who is successful?

Rich man poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief---when jumping rope as a small girl, that is how we determined who we would marry.  Women trying to determine who they would marry and thus their fate or place in this world was neither new nor novel.  Neither was determining a persons worth by their job.  It wasn't what they did, it was their position in life, relative to other people, hierarchical and not even seen as judgmental or prejudicial or in other ways wrong.

Sounds archaic but we are doing it still.  We want our kids to have a college education and every parent of a poor but very smart child pushes them toward medicine and law.  Average children are pushed toward entertainment, music, acting, professional sports.  If you can't be rich then be famous and you might get rich from that.  No one ever really pushes their children toward middle-class anymore and parents and schools have not recommended the blue collar skills as a life choice for generations.  We don't want our sons to grow up to be cowboys---or carpenters, or bakers, or electricians or gardeners or farmers (unless we have been farmers for generations, farmers are their own strange group, I kind of like them, but the sons always get the family farm, the girls are still in the back yard jumping rope and wondering about their fate).

I'm not going to pretend I wasn't bought in--I have a lot of college, which was supposed to help me meet a successful man and thus guarantee that happily-ever-after.  That college has bought my home and paid to raise my kids and feed me and keep my car functional,  but as an over-educated woman,  I make about the same as the average skilled blue-collar worker.  If I had stayed with teaching, I would be making less per year than high-school dropouts that attended a year of VoTech.  I got lucky in my area of study, it qualified me for  a job that is in demand and there is almost always a shortage. (why there is a shortage is its own story--another time)

But truly, what comes to mind is that silly nursery poem,
"If all the world was paper, 
And if all the sea was ink, 
And if the trees were bread and cheese, 
What would we do for drink?" 

We don't just need doctors and lawyers and famous rock stars, we don't just need CEO's, we need food that is good for us and clothes that fit and keep us warm enough and cool enough  and places to live safely, we need  \ people to help us teach our children so they can know about those things that we don't understand or care about, thus improving their ability to make choices, firemen for when we get unlucky or screw up, policemen and plumbers, chefs and pastry artists and yes, sometimes we need doctors so everyone doesn't die young of simple things  and lawyers and  leaders to keep us from living in chaos with violence being how we decide who gets their way.  

But who decided that success is measured by power and money?  If I make the best bread or grow amazing watermelons or take great wedding photos, am I only successful if those things make me wealthy?  Where do healthy and wise come into it?  Or Happiness, contentment, joy, love, comfort (and not the definition of comfort that really means "we are pretty rich but I don't want act like I'm impressed with myself").  What about that feeling of self-satisfaction that comes with learning something new or finishing something where you did a good job. When we raise our children to adulthood and they become self-sufficient, are we only successful if they become rich and/or famous?  Are we not successful if they are just honest, ethical, loving people that do what they do well? 

If you check your own genealogy, you will probably find that people did a lot of things in your family, and few of those things made them rich or famous.  Does that mean most of our ancestors were losers?  I don't think so. I think the real losers are the people that are buying into the success game.  Life is a gift, not a competition.  Don't waste it on stupid stuff, spend it wisely.  You may be worth billions when you die and some people think that as long as their name is remembered they are immortal, so billions would buy a lot of remembrance, but I think that I would rather be remembered for more personal reasons, even if it was only by those people I loved. If my kids pass on that quilt I made or use my version of a recipe or find themselves smiling because they just sounded like me when talking to their own grandkids.    

So, the moral of this story is, be careful what you ask for, you might get to drink ink.