The Negative Space of Success

Once upon a time, when pressed by my friends to choose, I decided that I would rather be rich than famous. My reasoning went somewhere along the lines of “because famous people get shot” and for any listening skeptics who might try and argue it, I could bolster my point with irrefutable proof: Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln and John Lennon. All famous, all shot, all dead. Rich people on the other hand, were just that: entities without a name. Strangers who got to luxuriate in anonymous wealth and spend their money on things like stuffed animals and trips to Antarctica (When I was ten, I would have mortgaged a kidney to be able to go to Antarctica. For no good reason except to feel I was a supreme badass for having been to Antarctica.), while famous people simply dropped dead in staggering numbers.  Naturally, it was a given that my friends and I would be granted one or the other of these two paths in due time. Voicing our preference was simply a measure of insurance, in case, you know, fate happened to be eavesdropping just then. After that, that it was simply a matter of patience and waiting until our formal entrance into “adulthood,” whereupon a choice, hopefully our preferred one, would be bestowed upon us and that, in effect, would be that.   Now that I am grown and thickly settled into “adulthood”, I am astonishingly enough, neither rich, nor famous.  Sometimes I think about that game from childhood, and  sometimes I wonder if my  ten year old self would be disappointed in me.

Because of course what was assumed in that starkly binary game of ours was that those two options, and only those two options, defined Success!   

            Perhaps as an adult, thickly settled though I am, I can laugh at the silly simplicity of this idea and pooh-pooh its folly. But on the other hand, have I really grown any wiser in the ensuing years? Maybe now I know enough to understand that Success! cam come without fame or fortune, but have I really gained a deeper understanding of what Success! fundamentally is? Simple test: would I recognize it if it came up to me on the street in a top hat and tails and knocked me over? Answer: no.

  

It seems that while we acknowledge how difficult an idea success can be to nail down, we also hold onto this delusional, hopeful notion that with just a little determination, we can sort of scrape around the edges of Success! and maybe define it through other ideas: wealth! fortune! achievement! etc. But the trouble is that these concepts are just as amorphous as Success!. It’s kind of like looking for shapes in the shadows of clouds.  Or something.

Success! is something we are all supposed to strive for.  We want to be successful! At least I think that is pretty true. Purely anecdotal, I know, but I have yet to meet somebody who says of Success!:

I know want to be successful. I want to feel like my life is successful, and that I am successful. But because I am utterly unsure what Success! even looks like, it easily becomes the plaything of Failure when I am not paying close attention.  You remember my recent post on Failure, don’t you? Oh, my dear devoted readers. I do love you.

So yes, Failure likes to squish Success! into any number of forms that just look so concrete you think you could practically reach out and touch.... just before they disintegrate into thin air.  Failure likes to dangle Success! and flap it around like a fly in front of a fish, a carrot in front of a rabbit, a hope in front of a dreamer. Failure likes to use Success! as a whip, urging you on with its bite even as its steers you towards despair.  Because what Failure assures you, is that no matter how you measure Success!, you will fall short. Sometimes I think I’d have an easier time trying to capture one water out of an entire pond of water. What is a water?

Exactly.

           

And so, when I am feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and I start to believe that the tickling tongue of Failure is absolutely right about me, I try to play a game with myself. Instead of trying to measure my Success! as a positive thing (what I’ve achieved, what I’ve earned what I’ve created, etc.) I beat Failure at its own game by measuring my Success! in the negative. That’s right. I  think about what I don’t do and what I haven’t accomplished. And thus does Success! slowly begin to emerge from the negative space:

 

See? It is a handy technique, and the best part about it is how widespread it is in its application. Here’s another negative that might help illuminate your own Success!: Not starting wars for stupid self-indulgent reasons. (...I’m listening to the Iliad on tape right now?).

   Anyway, if I understand nothing more than I did when I was ten, I at least understand that neither fame nor fortune is a reliable measure of Success! though I am kidding myself to think I wouldn't be just a little bit grateful for a teeny dollop of both. But I also know is that when I start to hunt for Success! in the hazy fog of nebulous “fame” “fortune” “achievement” and the like, I am in danger of letting Failure take over my brain and convince me Success! is a definable, bounded, discrete thing but that I am positively unequipped to ever find it. The beauty of negative space is that you know it doesn't exist, at least not in a material way. That’s why it’s negative space. And yet, it is something. It is what isn't. By embracing the fantasy and dreamy illusion of the negative space, I can turn it into something real. But Failure doesn’t believe it is real, and so Failure won’t find me there.