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Understanding Hedonism Part 4: What’s The True Measure of Success?
August 9, 2008
Normally, my existential views would automatically lead me to say “Success is anything you want it to be. It’s up to you to give your life meaning.”
And that’s still true.
But since we’re all flesh-and-blood biological machine human beings who cannot rise above our own humanity (not that we’d WANT to, but still) there exists a set of things that give our thoughts, feelings, and emotions a sense of ease and release a steady supply of endorphins into our bodies, giving us that drugged up “natural high.”
As I’ve talked about in the last post, in the scheme of things, your moment-to-moment quality of life is equally if not more important than your long-term successes and failures.
Goals are important and achievement can be extremely gratifying as well as lucrative, but if in the course of your endeavors you have been an overworked, humorless, and recklessly driven maniac, then you have not been successful.
A successful life can not be measured in numbers. A hefty bank account is a very nice thing, and a wall full of awards may impress the dinner guests, but those are signs of a successful career, and not necessarily a successful life.
Your career is not your life. It may be a large part of it, and that’s fine as long as you’ve enjoyed the ride and balanced it alongside your personal relationships and sufficient leisure time with a healthy dose of perspective.
But if your desire to succeed has become all-consuming, eclipsed all else and prevented you from truly enjoying every day, then you’ve missed the boat.
If you want to measure just how successful you have been in constructing your life, then answer the following questions honestly and you will get a very clear picture:
11 Questions To Guide You In Measuring Your Happiness In Life
#1. Do you have stable, drama-free personal relationships?
#2. Do you laugh out loud every day?
#3. Do you instinctively clear time in your day for leisure?
#4. Do you sleep well at night?
#5. Do you reward yourself for your own successes?
#6. Do you make the most of your surroundings?
#7. Are you able to trust people?
#8. Do you enjoy doing “nothing”? (my friend Matt sometimes refers to sitting around talking as “doing nothing” I disagree.)
#9. Are you able to love freely?
#10. Are you able to be affectionate?
#11. Do you live without fear?
Not all the things listed above come easily or naturally to everyone, and some may require a conscious effort. But as flesh-and-blood human being lifestyles go, they are all worth aspiring to if you truly want to enjoy your time on this big ball of dirt we call earth and be successful in living your life.
And, ok, since I posted this list here on my site, I suppose the only decent thing to do would be to answer all of the questions honestly for myself, here on this publicly viewable forum.
The way I figure, what the hell, I’ve got nothing to hide. So here goes:
#1. Do I have stable, drama-free personal relationships? Yes, but in my opinion not nearly enough of them, and not with as wide of a variety as I would like. So while I’m doing “O.K.” this is something I should be working on.
#2. Do you laugh out loud every day? A lot more often than I used to. Not every SINGLE day, but… it’s getting much better 
#3. Do you instinctively clear time in your day for leisure? Yes. But sometimes I get carried away with it. I’m still wrestling with pure work versus pure hedonistic pleasure. In past years I’ve rocked back and forth from one extreme to the other. Extreme work and German-like dedication melted away into a sort of free-floating pleasure-seeking vagueness. Neither are good. I need to burn the concept of balance into my brain and discover what it really means. Lately I’ve found that by switching between a lot of tasks during the day, some pure fun, some pure work, some in the middle - seems to help… but I don’t know if it’s the answer I’m really looking for.
#4. Do you sleep well at night? Oh definitely. In fact, I can only remember one night in the past few years that stands out as a no-sleeper due to stress… and that was the night I firmly decided I would in fact journey across the ocean and an entire continent to Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was a mental leap, not a physical one, that caused anxiety.
#5. Do you reward yourself for your own successes? Certainly. And when you’re the only person you know who can afford the things you want, you’re also the only person who can buy yourself gifts. So in a way, I have to… because no one else will.
#6. Do you make the most of your surroundings? Not always, but I am trying harder at this lately. Right now as I write this I’m in the frame of mind that perhaps St. Louis isn’t the right place for me. I’ve had friends say something similar, and even today a guy from California called me to and happened to mention his friends just got back from St. Louis and “Damn, there’s like, NO girls there!” Obviously he’s comparing St. Louis to California, in which case he would be right. The truth is, there ARE girls here, just a lot of unattractive ones, and the ones who ARE very attractive are few and far between. If I were a girl-fisherman, my pole would not be cast in Lake St. Louis. Hell, even a clarivoyant once told me she didn’t think this was my place. She said… “I see you more out west. West of here.” My friend Matt’s said something similar before; “You’re a California guy, for sure.” Maybe they’re all right. Maybe I should pack up and get out of here after this next year’s lease. Damn. Sometimes I don’t know what to do.
#7. Are you able to trust people? Yes, and in fact sometimes I can be too trusting - leading me into scams and stupid decisions. Well, at least I’ve learned from them.
#8. Do you enjoy doing “nothing”? Yes, with friends or alone; nothing is fine. I love thinking and reading. The other day I layed out in the pool and stared at the sky, occasionally wondering where a particular plane was headed, who was on it, and why.
#9 Are you able to love freely? Some past girlfriends would argue with this, but I say for the most part, the answer is yes. The reason they’d argue is because sometimes (true to being a Cancer) it can be quite difficult to pass through my hard exterior and “break on through to the other side” (thanks Jim Morrison), which is where all the deep emotions lay. But once it arrives, it does so very freely. In fact, once a girl has gotten to a certain point, it is very easy for me to remain hung up on her for months and months and months afterward.
#10. Are you able to be affectionate? In a protected sort of way, along with what I just described above in #9, yes. But I don’t think I’m as free with it as I want to be. I hold back, for reasons I’m not completely sure of.
#11. Do you live without fear? This is interesting to me because only a few years ago, I can remember having exact fears. There were certain movies, certain types of dreams, and certain events in life that could derail my brain in fear for awhile. But then, somewhere along the line, something snapped. All of a sudden, I began walking around in a sort of weird Neo-in-the-Matrix-like fearlessness of those old things, ideas, and events. I don’t know what happened. There are still some things I fear, but they’re more of the invisible kind now; hard to define. I’m trying to figure them out. And when I realize their roots, they too will go away.
Well, that’s it. Basically, I need to work on my sense of balance, time, and social openness; try to get that shell to where it’s not quite so tough to crack.
And apparently, according to popular opinion, I need to move out of Saint Louis
Popularity: 9% [?]
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Tags: achievement, dreams, enjoyment, fear, freedom, goals, happiness, hedonism, hedonist, hedonistic, life lessons, solitude, successTopics: Philosophy |
August 11th, 2008 at 6:40 am
#8=Fail.
Thinking, reading, wondering; these things are all something.
You shant do nothing until you are dead, since you will in fact always be breathing.
It seems that nothing is always about some-thing:
http://www.google.com/search?q=nothing
http://clusty.com/search?input.....ry=nothing
-The Captain