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What is success? Success by definition is as follows, by Merriam-Webster; The fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame.

Wealth, respect or Fame? That’s an interesting concept. We define success by having one of those three things. So then, is it possible to be successful in life and not have wealth, respect or fame?

I suppose that success could have a million different definitions, and profoundly different depending on who’s being questioned.

In the mean time, what does success mean to me?

In one word, I would have to say content. Content to me is bliss. It means that where ever you are standing in the moment you are at peace with it. It means that you have no regrets from the past and no anxiety for the future, that you are whole and complete in the now. That nothing that you have done, or can do needs to be fulfilled or changed.

Success to me looks like a person sitting in silence, smiling at nothing.

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Wealth, respect and fame must all be achieved, and can just as easily be lost, no matter how hard the battle was to get there. They are things that need to be acquired, that require others to stamp you successful. Well then, could any of us actually be successful if there was no one else there to measure our success?

I once had the opportunity to work with a client who was very well-known. He had all the things that deemed him worthy of the label of a successful man. All three! Yet, nearing the later part of his life, those things began to fail. His wealth was literally stolen from a partner. He lost respect and fame as he aged and younger men took over his position. I watch a man who use to walk with confidence in his step, walk with his head hung.

After many health issues he ended up in a nursing home at way to young of an age due to a stroke. I visited him there one day and upon entering his room I was caught in awe at all the photos his wife had hung in his room. The photos of his glory days. He was seen standing next to presidents and movie stars, photos of worldly people smiling next to him with their arms around his shoulders. He had seen it all, the epitome of success and yet, he was utterly unsatisfied with his life.

I asked him, “Would you say it was better to make it to the top and fall, or to never to make it at all?” His reply to me was this.

“I wish I had never made it,” He sighed and looked down sadly at his wrinkled hands, “There was a time I could walk down the street of NYC and people would stop me just to speak with me or shake my hand.” He raised his eyes back to meet mine, “Now they don’t even know who I am, I am nothing.”

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I will never forget that conversation. I was terribly sad for the man who was sitting in front of me. I knew that all the words he was saying were not true, but they were his truths. He truly believed that he was nothing without those things but I knew who he was, he was my friend.  He was a father and a husband; I am sure his family knew who he was too, but to himself, he was nothing.

Success is a word that we have made up.

It is a label, no different from the labels we place on all the inanimate objects in our life. The problem is, we also put labels on people and on ourselves. We are not labels. We don’t need to label ourselves or our lives any more.

We need to realize that we are whole and complete just as we are. The things we acquire, achieve, reach or “fail” at in this life do not define us. They simple supply us with experiences to challenge who we really are and allow us to impact others.

Wealth, respect and fame are tools we should use to help others see their true worth. Tools that put us above others, not so we can look down on them, so that we may reach down our hands and help pull them up by our sides. So that in the future, they too can help others up.

Success could be having a million-dollar home, with ten vacations a year sailing on your private yacht, or it could be swinging in a hammock in your back yard while watching your children play. Being successful is in the eye of the beholder. There is no right or wrong definition of success.

It is in the label of saying we are so, or that we are not, that has so many of us losing site of the prize.

The prize of being here now, in all our faults and glories, content with who we are. Fully accepting where we’ve been, with no expectations of where we are going. While we sit in silence, smiling at nothing.

Write back soon, love Annie.

Day 43 of 90 meditating.