Success is

This is an extension of a conversation I was involved in earlier today (though I guess most of these posts are, really)

I live in a smallish town. Even in today's modern world where travel is available to nearly everyone, I know so many people who have lived their whole lives in about a 150km (100-ish miles) radius of where they live right now, and have no desire to expand their horizons any further than that. For a few more, their biggest trip would be one of the major beaches to the north or south, extending that radius by maybe another 100km.

This is not the point, though we are heading there. There is nothing wrong with staying close to home. Whatever makes you happy. If that's what you do to feel safe and happy and confident in yourself then great. That's kinda what life is about.

The earlier conversation:

One friend of mine was flicking through Facebook, just checking through updates. I do it. If you're reading this you probably do it too. Said friend was flicking through pictures of friends old and new when up came a picture of an old schoolfriend, sitting on a camp chair in (I'm assuming from some of the things said) in his backyard. The long shot showed a nice beach stretching away to the horizon. The house to the left looked relatively new, big, comfy. To the side of the house was a big boat on a trailer, and next to that was a large (huge was my comment) RV. The guy in the picture was holding up a can of beer, a big grin on his face. He looked happy and I said as much.

My friend looked a little sad. Not really understanding (I don't do subtle that well) I asked what was wrong. The response:

" I wonder why I wasn't successful like that."

That's one of the things about not being able to read the subtlties in conversation. You never really get to pick up on all the hidden undertones or secret hints in comments. I tend to take things a little more directly, literally even.

The guy in the picture looked happy. I'm hoping he worked hard and achieved all he could achieve to gain all the cool stuff he had rather than juts have it handed to him, but hey, if luck favoured him one day via Lotto or one of those magic "rich aunties" with few relatives then cool as well. That's the way the Universe works. No matter how he got it (unless he stole it, in which case look out buddy, you may not have it all that long) he intended it and the Universe handed it on. Maybe it was pat of his karma, and he was on a high, about ready to drop into a well of despair. Whatever, at that moment it was aces for him.

I looked at Friend and asked what was so wrong with his life.

Do you ever have one of those days when you've asked just one question too many, when you have inadvertently show just a smidge too much interest and the response just catches you and drags you off into territory you didn't really want to travel in?
The following is not an exact transcript, but you'll guess the tone and timbre as you read along ...

" When we were in school, he was just an average bloke, not great in school. Kind of a clown. No one really liked him. But look at him. He's got everything. What have I got?"

So many thoughts just explode it's hard to keep them all in and in order.

The first point I managed to get out was the fact that he had a lot of toys but I didn't see anything personal about: no wife, no kids/grandkids, not even a dog. Maybe he's got them, but hey, maybe not. True, someone had to take the photo, but that could have been a mate,  neighbour, whatever. Might have been one of those cameras you ca delay the shot until you make it into the frame jobs. I was new to the relationship, no back-story.

The tale continued:

But what have I got? I work a crappy job, my missus doesn't sop complaining, the kids don't listen. My house is a dump that's falling apart ...

The list went on. Friend was getting more upset about his "failure" in life and just sort of wandered away, muttering to himself about the unfairness of it all. I was a little taken aback, because, as far as I knew, until that moment Friend looked like he was way happy with his lot. His kids are wonderful, around me at least, his missus is a nice girl who does as much as she can for just about anyone. His house is old, but nice, dry and warm. He's got a pool, a job that - I agree - is probably not the best, but in a rural town that is slowly collapsing in on itself, having a job and keeping it is a kind of success in it's own right. I wondered, and at one point actually exclaimed aloud (scaring the shit out of a couple of people innocently standing nearby)
what the fuck his problem really was. (Remember what I said about subtle earlier?)

Thinking and ruminating on this for a few hours, here's what I came up with on the topic of personal success.

1.      The notion of "he who dies with the most toys is bullshit. I you die you ain't playing with them, someone else is, possibly someone you don't like.

2.      If you're alive, you are successful, because nothing spells FAIL like dying early, not matter how pretty a corpse you leave behind.

3.      If you've got or had someone in your life that you can honestly say you love or have loved, you are a winner. Not too much beats the fact you have someone who means more to you than anything material in your life, except for

4.      If you have, or have had someone in your life who loves/loved you. Sorry, but that's the ultimate goal, isn't it? Knowing that someone out there thinks about you, cares about you as much or more than themselves, or pretty much anything in this world.

5.      An extension of the last two points: friends. 

6.      Kids; yours, your kids kids (grandkids, hopefully I live long enough to see them), even friends kids. The energy of children is amazing. No matter how down or tired you are, sit for a while and watch a one year old just live life. If you don't walk away with a smile you're possibly dead from the neck up.

7.      If you have a house to live in, and food to eat, a warm place to sleep and some personal time, you win. There's a lot out there that don't. If you can read and write you're one step further up the success ladder, because there are many that will never get the opportunity to learn, and the day you stop learning is the day you start to petrify.

8.      If you have some material things you like, then great. If you've earned them in your endeavours, enjoy them. Don't be greedy, share if you can, pay forward your good fortune if you can.

