Success

Relating to a recent post, what is success to you? Is it something you can put in words, or is it a vague notion of professional accomplishments and material accumulation? That sounds shallow but this isn't a place for judgement, but honest exploration. Maybe it's your children holding good jobs and happy marriages? Maybe it's peace and harmony in the home?

 Maybe we'll take some of each? 😆

Our idea of success, Whether vague or clear, is often something given to us, not original to ourselves. That isn't always a bad thing. Let's  look at the origin of these notions.

Professional acumen can be the result of hard work, sound education, and good interpersonal skills. All good things.

The money that flows in from your career buys the things needed for both you and your family. Another good thing.

Peace and harmony in relationships means personal, tailored attention is given to each person we care to give it to. Hopefully those are the people we live with. A wonderful thing.

So, society's definition of success has good roots. The roots are in human virtue and self-giving. It all seems so clear and easy in writing! But life's not like that. There is so much we can't control, most of whom are people! And wrenches can be thrown in our best laid plans.

And maybe our plans start to control us. This is when we get caught at work until late in the evening, every evening, to get the money to buy more of what would be nice but we don't truly need. When the perfection of the house takes precedence over the people we've created it for, including ourselves. When we are so busy we forget to listen, share, and play. When we don't pray.

My friends, it's time to regroup and define success for ourselves. Because it just may be something that hasn't occurred to us yet.