Yesterday, when I wrote about meaning, and I want to propose one to consider.

We are all given a canvas of time. It helps to picture a canvas, or a blank page. We’re even given some crayons when we start off, and we decorate our time with them.

Later, we move onto more complicated stuff. Pens and markers, where we begin to realize that mistakes cannot be undone.

We move on to charcoal, maybe, and learn how messy life is and that when we are not decorating our decoration smudges the rest of our life- which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Later, we get paint, moving from watercolor to oil paints. I don’t know, I failed art in secondary school because I never did my art on time and you can’t time travel wet paint to dry.

The point is that this is probably our meaning. How we use our time is influenced by our biases, the biases other try to introduce, and those biases in turn influence what we think is ‘success’.

So here’s a story that is true, and how I came up with this. It started, like most things, from bullshit. From trying to help someone understand someone important to them that I happened to understand.

Some years ago, before his father died, a young cousin of mine was telling me how terrible a businessman his father was. My cousin had been studying business and at the time it seemed like he was good at it.

I was sipping coffee, head down, and I listened to his tirade of all the things his father had done wrong. As far as business, to be honest, that Uncle, like his brothers, wasn’t very good, and after talking to a good business man about my grandfather, I understood why.

“…and that’s why the business is not a success, and I don’t think he will ever be a success either.”, was the end of his tirade. I remember I chuckled and met his eyes, suddenly feeling a lot older than I had moments before, a new weight settling on my shoulders.

I told him that his father had managed to provide for 4 children, sending 2 of them to college in the United States, and his last – him – through a local satellite college. He had bought all the boys cars – the daughter married – and one brother was setup with his own house, another was sent abroad to Canada and partially supported for a while, and he was living in a house that was once home to all of them and then 2 families at peak.

He had seen all but one of his children married, and the bachelor was sitting across from me and would soon be married. He had followed his passion of religious knowledge and even tried practicing it a bit. He had been married himself for at least 40 years, I don’t know, and had taken care of himself and his wife.

There are times when we sons think our fathers are idiots. It works both ways. But my Uncle, despite how much his son disagreed with his business practices and other things, was certainly not a failure. He put his family first, and every bad decision was generally a decision where he put his family before his business.

My Uncle, despite my own misgivings, was someone who had found his own success, based on his values. My cousin grumbled, and maybe it stuck, maybe it didn’t, but it stuck with me.

On the canvas of life, the theme was family and connection. If you were looking for corporate art, he wasn’t your guy. I’d say that was a success.

The question is figuring out what is success for you. There’s your meaning.

I’m trying to figure mine out still, so please ignore the mess, and be careful what you touch and where you step. Wet paint everywhere.