What is Success?

The last post was a blast from the past about the importance of failure.  Today's post is another essay I wrote in 2012, but this time about success.   Enjoy!

"What is success to you?" This was a question posed to me one day during an interview lunch. I have been interviewing for actuarial positions for the last six months and I thought that I had run across all of the interview questions that I could imagine. This one caught me by surprise, because I knew that if I answered honestly, I would be hurriedly shown the door.

Before I finish this brief story, lets take a look at how this is an open-ended question. What is success? Well, I went to dictionary.com and found some definitions:

1. the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors.
2. the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.

There were three other definitions - two used the word successful (circular reasoning?) and the third was obsolete. So I left those out.

Armed with these definitions, how do we define success for ourselves? Applying the first definition might be morbid - but worth a shot. Let's see...the definition of success for me would be the favorable or prosperous termination of myself. Most probably my life. Essentially, success would be what my life would be like at its termination such that I find it favorable and/or prosperous. OK for me, that would mean living a life of doing good for others, developing my God-given talents, and being the best husband/father/grandfather/etc. that I could be. In short, a successful life here just means that I am in heaven when I am dead. I have little care for the things that others care about in terms of temporary pleasures of this world. I would not have a TV if my family would allow it.

I don't think that a response down that path floats in the corporate world. I presupposed that they cared little for my view of the afterlife. Furthermore, conversations like that make some people nervous.

OK, lets try the second definition. Success for me would be the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like. So, I guess, this would mean, what titles or wealth would signify that I was a success? OK, if I answered honestly, I would say that me working in my little studio for the rest of my life would be a success, given that I provided for my family. I don't want accolades, wealth and the like. I want to do what God called me to do, and that is it. FWIW, my dream job is actually not attainable...a monk.

That definitely would not float in the corporate world either. So, how do I answer this question?

There was a presupposition to the question, that I had a plan for my success, some golden idea of what sort of honors, titles, and the like that I want. They, I believe, wanted to see where I wanted to see myself in their company based on my answers to their questions. I believe that was their end goal.

In the end, I gave some canned response - something to make it look like I would be a good corporate zombie. And in the end, did it work? Probably not. I did not get the job and it may have been because of the response. More probably it was due to other things as well. But it did open my eyes: if my goal is to be self-sufficient in an artistic career (music, writing, or otherwise), then I need to work towards that end. That may mean doing other work until it gets started, or go full-steam ahead now towards it.