Success

The conventional wisdom for career advice in recent months seems to be this: express your thanks that you have kept your job by working even harder to succeed with the fewer resources that are now allotted to your company by the shrunken economy. I don't know where this conventional wisdom came from--probably a convention of employers--but it is a little depressing that the primary response to the worst economic slowdown in the lives of anyone under 50 is not to pause to evaluate whether a change is perhaps desirable--is it possible that our relentless pursuit of more, more, more was fruitless in the end?--but instead to double down and work even harder doing the same things. Yes, most of us need to work to live, but it seems to me the philosophy that work is the source of happiness has taken a beating in the past year or so.

Thus I was refreshed this week when while reading I came across Ralph Waldo Emerson's definition of success:

To laugh often and love much;
To win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children;
To earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To give of one's self without the slightest thought of return;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a rescued soul, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exaltation;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded.

Note that nothing in this definition requires a job to achieve; in fact, a person successful by this standard could work in any field, or none at all. Perhaps that is the point--he or she would not be defined by a job, but instead by the obvious positive results of a lifetime of relationships, experiences, and memories. What a way to live!