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| Town View Guest House Daylesford Victoria, Australia |
As prescribed, I have recently read the essay "Laugh, Kookaburra" by David Sedaris. In Mr. Sedaris' essay, he begins with a reflection on his relationship with his father. We are brought first to a time when David Sedaris and Lou Sedaris (David Sedaris' father) are visiting a relative. During this visit they engage in an embarrassing bit of bickering, as often happens between family members. His father's criticisms bring David Sedaris back to a time during which he and his boyfriend, Hugh, were visiting Australia. After attending to business they meet up with a friend who is native to Australia, Pat. Pat acts as their guide, taking them to new and unfamiliar areas of Australia. During their drive Pat asks David Sedaris and Hugh to picture a four burner stove as an analogy for aspects of life that are priorities; specifically health, family, friends and work. She explains that, in order to be successful, one must turn off one of their burners. In order to be very successful, one must cut off two. This demonstrates one view of the relationship between success and priorities.
Through the course of this discussion we learn a lot about the people involved by their views of success, and what priorities they have selected above others. Introducing this analogy also invites us to reflect on our own definitions of success and priorities. We learn that David Sedaris has cut off friends, and in a less committal way, health. He is not proud of this, but his priorities are family (presumably including Hugh) and work. Hugh doesn't particularly need to work as his boyfriend is very successful in his own, so Hugh cut off his work. Pat cut off family because the relationship she had with them was more harmful than helpful.
Through David Sedaris' reflections on this topic, we come to find out more about his childhood and how his family defined him as an individual and how he measures himself and his own success by the identity he has developed through them.
The major themes at play here are definitions of success, and identity. Personally, I found that reading this essay brought to mind my own ideas about success, and how prioritizing the different aspects of my life affect success.
I am not entirely sure what success means to me. I have been going through a transitional time in which I have been defining my own ideas of success. For a long time I felt that success was defined by being in the state of not needing anybody. I felt that I had to be totally independent, and self sufficient to be successful. Financial independence, interpersonal independence, I took the idea that every man is an island and understood that to mean every man must be isolated and independent of other islands. The idea of an archipelago as an aspect of identity never occurred to me. I felt that was an arbitrary label which ignored the identity of the individual islands. I failed to look past the boundaries of the shoreline.
Until recently I never considered the actual effects of things in the world on one another. Whether we are looking at the island metaphor, or more specifically at people as they truly live, our circumstances are affected greatly by the things that happen around us. Be these things the actions of other people, or environmental factors, we find ourselves in unique sets of circumstances every moment. How we choose to see them and respond to them speaks to our character. Character, I feel, is greatly influenced by identity.
Identity as defined by dictionary.reference.com is,
"... 2. the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another ...
... 5. the sense of self, providing sameness and continuity in personality over time and sometimes disturbed in mental illnesses, as schizophrenia...."
As we develop, our first and most important set of influences is our family. They define for us the world. From their actions, the examples they set and the expectations they place on us we develop our ideas about what to expect from ourselves and the world. The resultant thought processes are the foundation for character. As we live our lives, our circumstances change from moment to moment, but the way we react or respond to them comes from within. As we use the foundational thought processes to respond to situations early in life, we begin developing a sort of conditioning that we use to respond to later situations. This is simply cause and effect at a level we don't often consider. The mind rarely reflects on itself unless we make a concerted effort to do so. The natural tendency of the mind is to take in information about the world around us and to try to make sense of it. As a result, we are often at the mercy of the effects that our prior experiences have had on us.
Before working to understand my own identity, I had very unclear, and what I now believe to be unhealthy, ideas of success. Upon reflection and introspection I have come to believe that being totally independent is not only impossible, but unhealthy. People are social animals. We need social relationships and have become dependent on our society to thrive. Even when looked at through the lens of the most basic needs for survival, relying on our societal constructs and learning to work within them is the new human basis for fitness in terms of survival. It's no longer about knowing what plants are safe and unsafe, or how to hunt, gather and make shelter. Now we have people who have specialized in each of these areas. We rely on these people doing their jobs, so we can concentrate on doing our own, and being of benefit to society in the way for which we are best suited. As we are successful in creating a benefit, we gain resources (in the form of money) to apply to our needs and other desires. How we choose to allocate those resources is defined by our identity, i.e. the way we think and behave to attain the "sameness and continuity" by which we recognize ourselves.
With this reflection out of the way, I feel the struggle since has been developing an acceptance of this societal model. It has been difficult without guidance. I am a "big picture" person. I can't find satisfaction and understanding through taking a job and focusing on it without the grand view of where it fits and why it is important. Losing sight of that is bad for my mental health. Through my experiences I have determined that keeping the flame turned on in my health burner (to jump back to the stove metaphor) is important for my success. If that burner fails, I cannot carry out the actions needed to be successful in other areas of life. If my health fails, I cannot work effectively, nor can I be useful to family, or friends. Going back to the thought about people being social animals, these things are important too. I cannot see how anyone can totally turn off any of these burners and achieve true satisfaction. Without satisfaction, one's health, work and relationships fail. These things are all integrated, and reliant on one another. I feel the important thing for success is to become familiar with one's own identity, and learn how that identity best serves society and self mutually. Once we have that realization, and condition ourselves to accept that and work according to that, we can develop a sense of peace and satisfaction in our role in the world. If one is dissatisfied, that is where the reflection process becomes important again.
Success as defined by dictionary.reference.com is,
"1. the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors.
2. the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like. ..."
In this definition, we are left to interpret what a success is in every instance. The perspective of the observer or judge colors and changes the meaning of this word. In the first example, the phrase "favorable or prosperous termination" is not well defined. Depending on the action, and who benefits from it, any outcome could be seen as a success depending upon which side of an exchange one happens to be. In the second example attainment is a clear word, but "wealth, position, honors, or the like" can be very flexible. Is this the position in question matriarch? Supervisor? Salutatorian or president? Do any of these titles mean success from one person to the next? Probably not. That depends on identity, and how one's identity leads them to feeling satisfied and behaving productively in life.
Perhaps there is some truth in the stove metaphor. I have a difficult time seeing how the expectations we place on ourselves to be all things (career successes, family successes, friendship successes and health successes) is reasonable. I understand the value of each, and of all. However I am having a difficult time reconciling the allotment of energy to each of those things to be very successful at any of them. Perhaps I will find satisfaction with mediocrity in each of these. Most likely, from what I have discovered about myself, I will need those around me to accept and aid my attempts to be awesome at everything, even when doing so causes me to burn out and drop the ball in some area(s) of life from time to time. Maybe one day I will get the hang of it. Until then I just have to accept that I will falter from time to time, and create a life in which there are people around who will be of benefit to me when I struggle, as well as making time and allotting energy and resources to be of benefit to those people in my life when they need it. Perhaps it's striking a balance of reciprocation, of giving and taking in turn so that everybody reaches an overall state of well being.
References:
Definition; "identity"
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/identity
Definition; "success"
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/success
Original Essay, "Laugh Kookaburra" by David Sedaris
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/24/090824fa_fact_sedaris
Image source:
By Mattinbgn (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DaylesfordTownViewGuestHouse.JPG
