Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.
—Winston Churchill.
Most of us want to be successful in one way or another. We want to do well in school and succeed at getting good grades; get a good job and be successful at it; have a successful relationship and raise children who are successful. Or perhaps we want to paint, write, or play an instrument, and be praised for our work.
We set goals and do all we can to achieve them. We want and need to have a purpose to our lives, and we want to feel that we have the power to create a life that is meaningful to us, and hopefully beneficial to others.
To succeed is defined as to triumph, to flourish, to thrive. Even the sounds of those words: flourish, thrive, have a kind of energy to them, a deeply appealing quality. Life itself seems to propel us to want to flourish, to thrive.
A flower “wants” to bloom. It’s made to do so. Living beings want to grow into something, always something more. A baby wants to grow into an adult, and as adults we want to keep growing, or perhaps expanding is a better word.
Just as a bud wants to bloom, we want to mature, to open, to expand our possibilities. We achieve one thing and then want to achieve another. There is always farther to go.
We want to continue to blossom, to bloom in new and unexpected ways.
But when we set a goal and chart a course, the way is never certain. All kinds of obstacles, both internal and external, usually make it difficult for us to attain our sought-after satisfaction. Yes, there do exist some fortunate souls who seem to be able to attain whatever they set their hearts and minds on.
But for most of us, the path is long and twisted, and doesn’t always lead us where we thought we were going.
In fairy tales and myths, when the hero must make a difficult journey to win a prize, he or she needs to be transformed in the process. This is part and parcel of the journey, the transformation of the one who journeys.
In the story of Psyche and Eros, Psyche loses her love, Eros, due to her wanting to look him in the face, to capture his image, his essence. She has to pass impossible trials to win him back. He is her love, and in fact, he is her very soul.
As Elizabeth Eowyn Nelson, author of Psyche’s Knife, writes: “Just as Psyche’s fate is entwined with Eros, the soul’s fate is always erotic. We work out our fate by discovering what we desire, what we value, and what we would die for.”
In the end, we are trying to reclaim some part of ourselves.
Yet it always seems that what we need is outside of ourselves–if only we can succeed in obtaining the right relationship, job, child, accomplishment, then we will feel complete, satisfied, and whole.
But what if we fail? What if we find it not only difficult, but impossible to attain one or more of our goals, to make that connection with others, to win acknowledgement and approval?
What is it to fail? To fail is a stopping of the journey. So as long as we continue on the journey, there is no failure. Maybe the attainment of the goal has to be balanced with the idea of simply staying on the journey, and the transformation that takes place while we are on it.
But there’s a feeling of exhaustion that can take over. We’ve tried so hard, gone so far, and still the goals looks far away. Even a flower can’t grow in the dark, even a flower needs sunlight and water to flourish and thrive.
In the end, whatever we want from others, we have to give to ourselves. Because even if the world applauds and rewards us today, tomorrow it will applaud and reward another. Many great writers and artists have achieved success at some point in their lives, only to lose it later. And on our death beds, we lose it all.
Success or failure has to be determined by own opinion. Did I do all I could today? Will I do the same tomorrow? And the day after that? We have to find the courage to make the path the goal, to persist in the face of failure—or success.
Psyche completed her tasks and won her own soul.
