If you had to define success, what would you say? Fame and fortune, if you look around you, don’t seem to make anyone very happy. Perhaps they never did. I often think of Judy Garland saying: “No one phones you when you’re famous because they think you’ll be out.” Or Emily Dickinson: “How dreary to be somebody!/ How public, like a frog.”
Even Dr Seuss’s breathless “Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won” sounds a bit, I don’t know, soul-destroying. People who are really ambitious about these things sigh and murmur: “Ah, but immortality’s the thing.”
But aiming for immortality is, perhaps, the definition of the word sad — sad in the truly modern sense of meaning wholly unenviable.
A little survey of my friends showed success defined in the following ways: “waking up in the morning”; “being creative on my own terms in my own time”; “doing what I say I am going to do”; “not wanting anything...”
The idea of not wanting anything makes me feel dreadful.
A teenager of my acquaintance feels there is success to be found in a middle placing with a good number of people above and below you. It is cosy in its way, not showy and no disgrace. Any form of “coming top” or desire to do so indicates a certain kind of neediness or hysteria to her. I recite a bit of the poem “Born Yesterday” that Larkin wrote for Sally Amis to see its effect. “May you be ordinary;/ Have, like other women,/ An average of talents:/ Not ugly, not good-looking,/ Nothing uncustomary/ To pull you off your balance.”
We both agree that it is just too modest, no, no, no, no, no.
These days success seems to me less a state to be aimed for, reached, maintained, clung on to and then waved goodbye to as it escapes your clutches, and more to be about a feeling.
This might be little stabs of pleasure, successful moments, small epiphanies, a sense of the rightness of your own behaviour in correct proportions laid out before you. It might be scarcely minding something unendurable, a bad situation turned around, very precise, unexpected praise from someone you respect, evidence that a decision you have taken was the best one. It might be eating a very good sandwich in sunshine while thinking, “Oh, how delicious.” It might be someone looking on admiringly as you sing your heart out. It might be finding something you’ve lost after a small amount of frantic searching. It might just be a very potent happy memory turning round in your head (instead of slights) or a well-made joke that has people in stitches. It might be a stolen film in the afternoon. All these things have something in common — a sense of freedom and possibilities. Viewed this way, success isn’t so much an end, a goal, but a sort of reviving (or “renovating” as Wordsworth had it) punctuation point in the day, the week, the month.
I had such a feeling yesterday. It came simply and unexpectedly.
It was the day of my blondest niece’s 22nd birthday. I had made her a card on which her new age really did resemble the two little ducks beloved of bingo callers but I had no present. I had spent hours looking in shops real and virtual but everything I saw seemed stale and tired. I asked myself, half-scandalised, “Is fashion maybe a little bit over?” After many false starts I found a little boxy black fake fur jacket, short in the body and long in the sleeve. It was made by Joseph Altuzarra in collaboration with the American chain store Target. Now I have tried many fake fur jackets in my time and most of them make you look as though you’ve swallowed Big Bird but this one seemed different. Its composition was not promising: 48 per cent acrylic, 33 per cent polyester, 19 per cent modacrylic — I had to add those up twice to make sure they equalled 100 — but it looked de luxe on the website and the proportions were good and at £70 (from Net-a-Porter) or $70 (from Target) was reasonably priced for a special gift for a special gal.
Now it is hubris, indeed, to think you might pick out something to please a wildly stylish citizen of 22. It is a sort of madness even to try. I crossed the fingers of both hands as she drew it out of the bag. “It’s highly returnable,” I murmured apologetically. “Consider it more as a gift voucher,” I muttered. “Because really I have no idea what is currently considered...”
But you should have seen the look on her face. It was perfect: both sharp and fluffy and elegant and witty and carefree. And because I had chosen it, these traits, for a few moments, seemed also to hover over me. I was so happy!
— Financial Times
