When I think of the word successful, I pause—uncertain what, and to whom that world belongs. It feels imported from a bright city of glass and steel, a place of climbing, accumulation, announcements. Not my world, never was. For those who thrive there, forgive me—no place is for everyone, and that world was not mine to enter and 'succeed.'
I learned this early on. Once, offered a job in a nearby shiny city, I went for an interview, credentials in hand, and was sent to a doctor’s office— weighed, measured, and told without kindness to lose ten pounds before beginning work. I was so humiliated, I never went back.
In truth, they did me a favor: I could never have grown beneath such fluorescent scrutiny, inside their narrow definitions.
I do not wish to climb ladders or be measured in the acceptable domains of currency or applause. I want to belong to something greater than myself, to listen until the soil tells me its story of persistence, to work until sweat drenches my brow and call that satisfaction.
Perhaps success is not a person at all, but a rhythm—the papaya trees bearing fruit again after drought, the scent of damp earth as the first rain returns, the bees remembering where the flowers have opened.
Nature is my teacher, and my only measure of success is how the gardens I have tended with my own hands respond.
Gardens of the Pac Northwest - 2010 bj
Hear, hear! 👏🏼
I could’ve custom written this for you I’m sure! 😊
🙂
It is indeed a puzzle to me how others define/describe “successful” people, Bela. Money and acclaim always seem to figure in it, though to my mind the most interesting people to be around are generally the ones looked upon as different enough to be slightly suspicious…
I wonder what may define success in decades to come? Maybe lush gardens and gardeners shall be status.
I say kindness and a simple contentment ought figure larger. Best to you, it seems you are enjoying both.
I am indeed enjoying life back here in our little community in Hawaii. And yes, money and acclaim as success? I want to say that started really amping up in the 1950s. The desire to aspire to that sort of lifestyle is completely unsustainable, especially given what we know, now that we have moved out of the holocene into an age that is defined by some scientists as the sixth extinction event. This is not happening overnight, but indeed that is where we find ourselves. You think we would develop a little more sense and awareness at this time. The hope is that we do.
Blessings to you, VL, in your little corner of this amazing world. 💗
I’m not sure what success means, or if we even need to think about it unless we’re looking for some kind of validation from the outside. I’m just bumbling along as best I can. (K)
Same here! As I intimated, I really think it’s for the young and aspiring. Surely by now we’ve figured some stuff out 😉 But still, I was intrigued by the prompt.
They ask some strange questions, but they do make you think.
😎