I do a lot of planning. I’m not the best at organizing, but I am constantly generating designs after designs, meant to be roadmaps to get my goals done. I tend to have too much paperwork around, which I’m constantly trying to whittle down; not with much success, because I’m great at finding some future undetermined purpose for every shred of paper around me. I’m sure that some psychology expert would diagnose all this clutter and mental busywork by saying I want to matter or be important. I’m not sure if that’s why I have clutter, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with wanting to matter or be important. I can’t see that desire as intrinsically being neurotic. I don’t know a lot of things, but I from what I have experienced in my life, I think all people want to matter on some level, even if they are deferring their reward until the afterlife.
Like just about everybody, I would like the sum parts of my life to amount to something I can take pride in. I would hate to come to the end of my life and see that I wasted my time chasing some desire or ambition which turned out not to be worth my efforts. Success to me means a life that really reflects me and my desires, not one that just looks good on paper.
In my twenties, I got a lot of input from people telling me what success is. Most had to do with personal ambition; that if I really put my mind to it, worked hard, I could be successful. The success that was described to me was hierarchical; my success would come at another person’s expense. I could rise to the top, and send some less deserving soul to the bottom from whence he came. His loss.
Coming of age just after the so-called equal rights movement only added to this material pressure. There were boomers and silent generation elders who hawked my progress as a Generation X college educated woman. On the generational front, if I wanted to prove my generation were not the slackers that others had thought, I had to prove it by showing that I had the ambition expected of me. I also got to show everyone what a success the women's equality movement had been. After all, my predecessors had worked so hard to give me all this opportunity. The least I could do is be a congressperson by age thirty to show how well it all panned out.
I admit that I swallowed some of this lingo. My determination of a successful life became increasingly material orientated. I seemed to forget that what I did wasn't necessarily a measure of who I was. What I did became me.
Materialism wore me out. It made me impossible to be around because I was constantly afraid of not measuring up. I weighed everything I did, constantly monitoring my responses to others, afraid of any mistake that would sabotage my chances of "actuating" myself. All this concerted focus was way too much pressure. It also made me resent my fellow human being. He either got in the way, was something else I had to prove myself to, or was someone I had to acquire as a friend, as though life was some kind of shopping spree. I couldn't relax and enjoy the moment, for fear of being unproductive. I wasn't even enjoying my work anymore. It was about the result, no longer about the process. Such a narrow focus made my world too small
Success is nothing if I can't enjoy it. Therefore, in my thirties, the requirement for success has markedly changed. If my life doesn't reflect passion, then what I do means nothing. If in my relationships, I don't make love the utmost goal, then my efforts in relating mean nothing. St. Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians states as such: if I give my life, but yet have not love, I have nothing. Love of work makes it more about the process, not the result. Love of specific people, those in my presence, gives clarity to each moment. Love of all mankind helps me realize it is not all about me, that there are six billion people trying to make it in this world besides me.
There's nothing in my life that says I can't plan. Having some kind of direction works well for me. Clutter may always be a problem. Five years from now, I probably will have too much paperwork lying around. But as long as what I do reflects personal passion and my focus aims on love, life will be successful for me.
