104-2008-05-05

You Succeed When …
By W. Owen Thornton

In a world where there is always more we could do before making a decision or launching into a work project, and where much of what we provide is not a product but a service or intellectual property, we can begin to wonder “what is the point of waking up and doing what we do?”  All work is vital and just because we cannot see the totality of our efforts at the end of the day reflecting back at us in the number of chairs or cars we have built, doesn’t mean the day was a complete waste … or that we should tag that thought to our spirits.  Human Kindness demands that we find a way to overcome this perspective. 

A friend said that she feels like she can never succeed.  “No matter what I do I could have done more.  I could have done more research or read one more article.  There’s no way to succeed!”  Another person across town said, “I’m in a remote field of study.  What does it matter if I read someone else’s article that sets me on fire?  Everything I do is so remote from the world.”  And still another person said, “Even if I did nothing but make chairs, you might think I have the comfort in knowing I made something today … but that chair gets thrown out eventually too.”  So even if you have a concrete product that is achieved at the end of the day it seems as though you can’t really win.  When you’re down, the end of the end can always be found.  But, we cannot forget the years of ‘joyful sitting’ that someone had while that chair went from new to the dump!

The big theme in the paragraph above is about our making a difference to the world – or rather about our inability to make a difference in the world.  The insights offered to us are words from folk in their mid 40s.  Upon observing their comments I’m betting we’d all say that a mid-life crisis was upon them big time.  “How did I get here?” and “Where am I going?” along with, ”Have I done anything to leave my mark in the world?” are questions reverberating around a room filled with toys that don’t satisfy.  The room, or ‘our world,’ might as well be empty.  Philosophically ‘What’s the point?” opens us to the danger of skepticism.  If nothing really matters then I don’t really matter and definitely what I do does not matter.  Skepticism is fallacious and wrong!

In a simple way, let me suggest the problem with mid-life crisis is the questions we’re asking.  I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be thinking about who we are, what we’re doing and how we got where we are (and where do we now want to go instead) questions.  To an extent they are healthy.  They help reframe us, send us in new more meaningful life directions, but if we dwell on them too much, there appears to be no new meaningful directions.  The, “What is the point?” question leads us down the wrong path.  ‘What is the point?’ has two dangerous remaining pieces of sentences that should be tagged onto it.  “What is the point of living my life this way?”  “What is the point of doing what I’m doing when I can’t succeed?”

For the sake of human kindness … human kindness to any of you who might be asking these questions, I’d like to weigh in and offer a different perspective to these skeptical notions.

First, when it comes to succeeding we have to find a way to succeed without feeling like we’re ‘done.’  In the grand scheme of things let me say that the concept of ‘Done’ is a fallacy that we tell ourselves exists.  We live in a world where we can never be done.  The moment we finish gathering all the knowledge on any one subject, someone else is going to add to that database a moment later.  ‘Done’ is unattainable.  Done might also be dangerous because if we were ever to be ‘Done,’ we wouldn’t have anything more to do.  And without more to do, perhaps this is the position we might find ourselves in where we now truly have no reason to exist.  ‘Done,’ I say, is an indication that we’re already dead.  Therefore to not be ‘Done’ or to never to be able to be “done” is the gift of life itself.  So if we can never be ‘Done’ we remain alive and this is an opportunity to celebrate, not to bemoan the fact!

Therefore each time you do something you succeed.  Building a chair?  Building a component for a car?  Producing a service such as providing a home insurance policy (which might never be used!)?  Prepping a university lecture?  You succeed each time you turn a chair leg, create a brake line, or read something or discover something relative to that upcoming lecture.  Have you built the quintessential chair that will last forever?  Will your car part go in the first car that will not end up in a junkyard?  Have you read it all and made the perfect lecture?  Impossible!  Can you read it all?  I say we don’t WANT to be able to read it all!  We don’t want to be able to say we’ve ‘Done’ it all.  Having more to Do, is what makes us want to wake up in the morning.

In the process of doing whatever it is you do, while we acknowledge it may not make a mark upon the world forever, still, in light of that news, you succeed.  Let’s pick the more esoteric occupation of university professor as our example.  I think many of us could wonder ‘what is the point’ of some of their work.  It’s out there!  It’s in a narrow field.  It may impact very few people in the world.  Can we defend that work?  Can we see a legitimate point?  Theoretically we must defend it.

Why?  First off, they are dealing with knowledge.  Can any of us say discovering any bit of knowledge is unimportant and not worthwhile?  Just because a rare bit of knowledge only impacts a few people in the world cannot be reason enough to dismiss it.  It must be important.  And it is.  All knowledge, all human endeavour, fits into the fabric of life.  Each of us weaves his/her thread through the tapestry of life and the bit of knowledge known by a few professors adds to the richness and diversity of life.  Within the diversity of knowledge we find a celebration of the uniqueness that makes up this world.  We as a people practicing human kindness demand that kind of unique diversity found in humankind!

