The Myth of Success
What matters in life doesn't always come with a paycheck, a promotion, a spotlight, or an audience
My June has been full to the brim. I felt like I had just settled into a routine for my writing schedule during the spring, when summer arrived and tossed all routine out the window. Now the kids are out of school for the summer and we’ve been gone from home several days of the week for the past three weeks. It’s been good, though my autistic brain craves routine in order to function.
However, the North Star and highlight throughout the chaos of my month has been my Tuesday evenings spent in a playwriting class with other writers and creatives in Houston. I signed up for the class several months ago and the entire spring, I was like a giddy kindergartener waiting in anticipation for the first day of school.
I’ve had an idea for a play tumbling around in my mind for over a year. I’d spin plot lines and character arcs around in my head while doing mindless tasks like taking a shower, driving, or waiting in line anywhere. By early this year, I felt like the story and its characters were going to burst out of me. They were begging to be written. But even if I wanted to dedicate myself to writing this play, I’ve been away from any form of work in the theatre for fifteen years. I have been writing consistently in various mediums and spaces over the years, so writing and story structure feels like a familiar practice. But the whole point of a play is to have it embodied on a stage. I could write the script, but at this point in my life I’m so removed from being active in the theatre world, I didn’t know where to begin to get it on its feet once I had a draft done.
I thought of reaching out to an old college playwright friend to ask her if she could point me in a direction of a class or workshop I could attend to get me started. Within a few days of thinking of reaching out to her, I saw her share news that she would be teaching a playwriting class over the summer where we would write our full-length play and have a reading - with actual actors! - at the end of the semester.
Well, that felt serendipitous. I said YES immediately and felt that YES with my full body.
As I’ve sat in class the last four Tuesdays, I have felt like I am exactly where I am meant to be at this moment in time. It’s like I’ve come back to a core part of myself. I haven’t been in the theatre world for fifteen years, but it feels familiar. I was in it for years and the familiarity comes from the part of me that longs to tell stories that move people in many different ways. The part of me that love love loves collaboration with other creatives (and has been thirsty for it for a while), who loves working toward a shared goal of telling a story, who likes playing with story structure, who can dig into character development, who enjoys picturing how a play looks on its feet and finds satisfaction in making it come to fruition. Saying yes to taking this class and writing this play feels like coming home.
Not to be too romantic, but oh well, I’m going to be: A few times during our discussions, my gratitude to the Universe for my life and its path has been so overwhelming that I’ve had to hold back tears of joy.
How ironic that I’m grateful for the years away from the thing I’ve loved since childhood. Sometimes the things that you have to set aside will come back to you if they’re meant for you.
But for the longest time I felt like a failure walking away from something that I loved and wanted to pursue since childhood.
All I ever wanted to do, since I was eight years old, was work in the theatre, tell stories, and create worlds. I was on that trajectory. I followed my plan until after I graduated college. Then my life took many much-needed detours. I wrote more about that in this article.
I had a twisted idea of what it meant to be successful and for many years my shame from walking away warped my perception of myself. I saw walking away as failure. Over the years, part of my healing has been deconstructing my definition of success.
I look back on my young, impressionable years and realize how much of my ideas of success were unconsciously defined by the adults in my life. Every time throughout my adolescence when my extended family gathered together, I remember the conversation revolving around their judgement and their perceptions about others’ “success.”
There was a lot of talk about employers. “So-and-so got a job at Prestigious Company.” Check: Success.
There was a lot of talk about job status. “So-and-so got promoted at their company.” Check: Success.
There was talk about the amount of money they made. “So-and-so got a new job where they’re making more money.” Check: Success.
There was a lot of talk about their career path. “So-and-so is going to school to be an engineer.” Check: Success.
The people they discussed weren’t presented as human to my young mind; their humanity was reduced to mere data points that I could read on a resume. All the conversations revolved around status and the practicality of peoples’ work. Oil and gas or engineering were considered honorable careers. The arts? Well, anyone who would purse an arts career was a loon and deserved the destitute life waiting for them for their stupidity in not choosing a path with guaranteed stability. (What stability is guaranteed in life, after all?)
Job. Marriage. Kids. House. Work. Retire. Success was defined as arrival. Promotion. Stability. Visibility. Status. Money.
And success was accomplished by continual striving for the next thing. To settle was considered immoral.
All of these ideals are symptomatic of a capitalist society that reduces its community to dehumanized worker bots.
But not everything that matters in life comes with a paycheck, a promotion, a spotlight, or an audience.
In a recent interview with Gayle King, Audra McDonald was asked about being nominated for a Tony Award eleven times and whether or not she thinks about breaking her own record for most Tony wins.
