AHSS The Gift of Years: Success (Lesson 19)

“Though it sounds absurd,” Ellen Glasgow said, “it is true to say I felt younger at sixty than I had felt at twenty.” There is no doubt about it: whatever we have become at sixty, we are. The game clock has ended. Now we can just enjoy the interminable feeling of having finally survived the climb, of being free of the unceasing competition, of the unending demands for self-sacrifice. Now life is just life and no more.

Nevertheless, the conditioning goes deep. Surely there must be something we should be striving for, even now, even here. If not, what is there? And if not, why do we feel this way in the first place? The fact is that we get instructed in the meaning of success even while we’re very young, which makes it so much more difficult to enjoy life as we get older. We talk about teaching our children to be successful, but we really mean that we teach them to be competitive. All our lives we compete, in fact and call it “success.” In the end, we’re exhausted. Did we succeed? At what? And who knows? It all depends on what we’ve always thought success must be about.

Did we succeed at making the family a “family”? Did we succeed at being a good neighbor? Did we succeed at developing a genuine spiritual life, the kind in which the presence of God dominates our whole existence, above and beyond worship attendance on holy days and liturgical events? Did we succeed in living gently on Earth, on creating a balance in our lives of time with nature, time with people, time with God, time for reflection, time for a new kind of personal development? If not, it’s time to plan our days rather than simply have them slip by unnoticed.

Did we succeed in learning how to be happy ourselves, doing something that we do only because we love doing it? Did we succeed at developing the kind of interior life it takes to weather the external demands of life? Did we succeed at becoming a person – a real person? A person who is real!

In the end, it becomes so clear: success is a much simpler thing than they ever told us. It has to do with having the basics, with learning to be happy, with getting in touch with our spiritual selves, with living a balanced life, doing no harm, doing nothing but good. The only test of the good life here is happiness.

Sister Joan Says: The burden of false success is that it creates an artificial standard that follows us through our entire lives, leaves us in fear, leaves us in a state of perpetual discontent, too tight to enjoy retirement, too invested in the elements of life that do not last. The blessing of real success lies in the fact that sometime in life we come to the point where we never overemphasize any one side of it again. Instead, we come to live easily and fully in all aspects of it.

1. In this chapter Sister Joan begins several paragraphs with “Did we succeed…?” which of these can you say “Yes” or “No” to?
2. Name a person you personally feel has been very successful. What has she or he done/been that has led you to feel this way? Consider telling her or him some way.