"Success" is achieving the ability to respect yourself, laugh, understand, appreciate, create, have pride in your actions, and live by your own terms.

Money is not success. Money is only a tool to help you achieve success.

Recognition is not success. People recognize failure just as much as they recognize success.

Reputation is not success. Reputation is only a reflection of how other people judge their own lives and has nothing to do with you or your success.

Freedom is not not success. Nobody is ever truly free. We all live within constraints. We must find success within those constraints.

Power is not success. Power over others is simply arrogance in action. A person who feels arrogant enough to exert power over others is not even close to true success because he expends all of his energy trying to stay in power rather than enjoying life.

Submission is not success. Giving up your own desires and will and letting somebody else use you like a puppet, destroys your spirit. There is nothing noble about it.

Love is not success. Love isn't something that you achieve. It is only something that you either feel or don't feel. And whether or not people love is, much like reputation, a reflection of how and why they love themselves.

My success is the ability to respect myself by not letting other people abuse me, to laugh at myself as well as the the people around me and the world itself, to understand the nature of everything (the way physics leads to chemistry, which leads to astronomy, which leads to geology, which leads to biology and evolution, which leads to psychology, which leads to technology, and so forth), to appreciate what I understand as well as what I don't and marvel at the beauty of it all, to create in all forms, to experience that "I did that" feeling no matter what others think of my of what I've done, and to live the way I want to live within the constraints of my reality. I am not rich, powerful, or famous, but I am already successful.

Labels: The Quest for Happiness