The badge of success
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- johnnnnyh
When can you wear that? At what point in your life do you think, that's it, I've made it. Is it when you toss the keys to your Aston to your butler at your ski chalet? Or is it when you produce a really great piece of work and then just take the rest of the afternoon off, because you can?
Any thoughts, cause I'm confused and caught between the dream (ie the first one) and the reality (ie the second one but maybe not great work just work.)
- jamble0
I'd say if you're happy with what you've got in life then it's good.
- SkyPoo0
Johnnnny just put your badge on and relax.
- Khurram0
johnny, you seem agitated.
You seem to be waiting for some false dawn to fix all your existential problems. Like somewhere, in the distant future, 10 years from now, you'll be in a place where you'll have "self-worth"...
I'm sorry, but it doesn't work like that.
It's not the destination. It's the JOURNEY.
Be happy now :D
- eatbreathdrive0
It doesnt necessarily have to be an Aston, say a Porsche 997 S, a Cartier Tank, many Rolex's, a great house with a magnificent view etc. Come to say all this, its my life, now that I'm listing them all, I feel pretty darn good right now.
- eatbreathdrive0
Actually, lets see, who will first tell me to prove it! :-D It is gonna happen eventually, hedge ?
- johnnnnyh0
". . . waiting for some false dawn to fix all your existential problems."
Khurram you're probably right, I've been waiting a long time too, just to get here. I think my main issue is one of is it just me, or does everyone feel like this? So yep, in a sense it's existential. I'm just wondering about how come I got to where I am and whether that really has meaning or as you say, is it the journey. But to be honest, I don't recall the journey that much, not in the sense of it being anymore than waiting for the next moment.I'll wear the badge, sure, but actually I'm still wondering what it represents for me.
- TheBlueOne0
First intention, then enlightenment.
- WeLoveNoise0
is this it ?
- Khurram0
Well i'm a lot younger than you still in my 20s. This is prolly some mid-life crisis you're having...
...still
For me "enlightenment" comes from simple knowledge. Just know, it's about the journey not the destination and DONE, tada, i'm fixed. But i guess for a certain mindset/thought patterns it ain't that easy to be absorbed in who you are and what you do TODAY and draw total satisfaction.
How long do you spend imagining yourself in the future, playing a movie screen version of your life and thinking "everything will be ok when...."? Since you were 16? 10? 5?
A little off-the wall example, but i been thinkin about this shit in the past year.. Like i used to be sorta into brit-pop in the 90s when in school. And I remember reading how, when that shit blew over how many of the former "stars" had total nervous break-downs. I remember reading a Jarvis Cocker interview saying that how you spend all your life aiming for this ambiguous glory, artistic recognition, welcome to the elite hall of fame, but then when you actually get there... it ain't nothing like what you thought it would be. That every day he felt, even after all the awards, that he had to prove himself, and defend himself, and nothing of what he had or achieved felt permanent and he became even more scared to lose it - getting obsessed with the music press and passing cultural fads and moments - knowing he actually gave a shit about everything he hated.
This is why so many rock stars kill themselves as soon as they "make it". Fuck, look at Britney Spears. I feel sorry for that bitch. She had everything, and she's a broken shell. The emotional chaos of wanting all these external pillars of validation, this desperate cycle to hold onto a sense of self, it's NEVER ENOUGH.
If you feel empty now, i don't know how "design fame" or "accolades" or material wealth is going to change it. It'll NEVER be enough
You'll be sat there gorged on your success, thinking now you can rest on your laurels, and oblivion will still be facing you. Oh shit...
this don't mean to say i don't got ambition. I have GRAND ambitions. I'm doing whateve is necessary to implement them, right now, and work towards my goals. Always higher, onwards, upwards etc. But it's the journey of getting there. It's the skills i'm acquiring. It's the "aha" moments i encounter daily. It's the lives I touch and the struggles and specific circumstances i gotta cope with - that's what get ME off.
...and that's how we do it yo!
- yeah mid to whole life crises I guess. It'll be OK sometime soon. Nice post. thanksjohnnnnyh
- ian0
For me the badge of success is fleeting. One minute I could be all happy and filled with confidence and ready to throw down the world and fuck it doggy style and the next I can barely motivate myself to hate Ben Affleck.
Thing is to recognise the good moments that make you happy and enjoy them, because sooner or later a shit sandwich is going to come your way and you're gonna have to take a bite.
- eatbreathdrive0
Charles Manson: I will not make myself unhappy.
- Khurram0
Smoke some salvia, confront death head-on. Come back a changed man, or a broken man.
Play2Win Bay-bee
- sublocked0
^^ that's not play to win. that's double or nothing.
- SkyPoo0
Most of us are born into parental care. The experience of becoming a parent and therefore what defines parental care is that you reach a point in life, sometime after your adolescent booster rockets run out of fuel and inertia slowly winds down, where you feel that something is missing, that you haven't fulfilled your potential, you have not acheived the miraculous destiny imbued to you by your doting parents who convinced you in a thousand tiny ways every day of your young life that you were a miracle, that you were special, better than the rest, destined to hold the world as your oyster.
So you also spawn, and what you produce is nothing short of a miraculous, miniature facsimilie of yourself. Perfect in every way, and in particular possessing that which you have lost. Youth, vitality, the power to acheive, the time to do it. So you re-learn all the ambitions of your youth, and you remeber how it felt to be so full of confidence, promise, potential and fire, and you realise that this tiny facsimile of you can acheive that which you did not, and so you begin to imbue them with the vision.
They grow, bit by bit, day by day, all the while being decorated by a thousand tiny affirmations of their own greatness to come. You tell them of the mistakes you made, so as to enlighten them not to repeat your path but to refine it, to perfect the stratospheric rise to greatness. And when adolscence comes and those booster rockets kick in, they take off, sodden with the notion that you gave them that they are the embodiment of true greatness. And the power of those adolscent booster rockets is such that they burn you up on take off and its impossible to maintain control of the direction they take.
So off they go, your spawn. Young adults, full of power with no control. And before they know it they've charged off at a million miles an hour into the great unknown, and then the adolscent booster rockets have run out of fuel and wound down, and they find themselves scrabbling round to utilise the resources available in whichever field of human experience they end up, and before too long they realise they never quite acheived the dreams of their youth... dreams which were imbued from day one in a thousand tiny , every single day. Something went wrong, they went off course. They got lost.
But its not too late. Rumour is its possible to make a tiny facsimile, and to charge that with the task of reaching the great destination that you did not.
Cue song "I believe that children are the future..."
- Sorry, I came over all Lorne Greene whislt writing my post.SkyPoo