COURAGE MONTH: DAY 23: “Just because you fail once doesn’t mean you’re gonna fail at everything.” ― Marilyn Monroe
When we deem things either good or bad, right or wrong, success or failure, we are looking with the wrong eyes. It is important to develop thinking that looks outside the lines, away from the accepted social norms that we are given. My greatest success today is my recovery. It grew from the greatest failure I ever knew, if I want to categorize it as such.
I have difficulty with the terms we use in our popular culture for most things. In every single day, there will be many so-called successes and failures, if we subscribe to popular rhetoric. And we can get easily caught up in believing our own press about these things.
What we call success in life may include great money and prestige, even fame and all the trappings that go along with them. But is that really success?
Most of those whom I know with financial success and all the trappings are too busy working to maintain them to enjoy the fruits of their labor. There is little or no time for relationships, which can be far more fulfilling than a wallet full of money. They have little time to sit still and enjoy the simple pleasure of breathing or taking a simple walk in a garden or on the beach.
I could hardly be as happy if I were financially successful to the extent that I did not have time to create things with my hands. I love to write, to grow amazing food and then find new and wonderful ways to prepare it, to make things, doing needlework or crocheting, sewing, painting, collecting seaglass along the beach. I don’t know how I would survive a life where all I did was work to get money to someday enjoy these things.
Failure, for me, is to miss those opportunities that sit right in front of me each day; a chance to have a nice visit with a neighbor or a friend. To be too “busy” doing to see the amazing butterflies and flowers and hummingbirds and life in my garden, to miss the way the sun shines on the ocean or a lake or any body of water. I do not know of anything more beautiful than the face of a loved one and cannot imagine anything more successful than being able to spend as much time as possible with that person. I am grateful for all of those moments I have been present to others, because it fills my soul. And I love the time that I spend alone, because I can go deeply into the interior of my soul, a place I never thought I would feel comfortable.
I cannot imagine a successful life that isn’t spent in contemplation and gratitude for the beauty that surrounds us all. Even the most dismal and blighted places in the world are full of beauty and grace. We are here to find it, I believe. I do not want those things of material success that do not feed my spirit and heart and cause me to pause and say “thank you” for the wonder and awe that are contained in recognition of witnessing a miracle.
To me, a miracle is that moment in time when we recognize something we cannot believe we are blessed enough to witness, either emotionally or visually; and that we had no hand in creating. Those gigantic “AHA!” moments that life is filled with when we pay attention. When we recognize that all we have to do is pay attention…there is nothing else for us to do….except say “thank you.”
Dolphin Hug 