When do you know if you're a success?
I've stopped to take a look around at my colleagues from undergrad - noting their accomplishments and life passages: marriages launched; plays written; babies birthed; initial career dreams dashed, put away, and picked up again; reconciliations; breakups; breakdowns; even deaths. I recognize more and more people I know on television, in movies, on commercials, in American Theatre magazine. People I remember as short, awkward eighth graders are now Ivy League professors, East Texas politicians, and NYC Soho artists. I was thinking last night about how 40 seemed some sort of far off shore, too distant to see or even consider when I was in my early twenties. There was too much to do and see and bargain and threaten and love and loathe and yearn for. At some point however; perhaps it was in Milwaukee, I ceased to appreciate the now and started dissecting and analyzing Everything That Had Come Thus Far. Growth was stilted; one cannot grow when one is stuck repeating the past over and over again.
I made it to the Here and Now, and now my problem is the polar opposite: rather than being stuck in the past or repeating the mistakes of the present, I seem to be spinning toward the future; like an object in the vortex of a black hole - being stretched toward the center and the beyond against my will. I've been dreading 35 now for a good 3 years or so; hopefully it will cease to frighten me once it is over. But I am reminded again of 40; only this time it is not a distant shore but an island I can see clearly. I am very aware of all the rocks I need to circumnavigate before I reach that island and I don't know if I can.
What defines success? I'll have my MFA soon, of which I am proud. Is this the definition of success, or is the job it will eventually attain? For every achievement I earn, I find myself wishing it was more. I find myself comparing myself to others and their achievements and wondering if I have been using my time as wisely as I ought.
Someone once said that the secret to true happiness is wanting what you have. I have much to be thankful for. I muse on this axiom, wondering when it will manifest itself in my life, and allow me to once again live beautifully, happily in the Now.
