Our definitions of success are more important than we realize and we need a deep and wide discussion of it. We need to really examine in our hearts what a truly successful human being is, and what the parameters for this measurement will be.
The worshiping of ostentatious wealth made us culturally vulnerable to the siren cry of no doc loans and no money down. Unethical banksters and mort-gougers grabbed the money and ran and left too many of us with foreclosures, chronic unemployment and crushed dreams. We haven't even begun the discussion about the impact this greed has had on the earth and the people of the third world.
We were not given the tools as children to create our own inner definitions of success, and unless we consciously teach our children early on and at intervals how to find their own barometers and to periodically examine their course to ensure that they have not strayed from their own integrity, we will continue as a nation to hurtle toward our old mistakes.
What is Success anyway?
I've been thinking a lot about success lately. In the last year many of us have had just about everything we know turned upside down and we are being forced to take a new look at old assumptions. For example, what is success? How we define it has a lot to do with who we are. Definitions of success are as varied as snow flakes -- no two are alike. Commenting fondly on the human condition, my spiritual teacher once said that there are 6 billion religions in the world, one for each of us on this planet, (although we tend to believe that everyone should believe the way we do!) Similarly, there are as many individual definitions of success that spur us on to take action (or not).
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the results), there is a powerful cultural overlay defining success that pushes us in directions which may or may not be right for us. If we do not have a deep inner barometer of success defined by our own truth and measured by our own integrity, this cultural definition of success can lead us towards dissatisfaction and even dishonesty.
If we hold a well lit mirror up to our pop culture icons we will see our cultural malaise and disease reflected back in various degrees of severity, from anorexia, to teenage breast implants, to the Wall Street white collar thugs who ransacked our nation's wealth. Bernie Maddox probably thought that he was a very successful man. And so did just about everybody else.
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the results), there is a powerful cultural overlay defining success that pushes us in directions which may or may not be right for us. If we do not have a deep inner barometer of success defined by our own truth and measured by our own integrity, this cultural definition of success can lead us towards dissatisfaction and even dishonesty.
If we hold a well lit mirror up to our pop culture icons we will see our cultural malaise and disease reflected back in various degrees of severity, from anorexia, to teenage breast implants, to the Wall Street white collar thugs who ransacked our nation's wealth. Bernie Maddox probably thought that he was a very successful man. And so did just about everybody else.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment