One of my favourite sites on teh intarwebs is Ted. I don't by any means watch all the talks; indeed only a tiny percentage. Some amusing, some fun, some interesting. It's one of the ways to pass the time on the web which I think is worthwhile.
Recently I watched this one. I liked him; he was amusing and what's more he confirmed all my own ideas about the idea of success so I of course was very invested in his talk and his words.
More seriously, the idea of success is one that I have been thinking a fair amount about over the last few years.
About a decade ago, my father posed the question to me and my sister over the dinner table -- how do you know you are successful? What defines success to you?
My sister immediately replied, "Money!"
And I didn't reply at all. Because the fact was that while I was sure she was wrong, I wasn't sure what the right answer was.
The principle idea behind this talk on Ted is that the idea of success causes great grief in our society mostly because we adopt unattainable ideals of success from outside of us. And what we really need to do is to create our own ideas of what success looks like just for us.
Two years ago I was struggling with the idea of going back to work after my maternity leave was over, and a friend of mine said to me, as we sat together, "Look over at that empty chair," gesturing at the chair near us, "And pretend that the eighty year old you is sitting there. What would she tell you to do?"
I didn't take the eighty year old me's advice -- I went back to work, and haven't regretted doing so. My child is happy and learning so much more than I would be teaching him at home; my career is doing quite well and I'm happy with where I am in it. But the idea stuck with me, and I've thought more and more about it over the last two years, and it has come to me that my idea of success can be defined when I ask the question of myself, what do I want my son (and other loved ones) to tell people about me once he leaves home / once he meets his future partner / once I'm gone?
And while I'm happy with my career right now and I'm glad I went back to work, interestingly enough my profession almost never enters into the words I hope that he says about me. I hope he tells people that I was kind and gentle and loving, that I enjoyed my family and was a generally very pleasant nice person to be around. I hope he tells people that he never doubted for a second how much I love him. I hope he tells people that I was involved with and interested in his life, but had a life of my own with my own interests and I wasn't overly interfering. I hope he tells people how much fun we had as a family. I hope he even tells people that I made nice things. Like quilts.
I do hope that he can tell people I am a writer. I hope he can tell people that I write more than academic proposals. I hope he gets to tell people I enjoyed my work.
But not once have I ever imagined with pleasure my son telling people that I made a lot of money.
Whether or not he ever has these conversations is immaterial. The image of my child talking about me is just the way I frame this in my mind, how I manage to come up with the ideas of what success means to me. The important thing is that I'm sitting down and thinking about what I want my life to be, about my own definition of success.
And I think that this is largely responsible for a recent -- year old -- feeling of relative contentment with my career. For the previous five years or so, I was fairly concerned with where I was going and what I was doing and what I needed to do to get where I needed to go, and now I'm content. I'm coasting, and I don't really care. Oh, I think every once in a while about where I'm going to go next, but I'm not that concerned about it, and even more importantly, I'm not that concerned about what my colleagues think either.
And I've started living my life trying to remember this: to be the person I want my son to talk about. To be the listening mom who had her own life but loved his as well. To be someone he wants to share with his friends and his future family. To be remembered in the same loving way I remember my own treasured family members. I don't always manage to do this every day, but I do try.
Most importantly, when I keep these ideals in mind and try to live my life with them as goals, I'm happier.
And really ...what more does anyone need?
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