What’s success?
Money? Social relevance? Waking up in a viscous pool of your own blood?
I just watched (five minutes of because I can’t sit through a whole T.V. show in one sitting) an Arianna Huffington thing that talked about her earlier years, her time on the debate team, the political stuff, Huffington post…
Just… Pretty much everything except the amazing mug-work she’s had done.
(Actually she hasn’t and is anti-scalpel. I just get jealous of people who look better in middle age than I do at thirt-…Twenty-five. Than I at twenty-five.)
Oh, yeah. And it also mentions how her type-A go-getter personality landed her in a crimson layer of her own sanguine life fuel after passing out and clocking her noggin on her desk.
At first, she didn’t “get” it.
It couldn’t be the fact that she was getting two hours of sleep a day, seven days a week.
It had to be a tumor or a neurological disorder or something – she was sure of it.
“Doctor’s office waiting rooms are a great place to ask life’s big questions,” she said.
Aw, brotha. I know that one all too well. Except, I feel like over the past several years, more and more of them have added plastered plasma screen idiot boxes to every wall. From the pill mills to the P.T. offices, it was either a barrage of banality in newscaster cadence – or sometimes some B stoner flick.
No room for thought, unless you brought your own headphones.
But if you were to silence the sensory input enough to ask yourself the big questions: what is success?
I’ve heard it being the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm (unless the nature of the failure is the same, cause I think Einstein had a special definition for that.)
I dunno. The “change or die” concept seems like success to me.
Not “change your whole essence”, mind you. More like keep changing everyday. Keep growing. Evolving. Learn something new or do something scary before you lay down and watch the back of your eyelids every night. And that’s both really easy and really hard for this betch. It’s easy ‘cause I don’t know much and am easily made nervous.
And it’s hard because I’m, ya know, lazy when it comes to change.
As for Arianna? I’ve yet to read about her life lessons she wrote after her work station head butt, but I’m pretty sure the thing she said before I hit the power button holds true. Something like,
“Life’s a fight between letting shit happen and making shit happen.”
Wait? Was it “fight”? Or did she say “dance”?
Also I’m not sure she said the word “shit”…
Nah, that’s def what she said. Sounds like the classy Huff I know.
Anyway, the idea is that common theme I hear with respect to happiness and success: balance. The idea that etreme action and extreme apathy each wreak equal misery. And for regular Joe Schmoe’s and Jane Doe’s who define success as real happiness, yes. That.
But what about people who don’t want real happiness? They want their wrong definition of happiness – like elevated social status? As someone with (metaphorically freshly amputated legs dragging herself down a rocky) a spiritual path, I do wonder:
Can this equanimity thing work on a daily basis if you’re striving to make your way in a big way? The “Time to go practice what I’m going to say for my Larry King interview in the mirror” way?
Whether you’ve got a startup company, want a political position, or just want to be famous enough to be recruited the illuminati club…
“On Wednesdays we wear pink. It’s Thursday, Gretchen. You can’t sit with us anymore”
…I feel like all of that stuff requires a lot of “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” mindset – initially.
So is equanimity reserved for the obscure? Is that a luxury the elite can’t afford until they’ve already built an empire of relevance and their only job is to watch their backs for Brutus? Is the “balance” less of any everyday thing and more of a “kill yourself for three decades, coast for another three, then die of a heart attack”? I like a lot of introspection myself, but I can’t help but wonder if we’re supposed to reserve cerebral spirituality for our golden years. Ya know – after our bodies don’t work anymore anyway and all we CAN exercise is our brains?
Plus, the old faceplant blood pool story would make for a great “I’m hardcore” story at brunch.
Especially if I told it after everyone’s ordered their v8 and vodka.