humiliating others and reducing them to nothingness as if our existence depended on others being mere nonentities. This, I think, harbors the kind of self-doubt feelings bogging us down so much so that we seek self-satisfaction in the annihilation of the other. We give others the measure-up test and we roll our eyes at their success.