All I have is yours to have.

I have been meeting a whole lot of young people lately. I meet and interact with the age 20+ and the age 30+ youngsters as a matter of routine .... as part of my job. Interesting young people, intelligent and bright. They, nearly all, seem to have clear and ambitious schemes ahead of them, and the pursuit of success and status take on a high priority. Clearly ambition and achievement are qualities held in special regard. Objects of material affluence are important to them.
That is the way society works ............
a) Success
b) Money
What the world measures you by.

I treat success with disdain. I smirk at its smugness. A recent mandatory appraisal at my place of work asked me if I was a success at my job. I have never asked myself the question.
Do I measure my success as a professor judging from the few dozen of CEOs and academicians I have tutored?
Or do I judge my success on the fact that hundreds of old students come back every year with girl-friends/boy-friends/wives/husbands/children/a dog, in tow to meet
"My Ma'am. Pronam koro."
To me the latter seems to be more important. Yet, when a publishing house of huge repute recently announced the top five young social scientists of India, three of the five were my students. I walked rather tall that day!
Actually there is only one form of success, and that is how successful you are in your relationships.How do you sculpt a long term relationship?

Of money, the least said the better. Money is so very non-contextual to me. I know that is not what I judge myself by. Neither do I judge others by it. I work hard and earn the money I think I deserve. I never have made money that I did not rightly deserve. I do not spend my earnings ostentatiously. I have all the material things I need, and what I do not have, I do not obviously need. I have earned other riches in life, I have got other wealth. Things money can't buy.

To the bright-eyed youth of today ..... Make money, make it honestly, but never for yourself. Always for someone else. Bring on a smile on someone's face. Let not "I want" or "I want to...." be a catch-word in your life.

I don't own any thing. All I have is yours to have.