value

It’s Not About Success.

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_Gustave Le Bon Error

I was reading GS’s “Not Successful Enough?”, and I wanted to take this in a different direction because I don’t think it’s about success.

Success means different things to different people, but most of the time when people refer to being successful they mean financial success, or career ‘success’, whatever that might be.

What do you consider successful beyond those red dots? We’re told that’s success, we’re indoctrinated to believe it’s success because we send off the little kids to go to school so that they can get jobs so that they can be… successful.

In some part, our parents and family determine what we believe what success is, but it’s institutionalized in our schools and even in advertising what success is.

They also say you need to have children, which makes sense in a way since that’s how you pass on all that genetic soup made up of male and female zygotes so that they too can be… successful. Most of the zygotes, by the way – the vast majority – are not considered successful, not because they don’t have jobs and fancy titles, but because their job is really to be numerous in the hope one of them is successful. That’s really the larger game being played with jobs and titles by homo sapiens.

I used to think that money mattered, and it does to some degree but not as much as people who want you to buy their crap want you to think. I never really thought titles mattered because I have so many people who are in some sort of authority that are idiots and consistently screw things up that I’m not impressed by titles, or diplomas, or academic degrees.

If there is any success for a human in this world, it’s based on a value. Different cultures have different values, different families instill (or not) different values, and different people have different values. The question about success is really a question of, say it out loud, values.

If you don’t feel your successful enough, take some time and consider what you believe your values to be. Look back on the things you felt successful about, or what you believe you failed at. You can’t miss the feeling of success or failure, they stand out. Maybe write a list. Maybe do a spreadsheet. Just do it. Examine each success and each failure. Examine the values associated with them. Examine the circumstances around them.

And work on the values, maybe. Maybe what you presently believe is success is not really what you feel is successful. Maybe you’re just making yourself unhappy for no good reason, stressing out over the need to buy meaningless crap to impress meaningless people with the net result of having a meaningless life.

There are two people who drive nice BMWs in my neighborhood, and I’m friends with them despite having a Hyundai. They constantly complain about parts, service, etc. They’re successful, right? Are they? They’re unhappy with their cars, so that doesn’t seem much like success to me, but people see them in these cars and believe they are successful because… why?

I believe that while we’re all in this artificial rat race of life that gives some advantages over others – and regardless of how it is done, some people will always have some advantages – if you can find meaning and value in what you do, you are more of a success than advertising campaigns would have you believe. You may well be a success in many ways and are simply wanting to appear successful.

The people who matter in life see your value beyond what they can use you for and what they can get from you. If you’re being told you’re not a success, question the intentions of the people making you believe it.

Meanwhile, be nice to the people who deserve it and even some that don’t.

A NowHere Dilemma Solved.

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And now, some of you have something that says, 'Home'. I don't. I'm Nowhere.I’ve been defining the new place which I call NowHere, and of course there are details that irk me here and there.

One of them was the ghastly electrical panel that someone thought would be a great idea to have in the dining space. A big, grey, electrical panel – one that might have gone with the more industrial side of me, a call to my childhood roots in electrical motor rewinding and industrial troubleshooting.

Somehow, that just doesn’t fit me in that way anymore. I might go hang out in a place like that because it’s comfortable to me, but it doesn’t mean that it should define my space. So, there was a thought of covering it somehow.

Worse, it’s the first thing I see when I come out of my bedroom. Haze grey and there to stay. It’s just ugly.

The first thought was bookcases on wheels that a cousin was going to give me, but those were bookcases made of that compressed wood that he had managed to put wheels on out of his own boredom. And really, they just didn’t fit.

Then came the thought of a mirror, but then, in an emergency, did I really want that? And given the angle, it would be awkward should I have a visitor in the visitor’s room. So I went around and looked at what people had to hang that would be the right size.

There were some paintings, priced for their own market which I am not a part of – and it came to me that I have enough photos that I should have something of worth. Thus I started going through my Flickr photograph collection, and I found it troubling how many pictures that I had taken in landscape versus portrait. I needed a long photo, not a wide one. I went on vacation.

