WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF SUCCESS?(Charles E.J. Moulton) WHAT’S YOUR DEFINITION OF SUCCESS?

Opinion by Charles E.J. Moulton


Let’s talk about those two things that seem to matter more than anything in this world of social media: fame and success. Everybody wants to be famous. Every streetcorner kid raps himself silly and claims to be the next Bon Jovi, the up-and-coming MC Hammer or the American Idol to end all idols. But not everyone has the same talent for the same thing. Nature ain’t that cheap, as my dear singing teacher Jimmy Rivers sometimes says.
People forget one thing: every single person has a different definition of fame and success. Nobody is famous everywhere. Even ABBA and The Beatles are not famous everywhere. So, what is fame? What is success?
David Bowie once said: “If I have an idea and the end product is just like my idea, that is success.” His definition is creative. Of course, you might say that he can afford to define his success like this. He has reached every single goal he set out to accomplish. But he still raises that important question: what is fame? What is success?
Now, just because one person is successful in one area doesn’t mean that he is successful in another. Sammy Davis Jr. had to eat his after-show sandwiches in the hotel kitchen, because he had another skin color than the hotel owner. Leontyne Price, one of the world’s most celebrated opera singers and a woman with a monumental career, came back to her home town to visit her relatives. The same old lady from her childhood days sat on the same old porch in the same olf home town and asked her the same question as she walked by: “Hey, Leontyne! Still singing?”
She’d never heard of Leontyne’s monumental worldwide career.
And the stars of yesteryear are not the stars of today.
Things change.
So, fame. Success. Where are we now? The idea is realized. Bowie’s definition might be true, after all. Creativity is eternal. Even artwork is finite. Marvelous, amazing, fantastic, absolutely. But still things. Mona Lisa is a marvelous artwork, a brilliant painting, but still a thing. What is not a thing? Spiritual?
Creativity. You can’t kill it. It is eternal. It is the soul.
And if all of our definitions of success vary, if fame is fickle and flexible, success has to be not giving up, keeping your creativity flowing. That has to be real fame. Super stardom, everyone wants it. Me, too. But if you open up the curtain and glance behind that deep urge to receive global attention, it is only a sign of not looking deep enough. Success is a matter of definition. Are you successful? Famous? I am sure you are. At something. Anything.
My mother-in-law just died. She was very well liked in her village and she influenced the lives of at least 300 or 400 people in her area. Those 300 or 400 all came to her funeral. Every one that came to that funeral had been affected by her. And yet, she was not the woman that actually would define herself as successful. But she raised three children and took care of four grandchildren. She worked to help older people and for good causes. She lived on this planet for 65 years and took care of a house and garden.
She was well liked and could make people laugh.
That’s pretty cool, too.
In 1968, Andy Warhol claimed that everyone wanted their 15 minutes of fame. Today, in the days of this extreme output, that quote is painfully true, more than ever. Not only does everyone want their fame. Everyone thinks they’re famous. Even the janitor.
I have gone through what could be called a paradigm shift, a radical change in social beliefs. Now, I have always been spiritual, deep thinking, religious, emotional. But by the way of personal events, I had to quickly sort out a great quantity of my family’s belongings. Many things disappeared and to this day I feel very guilty about this turn of events. Yes, of course, my deeds had a good reason and good results and many good things came of what happened. In fact, all in all, most things that came of what happened were good. But the enormous amount of valuable, artistic, non-artistic, albeit mostly creative, things that we got rid of has given me sleepless nights.
The soul, however, works according to its own premises. Artefacts mean nothing to the soul. These things sometimes proved more of hindrance than an asset. The things I have now are enough to spread the legacy of my family. The artistic stuff that I produce, doesn’t stay on the shelf. I open up the vaults of my spiritual treasure and let it out into the world. I had a plethora of creative output prior to the shift. Back then, these were things that never left my shelf before. Now, what I produce does.
Furthermore, I know that in life it is not always a matter of being faster, cooler, quicker, snappier to achieve something great. A slow person moving in the right direction is better than a fast person moving in the wrong direction. Everybody plays catch-up these days. It is, therefore, very tempting to think that the guy running to the train past you is better and more effective than you. But he might be going somewhere he shouldn’t be going. If you know where you are going, and will do something productive once you are there, you can move like a snail and you will get there faster than the man running past you to the train.
Fast is slow. Slow might be fast in the long run.
It is paradox that drives us all.
Reality is more than meets the eye. So, creativity is the answer. It is spiritual, eternal, everlasting.
Remember what David Bowie said: put your ideas into practice. Let the world know what you are about. Don’t think fame, don’t think stardom. Think: my spritual assets, my inner being needs to be heard. I need to be heard. I am not following the leader. God knows that everyone follows the leader today. They do what everyone else does.
How do you want to make the world a better place? How do you want to make people happy? Show me. That will excite me. You are the answer. You define your success.

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