A Mantra For Life And Success

The roaring Leo the lion in the MGM logo 'speaks' a mantra which is inscribed on a ribbon around a ring. The mantra is ARS GRATIA ARTIS. Certainly Leo does not know Latin but that MGM motto expresses a great philosophy which can be adopted in life to make it meaningful. 'Ars gratia artis' means 'art for art's sake'.

Sounds great (Latin always sounds great) but not practical at all. In fact anything sounding a little philosophical is deemed inconsequential in this dog-eat-eat world; it might be great for extolling our banal lives but it certainly can't be used to achieve success. But such a perspective is quite narrow and the life whizzes past while we keep on moving forward in oblivion.

The truth is 'doing something for the sake of doing it' shows how passionate someone with this attitude is towards his work and life. Read the biographies of great people and you will find that what made them great apart from their genius is their passionate attitude towards their work. They kept on doing their work; success followed. An office clerk is obsessed with the idea that there is something mysterious and undiscovered about how the universe works, "that Newton fellow missed something" he thinks, and later his theory turns upside down our whole perception of reality. Einstein was a rare genius but he was also a passionate man who imagined riding a beam of light. The world is full of such stories.

Sir Ken Robinson has written a great book "The Element" which is replete with stories of passionate people. The book asserts that those who seek to find their 'element' can only live an enriched and successful life. Success is not only materialistic and does have the contentment component associated with it. The 'element' is doing something you like and doing it with passion.

A passionate person enjoys the process and is not much concerned with the result, although it is true that success follows passion in most cases. Doing something for the sake of doing it expresses the 'mindful' way of living life - living the present moment to its fullest.