9.      If you've never been physically, emotionally or spiritually hurt, you've had a big win. In that, if you have and you learned a lesson that stopped it from happening again, then you've won there as well.

10.    If you like where you live, what you do, where you are and who you're with, who gives a rats arse what others think. Maybe that's true success; being satisfied with what you have, happy with who you are and something exciting to look forward to.



As always, I may be wrong, but I don't think so this time. Do me a favour (If you're reading this, Friend and I think you might be), this is directed at you,

Go out and enjoy the life you have. Anything more is a gift. What you have is the best present you've received so far, so have fun.

Enjoy your day.

People, just think about it.

Had an email from a young lady friend of a young male friend of mine the other day. On the face of it she seemed a little wild and random, but polite and nice when face to face. I was a little surprised at the message.

Basically, she was thanking me for being "nice" to her in our conversations during her relationship with my young friend. I told her I tried - though sometimes didn't succeed - in being nice as much as I could.She explained some of her background (I didn't think of it as being bad) and how so many people she knew kept putting her down because she believed in really odd and old fashioned things ie; fidelity in relationships, honesty, abstinence until marriage, really heavy concepts like that. Some in their circle called her wierd, a fruitcake and other rude things and made her feel less than worthy.

Sorry, in my book she is a hero.

Someone willing to stand up for they believe in despite the peer pressure, despite the negativity being thrust their way. This young lady had/has a plan for her life; education, finding a job she enjoyed enough to spend her life working at, loving her partner when the time came to settle down, being honest in all relationships. Sorry, thinking like that is becoming a rarity these days.

Right at that point I would have adopted her.

But her stand had the negative effect of making her put different masks over her personality so she could "fit in". She changed herself to suit the group, because she thought she was powerless to change the group.

The best you can do is hold on to your truth. Be yourself, so long as it is HONESTLY yourself. You will suffer the slings and arrows of others not so far up the evolutionary ladder as you, but if you are honest about who you are and what you believe then you are a winner.

Don't change to lower yourself. Don't try to change others (that trick never works!).

And don't change to please others.

As Popeye said:

And he didn't mean a root vegetable.

In today's more enlightened language, you are a GURU.

Break it down ...

Gee, You are you!

Be the You you want to be.

The Test

Most of the old religions, and almost all of the newer ones, all speak of the life we know and live as being a test; a test of faith, a test of spirit, in my case certainly a test of patience. W are tested, supposedly, so that we can experience all sides of creation and existence. I suppose it's true. How can you know peace if you've never known war? Known love if you've never felt it? How can you truly know what you would do until you actually have to do it?

Life is not one big test, more a series of small ones. We all know tests. We probably had to sit a few throughout our academic lives. We may be prosperous for a time, then fall to what we believe is the bottom of the barrel (believe me, no matter how low you fall, the bottom is a lot lower). We may be poor, then win the lottery. It happens. Sometimes we call it fate, or karma, but really, to different degrees for every situation, it's just life, the experience of it and the living of all the levels.

One group I worked with a long time ago worked on the idea that we are all surrounded by a sphere of tiny dots: millions and billions of them. This sphere roughly equated to Leonardo Da Vinci's portrait of Man. Imagine, if you will, those millions of dots surrounding you. If you look closely at them, you can see tiny little pathways that interconnect them. Expand that particular piece of the universe and see that each dot is a junction, a nexus. Imagine now that each nexus is an experience, each experience creating a new YOU in a  new Universe. In one you are male, another female. Another you live a long life, the next you are stillborn. The you in the middle of the sphere is the WHOLE YOU, experiencing everything there is to experience, all at once.

As an aside, think about those times you have met someone for the first time, only to be sure that it's not the first time, of remember doing something that you would swear blind you'd\have never done before. Synchronicity, deja vu. Back to our sphere, imagine some of that energy leaking from one pathway to another, memories of one life mixing for a moment with another, or more than one, more likely. In this life, that person you're sure you've never met, turns out you have, in another life. Crazy stuff, right? But maybe...

Today, my trials are hard, by my own standards. I am being tested in my strength to survive, my will to win, my need for safety. My faith, my security, and  - I'm sure - my sanity is being tested. I know this. By many standards, what I call a test is probably living the life or Riley. There are so many out there that have nothing, so little that I look like a millionaire, but that is their test, not mine. This - in my experience - is a trial. My world is breaking down, and the stress is more sometimes than I think I can handle.

And this is the true test.

If I Fail, If I falter at all, if I let my faith, my sense of self, my sense of humour leave me then I have failed. I KNOW that things will get better, internally and externally. Through all this I have grown stronger in the love for my family and my friends. This alone makes me richer than kings. I have found strength to recover from hardships, from negativity, from falsehoods and backstabbers.

in short, I'M STILL HERE!!!

That's faith in the self, the best faith you can have.

So, no matter what life, or lives throw at you, no matter how downtrodden you might feel, once you accept the fact that you can change it, that you can persevere and win

You Will.

Keep your mind wide open.