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 for 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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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

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The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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