Define..."Success"

[Teh Donut]

I spoke with an old friend of mine from bygone days. After about thirty minutes of the usual nonsensical banter we finally arived on a very interesting subject. My opinions, and that of my friend, are voiced below.

Pygo (10:55 PM): So, question.
Pygo (10:56 PM): If we continually work towards something that everybody calls 'success,' then how would you define success?
Joshua (10:57 PM): Meh, It's simply a fancy way of saying you're working towards your goals...
Joshua (10:58 PM): Whatever they may be.
Pygo (10:58 PM): Yeah, but goals are finite realizations of a potentially infinite desire. So, what does that mean as far as doing something worthwhile?
Joshua (11:00 PM): I suppose that working towards "success" would be working towards your goals. Though it may seem redundant, since a new goal always replaces one that has been completed...
Pygo (11:00 PM): Okay. That said, what are your goals?
Joshua (11:01 PM): ...ultimately, I suppose that fullfilling those goals, doing something worthwhile, contributing something more to this "society"...I suppose that's really the "success" people mean...
Joshua (11:01 PM): My goals? I have none.
Joshua (11:01 PM): Or rather, I don't make them for myself.
Pygo (11:02 PM): So there is no such thing as success for you then?
Pygo (11:02 PM): Come now, you know that isn't true.
Joshua (11:02 PM): Not in the sense that others see it, I suppose.
Joshua (11:03 PM): Others seem driven towards this unattainable "success" point, like it's a definable point, a summit to be reached, at which point thet can proudly proclaim "I am successful".
Pygo (11:04 PM): Yet we go on living. What does that tell you about the nature of success?
Joshua (11:04 PM): Success is arbitrary.
Pygo (11:04 PM): Perhaps, but only because people are.
Joshua (11:04 PM): No one can say "you are successful".
Joshua (11:05 PM): "He is successful", "she is a success".
Pygo (11:05 PM): Each person has his own definition because each person has claim to his own goals, and no one else's.
Joshua (11:05 PM): Right.
Joshua (11:05 PM): For me, I take each challenge as it comes.
Pygo (11:06 PM): That seems a bit passive.
Joshua (11:06 PM): For me, my ultimate goal is to live a life where, at the end of which, I can die without regrets.
Pygo (11:07 PM): We learn from the conservation of linear momentum that for everything received, there is an equivalent given.
Joshua (11:07 PM): How can someone measure that?
Pygo (11:07 PM): What are you giving vs. what are you getting?
Joshua (11:07 PM): Right.
Joshua (11:10 PM): However, people seem to think that quantity matters. They busy themselves with goals and call them "tasks", as if they're some stepping stone or foothold to some greater summit. If they feel that way, and that's really what defines "success" for them, then fine for them.
Pygo (11:11 PM): Well, quantity surely does matter. The leap between zero and the first step is purely a matter of quantity, and yet it makes all the difference in the world.
Joshua (11:12 PM): Of course, but to me, I could never live a life where everything I did was just some small building block to something I might never achive.
Joshua (11:13 PM): To me, success comes with everything I do.
Joshua (11:13 PM): I ask:
Joshua (11:13 PM): "Did I do everything I could?"
Joshua (11:13 PM): "Did I make a difference to someone/thing?"
Joshua (11:13 PM): "Did I better myself, or others?"
Joshua (11:14 PM): That deffines success for me.
Joshua (11:14 PM): *defines
Pygo (11:14 PM): I think there can be no more beneficial difference for others than the same kind that you yourself can appreciate.
Pygo (11:15 PM): So, in other words, you already know how to make others happy because you know what contributes to happiness and security from danger and fear.
Joshua (11:16 PM): Honestly, I know nothing.
Joshua (11:16 PM): I don't have some universal answer to happiness.
Pygo (11:16 PM): An answer isn't any good if we don't live it.
Joshua (11:17 PM): What I have found, though, is that many people simply want empathy.
Joshua (11:17 PM): To know someone, anyone, out there knows them.
Joshua (11:17 PM): It's what I'm best at doing.
Pygo (11:18 PM): It would be a very empty world indeed if no one had any communication with anyone else
Joshua (11:18 PM): And for all our vast modes of communication, more people are alone now than ever before.
Pygo (11:19 PM): This is true. We are losing our ability to make friends.
Pygo (11:19 PM): But for some it is growing.
Joshua (11:19 PM): Friends...that's certainly an interesting word choice.
Pygo (11:19 PM): Technology does not necessitate ignorance.
Pygo (11:20 PM): Well, a friend can be trusted with the most precious communication. The less the world knows about communication, the fewer friends can really be had.
Pygo (11:21 PM): Anybody who has no friends is alone.
Pygo (11:21 PM): People want to know who they can trust.
Joshua (11:22 PM): I like your definition of a friend.
Pygo (11:23 PM): And it's natural that the number of friends anybody has is limited. It would be quite impossible for me to even introduce myself to half of the world's population in my lifetime.
