It sometimes seems that what I considered my mission in life, as it were, attempting to hold the line on ethics (which I have often likened to Sisyphus and the boulder that rolls on him for eternity) was important only to me and it is done.
The enforced turn of events has left me plenty of time to consider the nature of success and its extrinsic and intrinsic measures. On Maslow's scale of the hierarchy of needs, there are five levels. The first is physiological, food, shelter, and the like. The second is safety, of body, resources, like employment, health. The third is family, friendship, the intimacy stuff. The fourth is esteem, achievement, confidence, respect of others, respect by others and last, that pinnacle, self-actualization, acceptance of the reality, morality, solving the problems before you, creating. I guess some of the measures of success and our needs have common ground at least from a psychological and societal point of view. I have a number of these needs met, and I am grateful for it. Achievement? I am not sure. I certainly self-actualized there. I came across the country. I passed my second bar, while working full time as a secretary with no time off to study. I found my niche. I moved up in the ranks and managed large numbers of people. I taught. I studied psychology at night for a number of years. I even interned as a supervised therapist on nights and weekends for a couple of years. You know that old saw, does a falling tree make a noise if there is no one to hear it? If it is about the doing, and the accomplishing, then I do not need anyone to say, "yes, you did good." Back to the old intrinsic motivation. But extrinsically, well, let's just say, of late, I've taken a hit or two, and it would appear that investing in that 25 year career (30 if you count the five years before as lawyer in New York and secretary and lawyer in California), was a bit like buying a "pig in a poke". Did I get what I bargained for? As you can imagine, I swing back and forth on this subject. If this was the right place and right mission for me, then yes, I achieved that mission. If I was looking for public acknowledgment of my efforts, I was a fool.
Believe it or not, this is all preamble for a quote I ran into last night, when I could not sleep. Some of this consideration overlaps into the spiritual realms for me. You know, the why am I here, what was I meant to do bailiwick. I have no idea what the name of the EWTN show was (yes, Catholic Television, 370 for you Directv subscribers), but I find lately in particular that when I am having a debate in my head and heart, God speaks to me in these little encounters (I can't prove it, but I believe it, which I guess is the essence of faith) with the TV and happily also with real people! Up goes a picture of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, not exactly a slouch in the self-actualizing category, with the statement, "It is not our job to be successful, it is our job to be faithful".
I think it might be said that Mother Teresa sought neither her own self-actualization nor did she seek extrinsically granted esteem. She simply was a faithful Christian. Naturally, I have been focusing on the wrong things. From my perspective as a Catholic Christian, I am actually overcomplicating things. It is really simple. And it will be liberating, if I allow it. Success, extrinsically or intrinsically meansured, should not be my direction. It probably never should have been, but even the dear sisters of my old grammar and high school talked int terms of worldly success and I was geared to it as well by a very persistent parent, my long late mother. Nothing wrong with it, but perhaps in time, I let it all overtake me.
The thing about what is truly simple? We don't find it so. I don't find it so. I resist the obvious because it is counterintuitive in the world around me.
Even as I write all this I don't think I have sorted it out. But that quote, that direct piece of purity, that has hit a mark.
Has it advanced me in my search? Maybe. God willing.
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