Why I Never Feel Successful
When success is always 10 yards out of reach
What are you striving for today? Or if not today, what are the goals you’re reaching for more generally in your life, the target that you’ve fixed your third eye on? Is it a life milestone? Maybe a certain job title or home ownership? Or perhaps it’s more relationship based - becoming a parent or finding that perfect person to share your days with? Can you taste how much you want it? That abstract, just out of reach nirvana which will finally make you feel fulfilled, successful, at ease.
There are so many quotes and memes going around on the internet at the moment - or at least on my internet - which make the entirely valid point that most of us are living lives today which we could have only dreamt of yesterday. But because we’re so focused on the future, and our targets are ever evolving, we fail to appreciate how far we have already come on our journey. I think about myself at 15 a lot and I know her jaw would be agog if she could see the life we’re now leading. I have achieved so many of her goals, I’ve assembled so much of my jigsaw that quite frankly I should never feel an ounce of discontent until my dying day.
But of course, it doesn’t work like that. And that’s because of the deeply human dynamic of arrival fallacy. For a really long time I believed that owning a house would fix most of my problems. I’m not going to lie and say that it hasn’t given me a previously unknown level of security, but it has proven to be a long way from the silver bullet I once imagined it might be. Instead of feeling content and euphoric about having achieved one of my major life goals, I find myself now focused on the next step: the renovation. Hustling to make more money, pushing, pushing to build a critical path to completion, I am now almost entirely caught up in my desire to create the home I’ve already dreamt of within the house I already own. I have subtly shifted the goal posts for what it will take to fix my problems from purchasing a house to perfecting it. As if moving out into a bijou flat for a year while going through an insanely stressful build and trying to keep to a budget will provide the circumstances to free me. I’m aware this is delusional.
“I have subtly shifted the goal posts for what it will take to fix my problems from purchasing a house to perfecting it.”
For one of the books I’m writing at the moment, the author - who is living with a terminal illness - is continually, unbeknownst to him, giving me sage advice. He’s achieved a shitload in his life, and he agrees we all need objectives and reasons to get up in the morning. But as he keeps reminding me, those are not the thing. The actual thing is the feeling of being alive. A warming hot chocolate huddled up with friends on an icy winter’s day. The sound of a seven-year-old running for the door to cuddle you when you’ve been away on a trip. Pushing your body or mind and sensing that blood pumping at the side of your neck with no doubt of your human existence. It’s the simple things experienced entirely in their present. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow isn’t yet born. That should be the daily mantra.
