Success--of Quantity and Quality

On this question again of success and failure, and of closing the books upon the past, and then of having to turn around and repeat our performance: Life is very much like that⎯always⎯every week, every day, every hour⎯almost.

We do continually have to repeat our performance. The moment we are born, we begin a round somewhat of repetition. The moment we build or buy something, we calculate its period of depreciation and replacement. The moment we complete any assignment, any performance, any event, it’s a question of what’s next. It is true in business, in professions, and in every other activity.

Almost the moment one meal is finished (or before) someone has to begin to plan and prepare the next one. It’s true of housecleaning and 0f dirty dishes and of every round of pleasure or drudgery or duty.

With the lawyer or the judge or the doctor it’s the next case, after this one is over. With all of us, constantly in life, in small ways and large ones, over and over, it is somewhat a repeat performance.

It must be so, for the moment it ceases to be so, we have in a measure quit living life. But sometimes this repeat routine leads us, or could lead us, to some very restricted ideas concerning success.

Success is not simply more and more of everything. Success is more than mere quantity. It must also include a discriminating quality. For success we have to have happiness⎯and not just indigestion. (And we do not mean only physiological indigestion. Countries and communities can have indigestion. They can have things put in the wrong places, and things that shouldn’t be put anywhere.)

Success is more than more and more of anything or everything. It is getting what you want if you want the right thing. (It isn’t getting what you shouldn’t have.) It must include a discriminating quality, high character, and a quiet conscience. It must be compatible with happiness and peace and high purpose and with well-planned progressed. And it isn’t’ success if it leads to loss of freedom or loss of faith.

And now as in a measure we go about repeating at least in part last year’s performance, we would well remember the quality as well as the quantity of success. It isn’t simply more and more of anything and everything.