Joshua (11:23 PM): Quite.
Pygo (11:23 PM): So, although we as a human race may have synergistic feelings and hopes for a united world, the actual fact is that most of us don't know each other.
Pygo (11:24 PM): So I don't feel bad about walking a lonely road when I know it's the right one.
Pygo (11:25 PM): We humans have always wanted to do things nondeterministically. To try everything and pick the best, and so effortlessly succeed because we have exhausted every possible option.
Pygo (11:27 PM): But we can't do that.
Joshua (11:28 PM): In a way, though, we do.
Joshua (11:28 PM): As close as we humanly can.
Joshua (11:28 PM): We try all options available to us, whether we're aware of it nor not.
Pygo (11:28 PM): That is perhaps why there are so many of us.
Joshua (11:28 PM): We then choose the one that we think would fit us best.
Pygo (11:29 PM): But we can't explore all of our options fully before we put them into action.
Joshua (11:29 PM): Oh, no, that's impossible.
Joshua (11:30 PM): If that were to happen, people would stick with their "dead end" jobs to retirement age.
Joshua (11:30 PM): Just to see if it could possibly get better.
Pygo (11:30 PM): Well, time is the limiting factor here.
Pygo (11:30 PM): We can do lots of things over the course of time, but we can;t truly multitask.
Joshua (11:31 PM): Correct...time is the most powerful factor of all in determining how we live.
Pygo (11:31 PM): We can't live multiple lives.
Joshua (11:31 PM): If time was no a factor...how boring a world this would be.
Joshua (11:32 PM): If time weren't an issue, I suppose I wouldn't have adopted my "day-by-day" philosophy.
Joshua (11:33 PM): If I were immortal, I wouldn't care about whether or not I died today, tomorrow, or a week from now, as it would not matter.
Pygo (11:35 PM): Well, does it? There's some difference there, but how far does it go?
Joshua (11:36 PM): Having that realization of our time limitation was what probably influenced my views more than anything. For example, I could die right now, and be satisfied with that quick flashback. Under the curcumstances, I've done much, I've done it well, and I know I've done what I could to help others along the way. To me, I'm successful.
Joshua (11:36 PM): And that's all that really matters.
Joshua (11:36 PM): The dead don't much mind the opinions of others.
Joshua (11:37 PM): *circumstances, by the way...
Joshua (11:38 PM): Sure, there are things I'd still like to do.
Joshua (11:38 PM): But to me, success isn't measured in the quantity of things I left unaccomplished, but in the quality of what I already did,.
Pygo (11:38 PM): I don't think I'll ever run out of those.
Joshua (11:39 PM): Haha, indeed not.
Joshua (11:41 PM): I want to relearn my German, and go back to Germany. I want to be a teacher, and help others on that wider scale that only a teacher can.
Pygo (11:41 PM): That is good.
Pygo (11:42 PM): Would you like to hear what I think of success?
Joshua (11:42 PM): If I never make it, sure I'll be disappointed. However, what I did get done before that holds more weight.
Joshua (11:42 PM): Of course.
Joshua (11:42 PM): Tell away.
Pygo (11:44 PM): I believe it consists in each person finding the work he can do best, and doing it to his greatest satisfaction and to the greatest service to others, and earning his living in the process.
Pygo (11:44 PM): Paraphrased from Henry Ford.
Joshua (11:49 PM): Apt words.
Joshua (11:50 PM): Really, I suppose that 's what my view is, then.
Joshua (11:50 PM): More or less.
Pygo (11:51 PM): No one ever has to compete for success.
Pygo (11:52 PM): We are simply finding out what we do best, pursuing it so as to best serve our fellow men, and thereby we become happy because we are doing our best and filling our purpose.
Joshua (11:54 PM): It's funny, really; I suppose the definition as we, the western world, use it has some measure of cultural connotations. Our culture is based around "success" as an observable, measurable, concrete object.
Pygo (11:55 PM): Well, there certainly are tangible aspects.
Joshua (11:55 PM): I suppose.
Pygo (11:55 PM): That's just not all there is to it.
Joshua (11:56 PM): To me, the elementary school cleaning lady is just as successful as the millionaire Wall Street tycoon.
Joshua (11:57 PM): So long as they're both proud of what they've done, then they've both achieved their own measure of success.
Pygo (11:57 PM): If not more so. It is easy for wealthy people to forget about their need to work because their needs are so readily supplied.
Pygo (11:58 PM): But it is also easy for the poor to forget that others have unmet needs as well.
Pygo (11:59 PM): But there are things to keep us in remembrance of our needs and the needs of our fellow men.
Joshua (11:59 PM): I miss talks like these; this was very welcome and entertaining. I apologize; I'm sorry I must go...my time is limited, and I must finish what I've popped online to do.
Joshua (12:00 AM): We should converse again sometime.
Joshua (12:00 AM): Have fun.
Pygo (12:01 AM): You too. But remember, fun is passing and inconsequential. So have some joy as well.
Joshua (12:01 AM): But of course.

