Self|Satire|Success

Worried about your own Success? You needn’t be.

Success is what happens when you stop reaching for it

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”

— Henry David Thoreau

By my last count, there was 5,738 articles on the Medium platform about success. How to envision it, plan for it, achieve it, maximize it, sell it, reward it, capture it and mount it on the wall in your den. You name it, it’s there for the offering.

Well, there may be slightly less than that number, but everyone, and I do mean everyone, is fascinated with the subject. They desire it with the heat of a thousand suns and yet, judging by the number of articles defining what it is, I don’t think anyone has a fucking clue about what success actually looks like. I mean, really looks like, when it comes to their life and their efforts within it.

You swiped right on Tinder and there she is at Starbucks the next day. Was that a success?

That fine looking ride in your driveway, with the fly wheels and a Bose stereo system — is that a success?

WHAT SUCCESS MEANS

Nothing.

Sorry, but that’s what success means when you go out hunting for it. Because “it” has been defined and redefined by every Madison Avenue advertising agency over the past 100 years. It, comes in the form of a car, a look, a life, a cigarette, a wife or husband, an income bracket, a job, and a certain shape while wearing a pair of jeans.

Success is meaningless, because its meaning is not attached to any one thing.

Its meaning is attached to everything that someone wants you to get, buy or agree with.

Trump won in 2016. You voted for him. You’re a success.

Your house has more bedrooms than your parent’s — you’re also a success.

WHAT SUCCESS DOESN’T MEAN

That you are doing what’s right. Now there’s another word, up there fighting for air with success. Do the right thing, at last count meant, 194 different things. Seriously. New meanings are added every day. According to reliable sources, that is.

Doing the right thing is judged by the result. Was someone helped? Was someone’s fear assuaged? Did someone get to pay their rent because of what you did? Was a loved one made to feel special? If the answer to all was yes, then you passed. You did the right thing.

However, if someone felt like shit after talking to you. If there were tears when you left and not the smile you were greeted with. If your employee now feels like a number and sees no future whatsoever, then you also passed. But for all the wrong reasons.

Success doesn’t mean zeroes after your annual income, though everyone is hard pressed to not see it this way. After all, money solves all problems. Nothing like a few Benjamins to get that fucking round peg into that square hole.

Success doesn’t mean the job of your dreams, the vacations, the on-demand foot massages you get at the men’s club. Or that $50 cigar you’re puffing on, while sipping Johnnie Walker Blue, in designer shorts and sandals.

That means you’ve got money to burn. The tenacity of my neighbor’s horny Tom cat and a disorder called DSW. Also known as, Domineering Self-Worth.

DSW, much like success, means whatever the fuck you want it to mean. That whatever you’re thinking, is right. That whatever you thought yesterday, was also right. That what you need, even if it’s six or eight of them, that too is right. And a success.

SUCCESS EXISTS ONLY AS AN AD CAMPAIGN

If you did the right thing; studied hard, worked hard, made a life that you feel proud of, do you really need a label for it, in order to feel good about what you did?

In 642 AD, somewhere north of modern-day Paris, were there people running around, searching for success? Did they write it in their fucking journals and post it on church doors, as Martin Luther would do a thousand years later?

Must be a success!

Or is it a modern construct? Something that is absolutely essential in selling anything? Create a demand or desire for it. Then tell everyone they’ll be a success if they have it.

If wearing tight-fitting jeans that cuts off the blood flow to your legs and makes your stumble, means you’re a success, then by all mean, go for it.

If having more money than God, while striving diligently to have twice as much money as God, makes you a success, then I am certain you deserve it.

Just don’t call it a success story. Call it what it is — greed. Or simply, DSW.

SUCCESS AS A LAST RESORT

I love statistics, crazy about their usefulness and their ability to fuck with one’s mind unlike anything else, ever created by man.

For example: In the United States alone there are 186,452,089* people who are technically a success but choose not to use that term, because it doesn’t fit within their moral compass. And because, per the latest edition of GQ, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Modern Mechanics, and Modern Lepidopterists, they probably aren’t one.

*Numbers subject to change without notice or reason.

Success is the refuge of last resort to people who are doing something they have doubts about and are unsure of how to spin the bad, insensitive, inconsistent or innocuous things happening in their lives, in a positive way.

We resort to calling our lives a success when it reaches certain criteria. Like the square footage of our homes. The resale value of our cars. The number jewels in our watches, or the number of watches on our wrist.

Success has value. Both real and imagined. It has cache. Like a label on a bag, increasing its retail value by a factor of 100, compared to what it actually cost to make it.

But true success. That state of grace where people do what they can, with what they have, in order to help others and themselves achieve the best that they are capable of, is the opposite of DSW.

There are other, older words that cover these events. Like integrity, honor, commitment, responsibility, gratitude, compassion and understanding.

But granted, they are not as fancy and I daresay, not as likely to get others clicking on them.

Success is an alluring mate in one’s life. A non-sexual, sensual fantasy that takes us willingly to bed every night and sets fire to our dreams in a wickedly delicious way. Success is hard to beat. Hard to fight, when we believe it is what we deserve in reward for all we have done.

It used to be the doing, that was important. The gratitude expressed by those helped, the just reward.

But things have changed. Success nowadays is merely a reflection of those changes. And who said DSW was such a bad thing, anyway?

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” ― Oscar Wilde

Joe Luca is writer and editor for ILLUMINATION and a published author and writer of children’s stories, short fiction, non-fiction articles, screenplays and poetry. Publications include Child’s Life, Children’s Playmate and others. There are some other articles below — have a read. And thank you for stopping by.

Sherry McGuinn Chris Hedges P.G. Barnett Paul Myers MBA Kathryn A. LeRoy, Ph.D. Ann Venkataraman Caroline de Braganza Alison Tennent Tree Langdon B. A. Cumberlidge.