Movers and shakers of the world are not icons of greatness. These demagogues are mere mortals, neither special nor exceptional. Pick out any from among the current crop and ask yourself if they deserve a place on the pedestal. Is there a president, a prime minister, chief minister, politician, judge, general or administrator worth a seat in Solomon’s temple of greatness?

These leaders should go back to school. What their teachers of yore didn’t tell the bunch of phonies could still be drilled into them. Greatness comes with accomplishment, not empty speeches and statements filling the newspapers daily.

During a high school graduation at a school in the US, an English teacher tells his students, “You are not special. You are not exceptional.” Wanting to hear more from the man at the podium, parents are all ears. “In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another — which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement.”

Brilliant! The truth shines through each word. Ask me, who has to pin up a scrap of pink, blue or green paper regularly brought home by my 10-year-old grandson from his various teachers who must expend energy and school resources printing out mindless ‘Certificates of Achievements’ lauding him for say being the usher in a school play or being best friends with Michael in aftercare programme. Alongside the faux ‘Hall of fame’ wall, stand shiny brassy trophies (made in China, where else?) in all sizes with ‘Achievement Award’ printed in big bold letters, telling the world you’re a champion at karate or soccer or some other sport.

“We’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality,” says the English teacher “if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.” His direct message to his students is to do something to prove yourselves, not just rejoice in praise and trophies.

While growing up, instead of trophies and gaudy certificates, tooting parents liked to brag about their brats to anyone within an earshot. How come everyone’s kid stands first in class, asked parents like ours who had not produced little ‘Einsteins’ like the show offs they’d often meet? Kids like us took this question personally — in a world of wiz kids, we were singled out as dullards. Enough to give anyone an inferiority complex.

Over decades, bookshelves stacked with ‘How to’ books on winning, achievement, success, type-A personality, triumph and self-realisation became the norm in homes. These books are passé today, with their nuggets of wisdom still unexplored and buried within the pages. The internet has pushed them aside by dishing out free advice by the nanosecond from pop psychologists, sociologists and therapists. The danger of drowning while surfing the net is always there. Even if you manage to scour a few pages, by the time you log out, your brain is dredged!

Last weekend, there’s a column that caught my eye in The New York Times. It was about our craze to be called exceptional. “In this world, an ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life,” says Brené Brown, a professor of social work. Because “extraordinary is often what the general public views as success,” she says.

Why must we label ordinary and normal as average?

The Times story by Alina Tugend titled A Call for a Movement to Redefine the Successful Life begins with asking what actually is success. She attended a recent conference hosted at the home of Huffington Post founder and editor Arianna Huffington. The theme of conference largely attended by women and a few ‘good men’ analysed success beyond money and power. Divided into panels, covering topics ranging from ‘Managing a Frenetic Life’ to ‘Wellness and the Bottom Line,’ was chiefly aimed at women who defined success as the ‘More, bigger, better.’ The heavy accented Greek-born Ms Huffington says on behalf of women “We can’t do that anymore”.

Currently high achievers among women and men are known to ‘sleep four hours a night, work 20 hours a day, see your family rarely and never admit the need for downtime.’ That regimen is “wearing us down”, declares Huffington. “Right now, America’s workplace culture is practically fueled by stress, sleep deprivation and burnout”.

The 62-year-old editor, columnist and author who came into a fortune after a divorce settlement from her gay husband wants to start a movement that embraces ‘physical and spiritual wellness — from meditation to exercise to good nutrition’ as part of a successful life.

All this sounds “wonderful”, says the pragmatist Alina Tugend, but how does this fit into our society? She quotes Senator Claire McCaskill, the Democrat from Missouri who is attending the conference. “This is well-intentioned and important. [But] “It’s luxurious to have the ability to rethink time in your life.”

The woman senator’s frank-speak takes me back to the question I opened the column with: Is there a president, a prime minister, chief minister, politician, judge, general or administrator who has won our admiration? I can’t think of one. Says who that success is a synonym for bagging the prized post of a chief executive of a country, army chief, chief justice and all the other ‘chiefs’ that Pakistan particularly has a penchant of labeling people heading institutions.

Because they are successful, therefore they are chiefs! This kind of deductive reasoning, if it can be called that, is terribly flawed. Just look at the ‘chiefs’ and their ‘achievements’ that caused grave harm to Pakistan. The country’s chief executives; army, air force, navy and intelligence chiefs; chief justices; chief ministers and bureaucrats like chief secretaries and chief commissioner — were men who were not ‘successful’ but failures.

The definition of success in the Western Hemisphere is different from the definition we hold in the East. The division line drawn between the ‘civilised world’ (as the developed world likes to be called) and the ‘uncivilised world’ (as the developed world likes to call us) is as poles apart as in these two definitions (civilised & uncivilised). A successful life among the rich nations embraces a total lifestyle practiced by a man/woman labeled ‘extraordinary’. It means you sleep four hours a night, work 20 hours a day, see your family rarely and never admit the need for downtime.

The ‘successful’ syndrome is therefore a misnomer and does not apply to Pakistanis leading the three branches of government — executive, legislative and judiciary — plus the defence because they come to their posts pre-stamped with the title of ‘extraordinary’. Blame it on the ‘system’ that throws up such gems? The system, dear reader, is an invisible, mysterious and dysfunctional monster that is supreme, indestructible and unyielding to change.

The greats are the prophets whose teachings live on long after they leave the world, the intellectuals and the academics who produce immortal works read, enjoyed and recalled, the sportsmen whose feats are unrivalled and maybe the occasional leader who appears once in a blue moon.

anjumniaz@rocketmail.com