What is the Ultimate Success?

What is the ultimate in communication? What has to happen for one to declare that when it comes to communicating, they have reached the top of the mountain? I raise those related questions because I am not sure there is a clear or set answer to them. In sports, for example, I suppose a player could say the ultimate is when their team wins a game or perhaps when they do something spectacular to help the team win that game or maybe if they as an individual are honored by being inducted into that sport's hall of fame. What is the "ultimate" when it comes to communication and business? How about when it comes to parenting? What about the entertainment industry?

I do not see the questions I raised initially as being all that easy to address simply because the answer to them - a best - is situational. Do people feel the most satisfaction when they are heard and understood or is their bell rung when they have understood others? In the field of public relations, what is the ultimate success of a practitioner? Is their measure of success based on how well their client does or in what they did on behalf of their client? To me, communication is a tough field to judge when it comes to success simply because how well one does is often dependent upon the perspectives of others.

President Trump could claim a recent appearance on television was a major success because a record-number of people watched his show. But many of those same viewers could claim they only watched the President in the hope he would say something inflammatory or off-the-wall. Success, regarding communication, then, could very well be in the eye of the beholder. One final analogy: A painting is not unlike communication. How does the painter of a piece judge the success of her or his work? Do they assess the quality of the piece or is their judgment based on whether the art work is eventually sold? And so this dilemma is with communication.