What is Success Part 2
As I progressed through the decades of my life, my goals and definition of success changed. Yes, in my twenties I was racing forward to the world ahead of me (avoiding getting caught by a woman and marrying). In my thirties, I struggled through aimless careers and relationships with women. My thirties was a grey decade of frustration. In my forties I finally started my own company and found boundless energy to make it work to the detriment of my family and other relationships. It was also fast moving but not a proud decade. In my fifties I finally started to calm down and become a better human being. Its when I opened our powerlifting gym, a happy time of my life. But it was also a time a struggle both financially and romantically. I seemed to be more sensitive. In my sixties, everything fell apart. The sky cracked open and I experienced the worst pain of my life. A whole decade of pain. The pain of losing everything financially and emotionally. Living destitute in a garage. My daughter disowned me, my dog died, my best friend betrayed me, my God's present to me girlfriend left me and my family except for my mother looked down on me. But at the same time, in this unthinkable pain I grew the most. I read and thought and studied more that my entire school life. I was driven to find answers. Finally, after all this searching, I simply gave up. I lost all faith. I had no goals, no plans and worst I couldn't see my way out of this. It seemed like life would never get better. Never. This was it. I had achieved all the success before and now I had no desire to go back and try to achieve the same successes. It was quiet. Everything died. I died.
From that absolute quiet, from six feet under ground level, I started to make an effort to crawl out. But nothing was the same. Everything was just noise, just a distraction. I felt old and beaten and 'who cares'. My mother still talked with me and told me to make goals and get going. I was in a nihilistic dark place. I was in a hole. I wished a car would hit me and end it. I walked. And I started to write a blog about my feelings about my dog.
Fast forward to my 70's and I am still here. But everything has changed. My daughter is my closest friend and my mother is my closest friend. My sister and my feelings of love toward her have come back. Marven my hand me down male cat purrs and cuddles all day and provides the most cat love a person can get. I have a handful of friends who are really good people. Financially, I am not lacking. (I started investing and learning to trade while in the garage). So you could say I have crawled out of the hole and am on progress to a quieter different kind of success.
So, what is success today?
Well to start it is not anything close to what success meant to me before. Gone, at least for now, are the sports goals of success. Gone are the being the best in the world in different areas. Gone is striving. It is replaced with taking my time, with "No Rush" and appreciating what is in front of me now. Learning to do woodworking and to build things is my new sport. Learning to stay ahead technologically is my enjoyment. Keeping up with my few friends and my family (except for my father for now), and taking care of my mother is what gives me peace and enjoyment. I've started acrylic painting, pencil drawing and find I like it and am pretty good at it. I am delving into the past in my family tree and learning that I am not so much an individual as much a replicate of my mother. My DNA is what I am. I see for the first time Ukrainian soldiers who look exactly like me. 92% of my DNA is the same as theirs. I see where I came from. My face, my nose my character, all these things came from my ancestry. I did not create them. I am very little individual and more a continuation of those before me. My goals are no longer to stand out. Instead they are more to understand where I came from and continue my heritage.
Today my goals are shorter, more like to do lists. Things that need to get done. And I revel in the feeling of success when I achieve them. I painted and rearranged the kitchen and now everyday I sit in the kitchen drinking coffee and thoroughly enjoying my success. I also painted and redid my bedroom with an Ikea bed frame on sale for cheaper than buying the wood and with mattresses I found at the curb that people threw out. Yes I cleansed, steamed and washed them with hydrogen peroxide. But now what a feeling of satisfaction to sleep in the greatest bed in the world with beautiful sheets that I bought for next to nothing at Value Village. My bedroom is a completely transformed heaven and peace and beauty. Slowly I will redo all the rooms in the house to reflect how I want to live, to be peaceful and beautiful. Slowly I get things done and this is now my greatest sense of success.
So what is success? The answer is it changes. The goal posts are moved all the time. What is important today will be different tomorrow. It depends on where you are today, what is in front of you now.