Dreading Success
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“I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and one behind.”
George Bernard Shaw
What is success? I don’t know, but I think about it. Whatever it is. Don’t we all want to taste success in our lives? Don’t we all want to be able to look back over the years and conclude that we led a successful, good life? I think so. Maybe. Hmm.
Ultimately, it depends on how we define success, doesn’t it? Is success about reaching financial goals or personal milestones or existential posts? Is success remotely objective or does it mean different things for each of us? Again, I don’t know. I am a mistress of not knowing, it seems.
What I do know is that I like George Bernard Shaw’s sentiment above. Success, to the extent that it connotes some kind of sparkling peak of finality, is something I do not want. Rather, I prize evolution, growth, progress, a constant sense of becoming, of getting somewhere. Maybe success is not a destination at all, but rooted firmly in these things, in these wonderful albeit less shiny things?
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How do you define success? Do you too dread the kind of success Shaw describes? How often do you think about success? Do you think success is something singular and objective or rather something elusive that comes in many flavors?
I like your idea of it being rooted in becoming. I always generally looked at it as a personal definition for each person. For me, success is security, love, happiness. It’s not necessarily a final point but rather a benchmark to continue growing
Of course the idea of “becoming” is a good one. It is an idea I intend to embrace for a great long while. However, there’s a part of me that thinks one day I might like a sense of completion. When I’m 70 or 80 mightn’t it be nice to sit back and say, “I’ve become whatever success I am going to become and now I get to sit back and relax”? I think that might be lovely as well.
Evolution, growth, progress – yes – those of us who set the bar high (and continually move it) focus on those aspects of success.
Still, some things are about the result. That’s where it gets hard. Which result and in what context? What makes for a “win” and a balance of savoring, without sitting on laurels?
No easy answers. Every one of us experiences wins and losses, our best efforts achieving our end, and then again – not. It’s what makes us compassionate, appreciative, and still working toward new goals.
I like the mix of process and accomplishment, and a realistic and pragmatic view that we “can’t win them all.” Of course, that also means we can win some!
Today I have a success story that sounds a bit like failure. I went grocery shopping yesterday. And I took a class while I was in town.
Apparently, when I got home, the last two sacks of groceries didn’t make it past the mud room because when my husband got home just after midnight he found them there and put the yogurt away then.
This morning I found the yogurt in the fridge and couldn’t remember putting it there. Yikes! I think I forgot and knew right away he’d found my mistake.
When he awoke and I asked him about it he said that, “Yes, he put the yogurt away.” I was so sorry. “Why?” He said it looked like maybe I was in a hurry, or got distracted making my son’s volcano, or maybe I was just ready to go to bed.
I started to cry but confessed I wanted to laugh. What a silly thing to be upset by. A silly little role I’ve carved out for myself “The woman who doesn’t forget to put the groceries away.”
But I forget things all the time. And now my success is to forgive myself. And to believe that he does too. Kinda silly. I know. But real for me.
Success is being happy with what you have.
Certainly, success comes in many flavors. A recent “success” of mine lately was leaving the 9 to 5 world to be a farmer. That did not rate as a “successful” thing to do for some I know, who saw it rather as a waste of a good college education. But this past weekend, at a conference where I was an exhibitor and a speaker, I found myself telling people who stopped by my table how proud I am of what I do, and that I am so fortunate because I love my life. I found myself repeating it to total strangers. “I love my life.” Is there any greater aspiration than that? (I totally agree with Jack’s sentiment!)
…and loving one’s life still leaves lots of room for growing, becoming, learning new things!
I think embracing the process, the evolution, is key in motherhood. Because there are very few certainties, or even outcomes–it’s all about the ongoing, day-to-day process. And making friends with that.
Success is in the relationships we have in our life and how we help others
Success is having peace of mind. Truly. Without reservation.
i recently told my partner that i had peaked in a project that i did last year. i looked him straight in the eye and said that it was too bad i’d done my awesomest work at 25. he looked at me and said, “you only think that because you don’t know yourself at 35 yet.” his point, as i took it, is that success is relative. if i can let my definition of it shift along with me, it can be a tool for self-acceptance. if i don’t, i can keep looking back on that project i did last year, lamenting that i’ll never do it again. i suppose, in some ways, the premise is that, through simply being we are successful. we are succeeding in being, which doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement or desires to work through to fruition, but that we are never failing in the grandest sense.
but i join you, aidan, in your uncertainty.