So, my challenge question to you, the EAB, is thus: define "success", as it pertains to you.

[Ninmast]

I must agree that success is not reaching a goal, but moving toward it.

A reporter once asked Thomas Edison if it was true he failed 99 times to make the lightbulb, and he answered that he did not fail 99 times, he merely found 99 ways not to make a lightbulb.

This is a perfect example of defining success or failiure as moving toward a goal or failng to do so, respectively. Every time he found a way not to make a lightbulb, Edison moved one step closer to finding a way that worked. Thus, onecould perhaps say that "success" is a synonym for "progress." So long as we continue to progress down whatever channels we choose, regardless of where their end may lie, we are succeeding.

[TrueBlue©]

You guys sound like The Republic. o.o

Why, my dear Glaucon! Does not it make sense that a warrior must carry him an armor?
But of course, Socrates! This is before quotation marks were invented! But after rhetoric was invented!
But of course!
But of course! ...^_^;

When one says "success," they think of a grinning well-groomed man in a pressed business suit with a striped tie, chest puffed out, standing on the mountain of money that represents his life's work.

That isn't what everyone wants to attain, thus, success must be something else, which, obviously, has been established. I can successfully finish folding a paper, or successfully get a gazillionth degree black belt. There's only success if you think you're successful, and you can succeed at being utterly miserable, anyway.

Call me negative, "successful" is something your dad talks about like a half-recalled dream, and "success" is the end of a race that doesn't end.

[Son of Marth]

Success is self fulfillment, of having reached your goal, but knowing tht you earned it. attaining something without working for it, is not success, it is failure. IF you dont get where im going, im saying the same thing as ninmast, if you didnt accomplish it the first time, it isn't, you simply discovered how not to do what you are trying to do. Failure is when you give up, or attain something through wrong means, such as letting someone else do the work and you take the credit. Success is met when you have fulfilled your goal and worked for it. The ONLY place where success comes before work, is in the dictionary.

[Ninmast]

I just wish to amend one thing to that, Marth. Please don't mistake me, I agree completely. I just wanted to say, if I happened to get lucky enough to be puzzling on a problem, hear a knock on the door and someone on the other side hands me the answer when I open it, I'd still count it as success. Perhaps that's part of success, knowing when to get the door instead of ignoring it and stumbling around on your own with all the lights turned off.

[Beanybag]

So instead of self-fulfillment, it's simply fulfillment?

[Ninmast]

Not all tasks must be completed alone in order to achieve personal growth.