Often in this world, we are consumed by a need to measure our lives against others, or to measure our own successes and failures against ideals that we hold up to ourselves. I wonder why we do this. Often, it leads to nothing but misery, anxiety and depression...
How do I measure success? That's a very important question to ask myself. If I am measuring it by what I am "supposed" to have achieved by a certain age (as deemed by my friends, family or society at large), then I have probably failed miserably in a lot of ways.
I am childless in a world that seems to value having children above most things, because it gives parents a sense of worth and value and reason to live, etc.
But that wasn't for me. As a result of me not being able to convince myself to bring more humans into this overcrowded world, I deeply hurt the wife that I had, and she left me. She now has a baby with someone that isn't me.
So there we have it - I am a failure at the one thing Charles Darwin says we are hard-wired to do - propagate...
I am essentially unemployed, and have been either chronically underemployed or totally unemployed for about 3 years. I will never be able to hold down a full time high stress job again (unless of course I want to ride the bipolar rollercoaster at its wildest again and again and again, and that's a sure way to shorten my life expectancy).
So, once again, if I measure my life by other people's standards, I am anything but a success.
Because I have some rather "out there" views about materialism and the stupid things that the vast number of human beings do to try and inject some value to their empty lives (thus raping and pillaging the planet in the process), I have very few real friends left. Most of them are too busy chasing illusions to be of any value to me in my life, or for me to be of any value in their lives. And so I am mostly isolated.
Once again, by other people's measurement, I am a runaway failure...
To date, I have written 2 books. I identify myself as a writer more than I identify myself as anything else. So far, I have sold exactly 3 copies of each book, bought by the one or two friends and family who cared enough to fork out the modest amount of dough to support me in my life goal or acknowledge that writing is my dearest-held passion.
Bit of a fizzer, that one, if I measure myself by other people's ideals of success and failure. I ain't exactly a J. K. Rowling in the making...
So, where am I at now? I'm currently burning through my life savings on the way to the poor house, because having a bit of money in the bank (as opposed to having it tied up in bricks and mortar) means that I obviously don't need help from a heartless cruel system that doesn't care. Ah well, at least I am "contributing to society" by paying my taxes.
Once more, not a lot to be proud of or happy about if I apply other people's conception of success and failure.
How's my health? Physically, I have multiple issues because my genes suck. None of those issues qualify me for disability or anything like that, despite the debilitation and pain. Mentally, I have multiple issues. Bipolar is a bitch. In fact, most people probably assume I'm a hypochondriac or a bludger, and that makes them feel so much better about things.
That's another tick in the "failure" column, BTW, if I choose to see it as such.
I am primarily an introvert. I hate crowds. I generally hate people. I would rather be left alone most of the time, and I especially hate it when people assume that the best thing for me is to drag me into a social situation that I'd rather not be in.
To them, I even fail at being a "normal" social human being.
I was too late to say what I should have said for years and years, as I held my dying mother's senseless hand in hospital. As far as that goes, failure doesn't get much more spectacular than that...
All of that stuff should get me down. And it did. For many years in fact. And that just compounded it and made it worse, and I spiralled down and down. Feeling bad about feeling bad - the ultimate downer. Why bother? That became a very constant and real question...
But do you know what? I am happier than I have ever been in my life. That's because I no longer give a flying f*** about what other people see as success and failure. I invite them to inspect my raised middle digit...
When I stopped applying those mistaken ideas of success and failure, and instead just grabbed life by the short and curlies and started living it for all it was worth, that was when I finally woke up and started life properly. Before that, I had just been shuffling along, letting the disappointments pile up. Even worse, I had been living a second-hand life, defining what I should and shouldn't do based on what I thought other people or society would expect of me. That is no way to live. That's just waiting to die.
As I look upon my fast-approaching middle age, I don't see that things are too late. In fact, things are just beginning. And they're the important things. The ones that *I* want to do for *me*. Those are the things that really matter.
I've got nobody else to blame for what I personally deem my successes and failures. They are my own, and I own them. I harbour no bitterness towards anybody any more (I used to, but have let go of it).
If someone hurts me, I learn from it. As a result of this, it doesn't end up hurting me, but actually ends up helping me. Such a simple little shift in my thinking, and it has saved my life, even transformed it to a life of wonder and delight.
I am grateful to all of the people that I have interacted with in my life. Good or bad, success or failure, it doesn't matter. It's all part of life, and life doesn't play favourites. The only thing we can really do is to roll with it, and try to make the most of what we have got. It may not sound like much, especially when things are at their worst. But any kind of life sure beats the alternative, as far as I am concerned.
I hope that all people who struggle in this world find their way to a transformed way of viewing the world. The world is not against you. In fact, "the world" doesn't really even notice that you exist. That sounds like a hugely negative thing to say, but it is actually hugely liberating when you look at it the right way. Even the most important person in the world is totally inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I for one do not matter one jot in this world. But I matter to me. That's about all that I can control. I can't "make" people love me or like me. I can't force them to do anything, in fact. All I can do is to be me. The rest, I leave up to the world to sort out.
What matters is not this eternal process of measuring our lives against the lives of others or the ideals that we have for our own life. We waste so much time and life measuring, measuring, measuring, and all it leads to is bitterness and disappointment. All of this constant trying to become something or someone else is a terrible waste of life energy. Better just to live, and extract what incidental joys you can from it.
There is much of worth and depth to be found in the world around us. Even staring at dew on a spider's web in the morning sunlight opens up a universe of colour and possibility. Seeing this very thing this morning was a huge success for me. I observed living jewels, sparkling with rainbow colours in the life-giving light.
I truly hope the best for everyone, myself included. Everyone deserves to see light in their lives. The trick is to appreciate the light without endlessly measuring it.
Hugs and happy vibes beaming to you all. 🙂
