What is your measure of success? For me, meaning keeps changing

By David McElroy · July 5, 2021

A friend called me Monday evening to give me some news about someone I used to know. A woman I knew in high school has been diagnosed with cancer. It’s Stage 4 brain cancer.

I haven’t seen the woman since high school, but her husband — who I knew casually back then — is a banker who I deal with from time to time. I knew his wife very well back then, mostly from long trips on a church bus.

A couple of weeks ago, she suddenly felt strange and passed out. She was quickly diagnosed and had surgery, but what I read about Stage 4 brain cancer doesn’t sound promising.

I can’t help thinking how much it must change your view of the world when you find out that your life is suddenly threatened in a serious way. And how does it change you when this happens to your wife? Or your husband? Or whoever you love most?

Wouldn’t it completely change the meaning of your life? The things that seemed so important before would become meaningless — and the most mundane routines of love would become priceless.

I have no idea what’s going on in the hearts and minds of this old friend and her husband, so my speculation isn’t really about them in particular. The news about their lives simply has me thinking yet again about how the meaning of life keeps changing for me.

I grew up accepting the values of this dysfunctional culture a lot more deeply than I realized at the time. Even though I was a Christian, I didn’t realize the degree to which this fallen world’s values had permeated my life.

I wanted money, ego satisfaction, fame, power and glory.

There were good things I wanted to do with my power and wealth, but I see now that my goals at the time were incompatible with what I really need. I told myself that I could have everything. I could be wealthy and powerful. I could be loved and admired. I could have it all.

It took me years to realize this was a cultural lie. I had to learn that life is one long series of tradeoffs. You can’t have everything the world offers. Whatever you choose cuts off other paths. Trying to have it all guarantees you’ll end up with less than you can possibly imagine.

There was a song in 1987 that made an impression on me at the time but it’s meant more to me as the years have passed. In a song called, “What is the Measure of Your Success,” Christian artist Steve Taylor imagined a wealthy old man on his deathbed:

I am an old man
And the word came
But you can’t buy time or a good name
Now when the heirs come around
Like buzzards on a kill
I see my reflection in their envious eyes
I’d watch it all burn to buy another sunrise

The measure of my success has changed. I’ve experienced some of the success I wanted. I had the money for awhile. I never had the power, thank goodness, because I understand it would have corrupted me. But I had enough of success to realize it wasn’t what I needed. Not really.

If I came to the end of my life and had massive success — everything I once dreamed of — I would be like that old man in the song. I would want to trade it all away just to live for one more day.

But it’s not just one more day of any life. It’s one more day — or week or month or decade — of life if I’m connected to someone I love.

I was always scornful of the attitude among hippies — and popularized by the Beatles — that all you need is love. But in ways which I wasn’t prepared to discover, I’ve found they were right. I don’t know whether they understood things as I do now. Maybe, maybe not. But the right kind of love and connection are more important than any money or success.

It would still be nice to have wealth. I still believe I could find good things to do with power. But all of worldly success would be trivial without the love and connection which my heart still longs for. Some people would consider that madness or worse.

I consider it wisdom — learned from living with the pain of having made poor choices in the past.

If someone had begged me to understand this when I was 21 or 25 or 35, I would have shrugged it off. About the time I hit 40, change was slowly starting to faintly dawn on me. Today, it’s simple and obvious to me.

I can’t force anybody else to see this. I can’t force anybody else to join me in changing how success is measured. And that’s painful for me.

All I can say is that when you understand, this knowledge — this wisdom — changes you. And when it does — if it does — I hope you’ll join me. Life can have more meaning than you ever imagined it could.

But most people learn that too late to make any difference. I hope it’s not too late for me. And I hope it’s not too late for you.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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