What a crazy world we all live in! But what a crazy world I have chosen for myself. Having such a big family is not for the faint of heart. Lately it has been increasingly overwhelming with a son getting married and having a baby (healthy baby girl, YAY), and my second son struggling so much with harder high school and concurrent enrollment college classes. My youngest kids keep getting sick, it seems that all the germs are ready to come out and play after so much social distancing and mask wearing last year. And I have felt frequently overwhelmed and like I can't quite keep my head afloat without some serious help.
I have done a lot of thinking over the last few weeks about what success is. So often, first world USA thinks of success as 1. a lot of money 2. a lot of nice things 3. a good job (often to help with # 1 and #2) 4. power, prestige, and influence and 5. lots of pleasure in our lives. We sacrifice our sleep, our family time, our health, and all kinds of other things to achieve those 5 measures of success.
But on a deeper level, what is success?? At the end of my life, not a single one of those things will really matter, except maybe if I used power and influence to help other people. What REALLY is success?
Here are some things I think are a truer, deeper measure of success. 1. Love At the end of the day, learning to love others and love yourself is a huge thing. There are so many ways to learn to love others, but family is definitely one of mine. So is serving others within my community. Learning to balance sacrifice with self care is a lifelong skill and journey that is worth taking. 2. Happiness I'm not talking about pleasure, that's not the same thing. Happiness is deep, it's permanent, and it doesn't depend on the circumstances you're in. I can be happy, even in the middle of intensely hard times or frustrating, overwhelming situations if I'm able to keep a perspective about it and remember to treasure and prioritize the most important things in my life. 3. Growth. Growth comes in a bajillion forms, but the one I'm definitely NOT talking about is my girth. I'm speaking of intelligence and skills. I'm talking about understanding yourself better. I'm referring to growing closer to the eternal potential you have. Being able to forgive someone is growth, and that is success. 4. Creation As children of the master creator (God who created everything) we grow like Him and grow closer to our full potential as we create things. This can be anything--a great meal, a work of art, or even helping to create happiness in another person by being kind or thoughtful.
Earlier this year, Simone Biles did one of the most amazing things I've ever seen done. She withdrew from Olympic competition because her mental and physical health was struggling and she needed to be able to recuperate. She has lots of signature moves named after her, but in my own mind, this is the most amazing and awe inspiring one of all. She did a Biles and prioritized REAL success over "fake success".
She put first her growth, her balance of love and sacrifice, her long-term happiness, and set aside her opportunity for prestige and bragging rights. She allowed others on her team the chance to compete without her, and cheered them on in their success, showing true love and giving them opportunities for growth and success they may not have had otherwise.
Today, I helped one of my sons drop a hard class that he was failing. I wanted to cry, I felt like I was a failure for not pushing him harder and earlier to stay caught up. He also seemed ready to cry as we discussed where he is and what needs to happen. At times, I felt like we were giving up and that I'm not teaching him about perservering. I worry that he feels like a failure because he has struggled to catch up with this very difficult class, and no matter how hard he works, it seems he can't keep up, and if I had been keeping him on track, he may have been able to do it. As I discussed with his counselor the options that he has, I realized that I was forgetting about what real success is. He has learned a lot about himself through this process. He realizes now that he sacrificed the opportunity for growth in favor of temporary fun. (Initially, we let him have more control over his time, and he squandered too much of it. He watched too much youtube, played games on the computer, and spent too much time on distraction and got too far behind in many classes.) Trying to catch back up, he has sacrificed sleep, mental health, social growth, and fun time, and those were necessary if he was going to actually get his grades and learning back to where it should have been if he had been keeping up and balancing things all along. But at this point, his growth, balance of love and sacrifice, and his happiness are not worth sacrificing just so he can have one more CE class under his belt. I wanted him to have the option to graduate high school with an associates degree, like his older brother. But he is not his older brother. And that is OK. We are not all the same human being, and we are not all going to have the same bullet list of skills and accomplishments. So we are going to pull a Biles and pull away from this challenge so that he can do what he needs to do with the other classes and the other areas in his life.
Many times, I am sure people look at what they can see of my life: mom of 6 kids ranged from 18 years to 2 years old, (and now a grandmother to a tiny newborn), with no job (besides part time teaching piano lessons out of my home and tutoring math from home), no fancy cars, no prestige, no extreme wealth, no fancy clothing, and they think along the lines of "she has no idea what she's missed out on" or "I feel bad for her" or "she was brainwashed to be a stay-at-home mom and not have a career" or "why did they have that many kids?" Truly, there are times I question it too. When I remember the things that are MOST important though, I remember that I have chosen a life that is poised and ready to help me grow in love, happiness, creation, learning and what I consider REAL success. My children are still lacking in wisdom, and they do choose pleasure over real happiness far too often (as do many teenagers), but at the end of the day, deep down, they know what is real, and what matters most (and so many people do not).
Success. To learn and truly understand about yourself and to be willing to make sacrifices for others but also for yourself. To learn from your failures and from your good experiences. To be able to spend quality time growing in love with the family and dear friends in your life. To have and take time to create, to grow, to find real happiness.
