What’s success, anyway?
Posted: - Modified: | happy, life, reflection
Cate Huston and I are figuring out happiness and success. She wonders if happiness inhibits success, and if that jolt of insecurity is necessary for greatness. I'm happy and successful, so I want to explore what that means, and if being content gets in the way of being great.
It seems like you need that kind of driving ambition in order to live the kind of life that gets written about in books. This is great. History has both happy geniuses and unhappy geniuses, although we tend to focus more on the unhappy geniuses. (Perhaps they make us feel better about ourselves?)
The language that we use to talk of happiness frames it as a pursuit, a goal. People dream of being happy. People work on being happy. People achieve happiness. Or they achieve their previously-set goals, only to find that the goalposts have moved. They thought they'd be happy with a hundred thousand dollars in the bank, and now they want a million.
What if happiness isn't something to be pursued? What if it just is? What if you just are?
What if you accept the world as it is, and find your serenity and happiness in each moment? What if you don't need to be entertained or loved each moment? What if you can find the grace in the pain and the joy of life?
I'm happy. Sometimes I'm annoyed on the surface, but I'm generally happy, and it's fun to grow even happier–to get better at reflexive happy-do. I'm successful: I'm alive, I'm happy, and I love. (This is not dependent on being loved back, although that makes things even awesomer!)
Realization: Growth doesn't stop when you're doing well. Your questions change. Instead of asking, “Why does this suck?” or “How can I make this suck less?”, you ask, “How wonderful can it be? How can I help get there? How can I help more people experience this?”
A tangent: One of the interesting job openings at work is looking for people who want to challenge the status quo. Reflecting on that, I realized that my drive is different. I want to share the status quo, recognizing that there are many kinds of status quo. My status quo is that I'm happy, I have a wonderful life, and I work with an awesome organization. Within that organization, there are pockets of status quo like that. Within each person, there are moments like that. I want to bring out those moments. There will probably be resistance, even from people who already want to change, but we don't have to be adversaries.
It's different when you start from a perspective of abundance and love.
It will be an interesting experiment to see if I can keep this perspective through the years. Deepen it. Share it.
What's success?
Dreaming, I could set my sights on a job title and climb the ladder; carve out a name for myself in history through endeavor; become a titan and create an empire. (It would be nice to be like Carnegie and plant libraries all over!) There are people with drive and ambition enough for that. People will do what needs to be done.
Maybe I will explore the little way, the ordinary life well-lived. As my parents' example continues to teach me, you don't need an Extraordinary Master Life Plan to make awesome things happen. My ordinary-but-awesome life so far is working well, although occasionally people need a reminder that these things are ordinary and doable.
So: success. What is it, anyway? If I can live, be happy, and share happiness, that should be pretty good. We can figure out how wonderful life can be (for as many people as possible) along the way.
Hmm, time to read up on philosophy again. I need better words and perspectives to explore this! =)