Audra is the most decorated Tony winner in Broadway history with six Tony awards and was nominated this past season to receive her potential seventh for playing Rose in Gypsy. (Nicole Scherzinger won for Sunset Boulevard). Gayle asked Audra if breaking the record for most Tony awards is something that she thinks about.
“I can’t not think about it because people are talking about it,” Audra replied. “What I do know is that whatever happens [at the Tony Awards], I still have to sit with me the next day. So I need to make sure I’m right with me and with who I am.”
She continued. “Because what I know is that the Tony isn’t going to make me a happier person or a lovelier wife, mother, or human being…If I’m gunning for a Tony thinking it’s going to change my life, it’s not. A Tony…can’t fix [feeling empty].”
This is the most decorated Tony winner in history. She speaks from experience. She knows that the accolades won’t fill an inner void. Being the most decorated winner isn’t what defines her life because life is much more than our resume. And success is so much more than our accomplishments.
If we lose ourselves chasing a status symbol, we’ve already lost. If we arrive at our goals and find that we still aren’t satisfied, we’ll spend our entire lives searching for the thing we believe will finally make us feel fulfilled. We’ll have spent our lives striving for something that doesn’t exist. It’s not about making it to retirement. It’s not about winning a Tony Award. These can be healthy goals for ourselves, but they aren’t the final destinations that define our lives.
We never fully arrive at a destination in life; life is ever-evolving.
Not to belittle this place where I’ve found myself at this moment in time, but I know a small playwriting class isn’t a huge deal in the eyes of external success. But I’m no longer operating by an external definition of success. I define my own success. Can I be proud of what I’ve accomplished even if no one notices? Can I be proud of the work I’ve done, even the work no one sees? Can I be proud of how I’ve navigated life? Can I be proud of my integrity?
We can all ask ourselves these questions when we’re trying to form a framework for ourselves around a definition of success.
Is something or someone considered successful only when there is a monetary value attached? Why do we believe that?
Am I pursuing something because I’m striving for love/attention/accolades/money…?
Does popularity define success?
Why do we allow external sources to steal from us the success we feel on the inside?
Can we acknowledge and be proud of the inner work that has happened regardless of how the external world views us as successful?
Can we say that we’ve operated out of integrity?
Can we be proud of bravely pursuing something, regardless of a “successful” outcome?
Was there a greater lesson to be learned regardless of how “successful” we are? Sometimes the lesson inside of the thing is why we needed to experience the thing.
What or who defines success for me?
Signing up for this playwriting class and writing this play is success for me because I know what it means for me to be able to show up in this class at this moment in time. I know what I have been through to be able to have the guts to step back into theatre world and write a play. I’m not labeling my finished (or first draft) work good or bad. I’m not measuring the success of this play or this class by external or future rewards and standards; I’m holding it all in its own space where it exists in this present moment in time. To do otherwise would be unfair to myself, the play I’m writing, and my experience in this class.
I am successful because I’ve formed my own definition of success within each circumstance in which I find myself. My success at this point on my timeline is that I said yes and that I am doing it. Period. And my success now looks different than it did fifteen years ago. I was successful back then because I walked away. Because that’s what I needed to do at that point in my life. I couldn’t have told you that then, but I can now with the perspective having lived it.
It feels like success to me that I’m able to show up in any theatre space as the person I am today, after the life I’ve lived up until now. I thought my dreams of any participation in theatre were dead and I’ve grieved that loss over the years as though I grieved a loved one. It feels like I have clawed my way to get to get to this moment. Not in a grabby, controlling way; I didn’t even realize I was clawing my way to get to this point in time. I just knew I wanted to stay alive and I wanted to heal. And in the process I had to let my desires go in order to allow them to come back to me on the other side.
How divinely sweet to come back to something later in life that you’ve always loved, but a completely different person with a new perspective — a perspective rooted in health and wholeness. It helps me approach and appreciate this endeavor with a level of gratitude I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
I wouldn’t be able to write the play I’m working on if it hadn’t been for the years in between - the trauma, the healing, the relationships, the events, the lessons. All of these are ingredients to the recipe of the work I am creating.
We can’t rob ourselves of the stories we live that bring us to certain moments in our lives simply because we haven’t arrived at some arbitrary definition of success on an arbitrary timeline. Whether that definition is imposed on us by society or by ourselves, it doesn’t matter. I can dream for Broadway, but I’m not going to begrudge the liminal space between now and then. That middle space is where we heal and stretch and grow. It’s a space to make mistakes and to learn from our mistakes. It’s where we learn who we are and what’s important to us.
Don’t steal these opportunity away by resenting the liminal space that looks and feels “unsuccessful.”
Nothing in life is wasted. The detours aren’t necessarily detours; they’re the building blocks of our life story. They are the arcs of our character in the play that is our life.
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Freaking love this.
Keep going. Can hardly wait to read/see your play one day.