We try and try to achieve success, and still the goalpost moves farther away. The harder we chase it, the more distant the feeling becomes. What we were promised as arrival often feels like exhaustion. What we were told would bring freedom instead brings pressure.

Success is commonly described as a destination. A place reached after enough effort, discipline, or sacrifice. But lived experience tells a different story. Each achievement quickly turns into a new expectation. Each milestone becomes the starting line for the next demand. Relief is brief. Satisfaction is fragile. The chase never ends.

This may be because success was never meant to be caught. It functions more like incentive than fulfillment. It keeps people moving, producing, comparing, and striving. Stillness is discouraged because stillness exposes uncomfortable truths. When movement stops, questions surface. Who am I without my output? What remains if I am not becoming something more?

We tell ourselves we are striving toward progress, meaning, or security. Often we are simply running from uncertainty. We build careers, reputations, and identities to protect ourselves from the fear of being insignificant. We measure ourselves by metrics that cannot recognize us as human. Titles, income, recognition, and status cannot return what we ask of them.

What is rarely acknowledged is this. We were born successful.

At our first breath, life had already succeeded. Existence did not require justification. There was no prerequisite for worth. We arrived complete. The body breathing was enough. Consciousness itself was enough.

Somewhere along the way, we were taught otherwise. We were taught that value must be earned repeatedly. That we must prove our legitimacy through achievement. That rest must be justified and contentment delayed. This belief is reinforced quietly and constantly. Through comparison. Through performance. Through fear of falling behind.

But completion is not something achieved in the future. It is something remembered. The striving that follows birth is not proof of inadequacy. It is often the result of forgetting what was already true.

Success did not begin later in life. It began with the first breath. Everything after that has been negotiation. The work is not to become worthy. The work is to remember that we already were.