The Opposite of Success

 It's scary to reflect that most of the stories that I internalize are "success" stories--stories about triumph, winning, doing everything perfectly, and never achieving less than A scores. I have come to realize that this game of success is addictive, but it also constitutes an entirely new self over time.
    I recall when I was in 7th or 8th grade, swinging on a big swing in a cottage in a rural area on a family vacation--and thinking about how this time I would do the things I always dreamed about doing: being a scientist (that was my one big dream at 10 years old) and, excelling in math (a subject I truly dreaded). That fateful day began a series of what I like to call "success stories": stories about the young boy who kept a notebook in his front shirt pocket, and wrote down all his "to do's" including upcoming homework assignments, tests, you name it. When that boy finally did succeed in achieving fairly decent scores in both math and science (maybe not fantastic scores but surprisingly decent scores), he inducted a new series of performances into his life. And what heralded all of this was the realization that indeed, there is a reciprocal relationship between diligence and success. Indeed, if I concentrate in class and do everything I am told to do, I stand a pretty good chance of having some degree of control over my future. Sounds easy, don't it?
    But with those repeated experiences of meeting fairly predictable, measurable expectations comes the unpredictable: being invited to math competitions where the answers to the questions could not be derived from neat sets of formulae; taking courses that don't accord with a felt sense of what success means; being derailed by my self-image of a person who can succeed at anything, in theory, by these moments when there is no success on the horizon. How the narrative of success is then maintained is by sometimes introducing complex arguments for the relationship between successful outcomes and emotional management. After all, isn't it my own despair at not succeeding that derails the smooth path of determination to succeed? So here again comes the insidious narrative of being able to do whatever one likes to do, veiled behind the discourses of managing emotions, minding emotions, mindfulness, and so on. Embedded in meditative and mindful moments is the possibility of being awake through difficult emotions..but always with the promise that being mindful will allow the process to go by quicker and in a more integrated way than suppressing those hard emotions.
   I realize that my style tonight is different from before, but I am challenging myself to ask: how did this determination to succeed arise in the first place? What did the dreams of becoming eventually become over time, and where am I at in terms of my current views of success? How the self moves through these discursive moments is something I would like to view in more detail.