Success is one of the dirtiest temptations of the devil.
— Madeleine L’Engle
In his book “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years,” the venerable Donald Miller quotes another author in saying that writers love having written.
I can’t allow myself to be content with that. Writers aren’t the only ones who feel that way; ditch diggers, I imagine, feel the same. If I’m going to moan my way through my day, and only feel good when it’s done … well, there are a lot more lucrative careers than writing I could pick. Careers that bring the added benefit of a retirement package and health benefits.
Madeleine L’Engle says in her essay “The Journey Homeward”
I enjoy the results and so I should enjoy producing the results.
She compares the artist’s work … and it doesn’t have to be a fine artist, but anyone who loves what they do … to a child playing. She points out how serious a child is when he plays, studiously building a tower out of blocks. Because that’s probably what Madeleine L’Engle’s kids did. But even a kid on PlayStation–have you ever seen how intensely their brows are furrowed? For any child, play is not messing around.
The difference, she says, is that the artist at work is conscious of having to be disciplined, while the child merely experiences it. The child does a thing because he’s drawn to it. On the outside, it looks like discipline; on the inside, it’s just desire. There’s nothing to his “work” but the doing of it, because his joy is the only standard.
But when you’re older, suddenly it’s on you to choose work that will make the time you spent on it seem valuable. Success is an inner agreement forged between our judgment and our will: “I chose wisely how to spend my time. I can feel free to relax now, because I did my part.”
Chasing that feeling is maybe one of the quickest ways to ruin doing what you love.
Because in the beginning, nobody is going to congratulate you, because in the beginning, most of us aren’t that great. Even if you do get congratulated by others for great work, you probably had something much greater in mind than what they can see. They’re only admiring you for what you tried to do, and that’s not really what you want.
…the squalid interpretation put on the word “success” is our national disease.
In a letter from one cultural patriarch to another, psychologist William James excoriated to sci-fi writer H.G. Wells “the moral flabbiness born of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS.” He meant, I think, the effect on our insides of investing our time and effort where our vision doesn’t exceed our ability. It’s a lot easier on the pride to keep what you care about in the visionary stage, because then you never have to disappoint yourself. It’s a lot easier to live with work, relationships, and spirituality that don’t really matter, because they demand so little of what’s best in you, and their demands are easy to ignore when you’re not in the mood.
It’s so much easier to feel successful at something that you don’t care much about.
Physicist Richard P. Feynman said, more politely and aphoristically,
In order to succeed, I try to fail as fast as I can.
We forget, in defining success, that to “succeed” means to follow, to progress, to get after something. Success exemplifies what Aristotle meant when he made up the word “quiddity”–the hard, consistent work it takes for something to remain itself.
This takes more courage than dressing well, showing up at the office on time, learning how to network, or even handling your money well.
To acknowledge what you really love?
To acknowledge that you really love it?
To throw yourself at it every day, knowing how slim your chance is of achieving what you have in mind?
To rest on each achievement only long enough to prepare for the next level?
That’s life in perpetual motion, where each failure succeeds another.
Flickr photo by late-night-movie
