Why "The Secret of Success" instead of "The Secret to Success"? Well, that's simple: Despite what many people might think, success is not an end point, a destination (a six figure income, a fancy car, a big house on the hill, a trophy wife, one's children at a prestigious school, some sort of social status). If reading Bear Grylls' Survival Guide to Life has taught me anything, it's that success is a process, an attitude one has when travelling the path to the destination (which is the goal one has). The other is that the money is never the sustaining factor to reaching the goal, no matter how much (or little) of it there is; the passion and commitment is. (I have had almost no money most of this year and am deeply in debt, yet I haven't been this happy in at least half a decade.)
Over the course of the past two weeks, rain has fallen almost constantly, every day (letting up for maybe a few hours at most). At first, I thought I'd eventually get a clear day that would be opportune for mowing, since it's both dangerous and inadvisable to mow wet grass. While I did, it was on a day I ended up working and rain started falling before I got home. This turn of events added an unwelcome level of difficulty and a damper to my trying to get yard work done, something I'm not keen on doing at the best of times. (This is part of my responsibility house-sitting for my parents while they're on holiday. Part of that includes mowing the front and back lawns.) However, the likelihood of getting the desired circumstances became increasingly unlikely with every passing day, to the point where I resoled to take the risk and get it done anyway (because I had to do it) and hang the consequences.
Unsurprisingly, considering that the circumstances were even more heavily stacked against me than usual (about 98% of all my endeavors will fail, I learned long ago), I faced setback and defeat after setback and defeat until, this morning, neither the mower nor weed-eater would switch on (perhaps for no other reason than because today was the day I most needed them to just work the way they're supposed to). Try as I might, I just could not get any power into their motors and start them.
Now, at this point, it was about 16:00. As little as a year ago, a younger me would have declared, "there's nothing more I can do; I quit", thrown my hands in the air and given up in pursuit of some more enjoyable/pleasurable pursuit. However, I didn't. I came inside, fed my dogs and made myself an early supper of bacon, egg and chips to give me strength. Then, I got the hedge clippers and went out onto the lawn, moved about in an awkward squat as I cut the grass as best I could, until the sun had set at about 19:30. Did I achieve my intended goal for the past two weeks? No. Did I achieve anything practical or make a difference to the overall visual state of the lawn? Unlikely. However, did I fail? Maybe, but I don't think so, because I refused to give up and did the best I could in the circumstances: I persevered despite knowing I wouldn't achieve my desired outcome (a beautifully cut lawn my parent would see when they arrived home).
What does any of this have to do with success, though? Well, success is simply getting up, back on the path and carrying on, no matter how many times you're knocked down and off it. Even if all you can manage is to crawl on hands and knees and get left behind by everyone else or the events of life itself, you keep moving forward, no matter how slowly, towards the goal. Maybe you don't/wont get there in the time you have, but you keep going anyway, because there really is no other option. If that's a failure to some, then I'm happy to fail, because I know in my heart that I did the best that I could and I didn't make excuses, which I usually do.
I am not a man of much resolve or willpower and I have quit too many times in my life (including trying to quit my life itself) to ever again catch up with the people in my life. However, I hope that the lesson I've learned from the past year is to never give up on life, to try quit it, ever again. Even if I'm the only one on the path and travelling along it by foot, I have to keep going.
Lead image: Photo of a storm in the USA, by Frank Cone from/on Pexels