Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it...

Tennessee Williams, the bard of human longing and fragility, once unveiled a paradox that speaks with timeless force: “Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it... Success is shy—it won't come out while you're watching.” In these words, he teaches us that the pursuit of greatness is not a matter of staring endlessly at the prize, but of losing oneself in the work, the passion, the calling itself. Like a shy creature, success does not appear when hunted directly; it emerges quietly, almost unexpectedly, when the labor is done with love and devotion.

To say that success is blocked by concentrating on it is to name the great trap of ambition. Many souls fix their eyes on the glitter of recognition, the applause of the world, or the wealth of reward. Yet in their obsession, they neglect the very thing that leads to success: the work itself. They plan endlessly, they calculate, they dream of the crown—yet they never sing the song, write the play, or plant the seed. Williams warns us that to cling too tightly to the outcome is to strangle it before it is born.

His image of success as shy is deeply evocative. It is as if success is a timid guest that enters the room only when we are too busy with our craft to notice. The playwright himself knew this truth, for he labored through years of obscurity, writing with little recognition, until suddenly his work—The Glass Menagerie—was hailed as genius. But Williams did not win success by staring at it; he won it by pouring his soul into his art, even when no one was listening. Success came quietly, like dawn breaking after a long night.

History gives us countless examples of this hidden law. Consider Gregor Mendel, the monk who patiently bred peas in his monastery garden. He was not seeking fame or fortune; he sought only to understand the mysteries of heredity. In his lifetime, his work was ignored. But long after his death, his experiments were recognized as the foundation of genetics. Success was shy—it would not appear when he sought it, but it emerged when the world was ready to see. Mendel’s legacy teaches us that true success often comes as a byproduct of faithful devotion, not as the object of restless pursuit.

Even in the realm of invention, we see the same truth. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin not by obsessing over glory, but by quietly observing a mold in his laboratory. He had no grand plan for revolutionizing medicine. Yet his curiosity and devotion to science allowed success to reveal itself. Had he been staring only at the dream of fame, he might have overlooked the small, “unimportant” accident that became a miracle for humanity.

The wisdom of Williams, then, is this: focus not on success, but on sincerity. Pour yourself into your art, your craft, your calling. Do not chase the shy guest; prepare the house of your labor, and let success enter when it wills. Obsession with reward blinds us to the beauty of the work itself, while devotion to the work brings reward in its own time.

So, O children of tomorrow, take this teaching to heart. Do not fix your eyes on the shimmering crown, lest you stumble on the path that leads to it. Instead, walk the path with diligence, with joy, with honesty. Let your mind dwell not on applause, but on excellence. Success will come when you least expect it, and when it does, it will be truer and more lasting than if you had chased it like prey.

Thus remember always: success is shy. Do not call after it with desperate cries, but labor faithfully and let it find you. When you turn your eyes from the prize to the work, when you cease watching for its arrival, you will find one day that success has been standing quietly beside you all along.