Success

I am a man richly blessed with friends.

Over the past two days, I have had deep and thought provoking conversations with Bogha Frois, An Polleaneach, and An Quebecois about success, succeeding, and how that applies to my life and what I am doing.

I don't know that I have fully apprehended all that has been said to me - other than I know that I am close, closer than I have been in a very long time.

The two, somewhat intertwined paths are:

1) What does success really mean?
2) What does it take to reach that success?
3) (I lied) What does that mean to my life?

I freely admit that part of my definition, probably true of most men, is tied to financial means. It's an easy way to measure it (I have X, I used to have W, I am moving towards Y) and is often the most immediately noticeable - as Moliere said, "There's no praise to beat the sort you can put in your pocket". Also, given the experience of The Firm, I am not happy when our finances are so close to edge, as they feel to me to be and as the Market has been daily reminding me.

But it is certainly not the best measure, and not the only one. As An Quebecois pointed out to me, you can succeed at business and handily fail at the important things in life - God, Family, doing what your supposed to be doing (which money may only be facilitating by paying your way).

As to the price of success, generally it seems to always rated as worth it by those that succeed, but I wonder. An article, which was the genesis of this discussion, was both carefully questioned by An Polleaneach and An Quebecois, is what the author paid to reach it. It is seemingly apparent to me that the cost of success only truly becomes apparent later in life (perhaps in eternity?) when the outcome of the actions we put in motion have played themselves out.

Which kind of makes a question of value, doesn't it? And we how we assess the value of everything in our life, or perhaps more accurately stated, how well we assess the value of everything in our life.

Maybe that's the key and core and therefore a starting point to consider: success is spending the most time on the things that are truly valuable in your life.

If that's the case, then Bogha Frois's comment of last night is worth considering: You have to make a choice. It can't be anyone making the choice for you, and it doesn't have to be permanent. But you must make a choice on the things that are valuable, and then construct your life in such a way that you support, nurture, and move towards spending more effort and time on these things.

I don't know. But I feel I'm close - closer than I've been in a long time.