I came up for air this morning after a week of juggling final book edits, beginning a new semester of teaching, attempting to get ahead of my studies, and trying to get into the groove of a new school year for Martin and Ian. As a result, the house is a bit of a wreck and my plans for organizing my room, my papers and the bills have mostly gone undone. Things are not exactly how I want them and I, while I have a clear vision of how much smoother things might go if I could just get a step ahead of things, that just doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
Instead, it seems that the second I get “caught up” something new is added to the pile. Like a modern-day Sisyphus, I can’t seem to get the stone of my daily responsibilities over the crest of the hill. Yet, unlike Sisyphus, I am not feeling condemned by this truth today.
Earlier this month I posed the question: “Is it Possible to Keep Our Priorities Straight?” Rereading the post, I think the question I was really asking may have been: “Is it Possible for Me to Get Everything to Run Precisely According to My Ideal?”
Of course, these are two very different questions.
Scanning Facebook and Twitter this morning, I came across a few posts that led me consider my relationship with success and satisfaction.
Mark Batterson, a Pastor from Washington D.C. Tweeted that “success is trying harder and trying longer than anyone else. with the Holy Spirit’s help, of course!” and blogged about his definition of success.
Stephen Brewster, a marketing executive in the music industry, blogged about not being satisfied with mediocrity.
As I read these pieces and considered having more on my plate than I could ever “successfully” complete, I recognized something profound that has changed in me over the past several years. Where success and satisfaction once walked in lock-step in my life, they appear to have shaken free of one another, converging and diverging without rhyme or reason. There was a time not so long ago when satisfaction once came only when I was successful – and my bar for success was so high that I rarely, if ever, achieved it.
I can see now that that success is not always satisfying and that satisfaction can come without it. While this realization might cause some people to slow down, I find the freedom to enjoy the journey toward success to be liberating…
Would love to hear what you think…
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