A Facebook acquaintance inserted this photo with the title, ‘The 380 upper deck is, well…um, a kind of different, I’d say’ and then he inserted another one which offered views of the scenery he could see from his hotel window, saying, ‘Not so bad view from a window you have to spend four days in.’ And so came more gloating- we had photos of him drinking wine, trying different kinds of foods, etc. He got 28 ‘likes’ for that first post and 37 for the second one. The thing for me was that this was the same guy who worked for an organisation that helps the poor.  Not many of his ‘customers’ would have experienced this luxury and again, the organisation that sponsored his visit, would perhaps be uncomfortable with his boasting.  I thought that his aspirations and his work were so opposite that perhaps he does not find comfort and happiness in what he does.

For many of us, one’s career can different from one’s calling, leading to a dissatisfaction with our everyday lives. A calling is something we do from our hearts, it is part of our whole lives so that is it not an incongruous part of it but something that is natural. Thomas Carlyle said, ’Blessed be he who has found his work, let him ask no other blessedness’.  But success is a bit more difficult to understand. Alain de Botton recently posted a blog about learning from the 80’s pop group, Wham!. One of the lead singers, Andrew Ridgeley, is living a comparatively unknown life with his wife, who is also a former pop star from ‘Bananarama’. de Botton contends that Ridgeley is the ‘winner’ and more successful than his former partner, George Michael, who is in the news all the time (sometimes for the wrong reasons) and wealthier. Success is about more than accumulation of money, travel, homes and carsl- ‘The life of Andrew Ridgeley belongs in the public realm. It’s one of the great moral fables of our time. It’s the story of one man’s redemption – from manic, narcissistic pleasure seeking to maturity.’

I have been thinking of success and what it means to me. For me success is a quiet confidence that we have lived the life we wanted, regardless of what society thinks of it and to have contributed to the world a similar amount of time and resources that it has given us. Success does not shout its status from the roof, it is solid and deep, grounding us with our calling- inside out.