Besides, should any of us be able to audit the value of someone else’s work we open a dangerous door to criticizing all endeavours.  (And perhaps there are some we SHOULD question!)  Over the decades we’ve thrown billions of dollars at cancer research and it appears to the lay person that we’ve thrown billions of dollars away.  For many forms of the disease we still can’t prevent it, we can’t stop it and the only treatment we have for it, is to attempt to kill it before the treatment itself kills the rest of our healthy cells.  Should we, therefore, suggest we stop researching for solutions to cancer?  I don’t think there’s a person out there who would agree with that.  But if we limit one aspect of knowledge and say it’s unimportant and that we should stop wasting our time on it, then we open the door to say that seeking any form of knowledge might be unimportant (from a certain perspective).  That means we might be able to make a sound and valid argument to cease researching solutions for cancer … and there aren’t too many people who would really desire that.

All knowledge is important, whether its esoteric philosophy or cancer research.  That one bit of knowledge might have more importance to more people is irrelevant.  Knowledge, work, results, whatever you achieve through your daily work, it’s all important.  Variety is the stuff of life.

We all acknowledge that we have too much specialized knowledge in something esoteric.  Some people know star trivia.  A friend of mine can virtually site the book and page number for any bit of Dungeon and Dragons (D&D) information – believe me when I say that’s esoteric.  So if reading a D&D manual to play a game is what excites you, read it.  If you’re interested in theatre and someone writes an article that you’re certain you’re the only person in the world that will read it … read it and love it and enjoy it because that’s what YOU like to do.  This is human kindness … to yourself.  I once asked a friend about writing an article for this website.  I suggested that it was odd, strange and esoteric.  I told him that other people had given me advice that I should write these articles as “how-to” pieces so people know how-to become more kind to one another.  I suggested that I wasn’t sure of the validity of the ideas in the article, but intuitively I thought I had something important to say.  “So,” I finally asked him, “should I write it at all and if I do, what style should I pick?”

His answer wasn’t one that would please an editor, or perhaps a reader, but it pleased me.  “Write it the way you need to write it.  Don’t let anyone else tell you what you should do or how you should approach your work.  If you think it needs to be said the way YOU want to say it, say it that way.  That’s what writing is all about.”

I took his word to heart and never again fretted about my approach to articles.  I didn’t say it isn’t good to have heard that I should write ‘step articles’ (step-by-step on how to be kind) or ‘how-to’ articles where I demonstrate how we should be kind to one another.  These are direct and reach people’s specific needs.  They might be targeted to a specific audience who likes to read those kinds of articles and sometime I do write them.  Sometimes the idea comes to me in that format and … perhaps those articles hit the mark.  But it’s the odd ones, the esoteric ones, the articles that take two very different happenings in my life where I crash those two ideas together and … perhaps the link isn’t too clear but the intuitive point is important that it be expressed: that’s the article that might only reach one person in the universe.  But www.thehumankindnessproject.com isn’t about being practical, direct or programmed.  It’s about helping us all walk through life in order to become a little more kind.  And if I write an article for only one person in the universe (even, if that person is me) then I have to write it.  It’s the only way I know how to be kind to me, and if I’m kind to me and you can tolerate my dalliances from time to time, then I’ll eventually write an article targeted specifically for you.

So about specific tasks in life … about getting done … leaving your mark … Life isn’t about these things.  It’s about doing what we can.  It’s about finding success in what we do do.  In what we can do.  About what we have time to do (without going mad).  It’s about reading, or writing or doing or creating what we want because we like to do it.  In that we find the joy of life.  Success is in finding the joy in life, regardless of whether or not the task leads us to the mythical sense that we’re done, that we’ve arrived, that we’re perfect, even for an instant.  And being joyful allows us to practice human kindness towards one another because we end up being in a better frame of mind.  Being perfect isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.  Perfection comes with demands that are far too great for a mere human.  We can only do what we can, and in the end, that has to be good enough because … in the end, that’s all we mortal and frail humans can do.

Sure, we’d all like to leave our mark.  Often, I’ve observed that leaving your mark … the people whom we remember in this world … well, that remembrance often comes at a great cost.  Often it means their life was cut cruelly short in the prime of the gift that individual was providing for the world at that time.  Jesus was cut down at the height of his ministry.  King was assassinated at the height of his dream.  Munro was lost to us in a haze of sorrow, and forever remains the quintessential Hollywood starlet.  Too few of us make a mark like Mother Theresa where we live long and die in the saddle … and we’re still remembered for living a complete and exemplary life.  For one thing I’m not all that sure many of us could be that dedicated to one thing for that long.  I admire Mother Theresa, but A: I don’t have that degree of humanitarianism in me and B: I’d find doing the kind of thing she did boring beyond belief.  So you’ll excuse me if I go away now and read a book on how to write screenplays.  You see, now I have a screen play racing through my mind … and currently that’s the thing I have to do.  I don’t know how to sell it.  I don’t know how to make it pay.  I don’t know why I feel I even have to do it … but I do … and in going for it, I succeed, even if I don’t finish it, even if I do and no one else reads it … I did it because I had to do it and that’s the point.  As long as there’s joy in the activity … therein lies the point!

 You can download this article here:  Please note that you can quote any of my articles as long as you credit the source!
June 2008 Article #4