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According to my WordPress admin page, five-years and near two-hundred posts have resulted in 92 “followers”. So curious about just who’d bother “following” this wandering recreational blog, I spent a few minutes clicking down the list. There are some definite patterns.

About a quarter are writers whom I’d followed, possibly in response. Of those, however, few of the recreational writers (like myself) kept at it for very long, with most of the thought-journal sites having been deleted.   Also, few of the aspiring authors I started following early on are still producing anything, which is in sharp contrast to the “professionals”. Some of those have been more regularly producing content here, and for far longer than myself. And this pattern seems to be regardless of the subject matter or in what ways they’ve been published.

As for those who’ve “followed” me from out-of-the-blue and without even leaving a “liked” article or a comment, about three-fourths fall into various forms of what I’d term the “self-improvement” genre. Never having been big on the self-improvement thing (which perhaps explains much), I nevertheless decided to rummage through several of the sites, curious what they had to say.

Most of it’s the usual… aim high, don’t give up, believe in yourself…  Many also include a spiritual message, usually Christian, sometimes an Eastern/Indian perspective, and a couple of what I’d call either New Age or psychic spiritualism.  Regardless, self-improvement is one of those topics that seems terribly vague to me.

It reminds me of a local teacher who once told me that during his job interview, which took place immediately after an all-night drive with the windows down and the radio blaring to keep him awake, he was asked his definition of “success”. Of course, there’s no easy answer. But too tired, exhausted and hungry to care, he simply repeated the first twenty-seconds of this song, which he’d heard during the drive out. The words are commonly known as the, Serenity Prayer, and he said he thought it might actually have been what got him hired.

The usual contemporary rendering of the prayer goes something like:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
It’s a rather more poetic and abbreviated version of that used by the American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, for sermons he gave in the 1930s. And I think my friend grossly underestimated his intuitive grasp of just why its broad statement was such a perfect response to that question about “success”.

Humans are so accustomed to being sold things that we don’t even question how much is bought reflexively. And the human currency exchanged for what are sold as measures-of-success can be our very selves when we internalize and emulate cultural and social values.

“Meme-theory”, or “memetics”, proposes that this exchange of values is the very basis of culture. The evolutionary biologist and outspoken atheist, Richard Dawkins, has even proposed that these “memes”, or the things that we internalize as values and norms, are subject to natural selection in a way similar to biological evolution. Social groups that express beneficial memes prosper. Groups that don’t, die out.

So what memes are being sold as definitions of success, and how do we become successful? Sorting through those “self-improvement” sites, this is what stood out to me:
• Rising to the top by avoiding mediocrity.
• Following one’s dream or passion by accepting failures.
• Wealth as conveyed by money.

And this is where I’ll simply jump to another story altogether…

Arriving at this week’s Wednesday morning coffee group in a slightly unkempt state due to starting my morning run a little later than usual, I found it unusually lightly attended. Travel, family visits and other obligations had reduced our group to a single table in front of the coffee shop, though we were greeted by a couple of high-powered locals at the adjacent table before they returned to their own business. Notably present, however, was “John”, a local friend whom I’ve previously mentioned here… and here.

Not long after sitting down, my phone vibrated to indicate an email. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t even have my phone on me. But in this case, I was expecting the email and knew that it would need a fairly prompt response. Apologizing for the distraction, I plopped my phone onto the table for a couple of minutes, and then turned it off before putting it back into my pocket.

“What kind of phone is that?” John queried. I replied that it was rather old, but that it was rugged and had a big battery that made it good for travel, and that it still did everything I needed it to do. His next question shouldn’t have surprised me.

“What’s the single most important thing to you?” he asked. And then he added, “You can give it some thought if you like.” John sees himself as something of a success guru, and I knew this was one of those teacher-interview questions. Regardless, I didn’t need to think much.

“Knowing what I want,” I replied.

John smiled.  “So I take it you don’t want an iPhone 10?”

“I don’t have any use for one.”

And therein is the problem with becoming sold on a meme. It ignores what’s important to one’s self.

• Always having to be at the top implies a competition, and that doesn’t describe most of one’s life. Is the “best” car, or phone, or selfie an act of personal success, or is it merely the result of having bought into the idea that some arbitrary definition of success is automatic if it’s visible to others?  Mediocrity is only a vice when it describes how we use the tools in our lives.

• Not everyone has a passion. And even if one does, most aren’t pursuant to the practical aspects of day-to-day survival.  The ability to accept failures is indeed important. But failure can also be a signal to move on to something else. The quote often dubiously attributed to Albert Einstein goes that, “The definition of ‘insanity’ is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

• Wealth and money aren’t the same things. Wealth is a subjective goal. Money is a tool… a means to an end, and not an end in itself. And using a tool, any tool, to reach a goal requires both the understanding and discipline to use it, and knowing what you want as a result.

And knowing what you want isn’t the same thing as buying what’s being sold.  Rather, it’s the “…wisdom to know the difference.”
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Photos:
Tools by jesse orrico on Unsplash
House by Ian Keefe on Unsplash