Framing this one from Tobago.That’s when I saw the shot. I couldn’t take it properly – a lot of planning went into it to get it the way I wanted it. When I got back, I printed it.

It was, indeed, what I wanted – and of course the people who printed it said so, but that’s affirmation to a customer. It’s sort of like having your mother tell you that you’re smart and handsome/beautiful.

Maybe you’re not. You’ll always be special to someone who carried you around inside them for 9 months or so. They’re too emotionally invested in you to see you, sometimes, for what you are.  

Then I dropped it off to frame. The wait made that panel uglier by the day. In 3 days, I was called to pick it up, so I went and I did. The gentleman who had framed it, whom I never met, was busy with two ladies so I waited quietly.

It wasn’t long before all three looked at me expectantly. I pointed at what I could see was my framed photo, large enough not to be completely hidden by other framed works.

“That’s mine”.

“No, that’s mine”, said one of the women.

I know my work. I know that one is mine. In conversation, she realized I was the photographer, and she did something I didn’t expect. This was an opportunity, she wanted it and it was mine. I could have sold it right there and then.

“You didn’t sign it.”
“It’s for me, I have no need to sign it.”

She wanted me to sell it.

I couldn’t.

I did not want to part with it. I know it’s one of my best photographs I’ve ever taken, if not the best. Yet, it wasn’t about the framed picture, it was about what I learned and how I had grown; it was collateral damage of a distinct growth of myself as a human being.

... And hung.Somehow, it had gone beyond covering that ugly grey panel. It had become about me stretching everything I knew about light, tides, meteorology, vectoring, photography, and timing – things that by themselves had no value to anyone. This was a nexus of a set of knowledge and ability that caused me to push myself to become better beyond that silo of photography.

This wasn’t pride, or I would have sold it and printed another. This wasn’t about bargaining for a better price. This was about who I am and am becoming, and some things – some things you hold on to as a reminder of that.

Some things hold a value beyond what other people might see as a cost.

The picture that hangs will never be sold.

However, it has pushed me a bit more toward getting more photos together for people to buy should they wish, which I’ll dedicate 10-20 hours a week on until it becomes manageable.

Social Networks: Having Vs. Being

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Erich Fromm for PIFALI wrote a bit about being an introvert and building a social network of value in response to John Hagel’s post about measuring you’re real net worth.

There is, of course, more to it than what I wrote. To me, it revolves around two major things: Form vs. Function and Having vs. Being.

Speaking for myself, I’m a big fan of function over form – and being instead of having. These are two philosophical distinctions that separate me from what seems to be mainstream from my perspective.

Function Over Form

I have a 4×4 pickup that is set up for going offroad, but not with anything extraneous: What is there is there to meet a purpose, no more and no less. In my mind, anything but that is inefficient and wasteful. If I lifted the pickup higher, it would be unmanageable cornering on the roads – and would put the center of gravity much higher than I would want it given the hills I navigate in the bush on my land. I do not have more aggressive tires because they would be a liability on the road – but I do not have less aggressive tires because they would be a liability in the mud on my land. There’s a balance. And the vehicle is usually dirty to some extent, but always functionally sound. I am completely about function.

In contrast, I know someone with a 4×4, all white, street tires and just about every piece of plastic bolt on product you could find on his vehicle. He washes this pickup so often I’m surprised he hasn’t rubbed the paint off of it yet. He’s all about… form.

When it comes to my networks, I’m not a namedropper, and I don’t care who else someone knows or how famous they are or aren’t. I do not value people in my network based on what other people value them as – that, to me, is form. Instead, I care about what the people themselves have to offer of themselves, as well as their own expectations.

This is an intrinsic part of network building, where the mainstream – those more interested in popularity (form) are less interested in understanding (at least in my mind) and therefore truths (function).

I choose function every time.

Having vs. Being

I don’t ‘have’ connections in the way that social networks deliver their networks. I don’t count them, I do not see them as scalar quantities – I see them as vectors, as matrices of humanity that I connect to. I do not have them just as I do not have slaves; I exist with them.

This is in contrast to those that count their success by metrics, typically scalar, and these metrics are easily gamed by the echo chambers of social media where like minds rise in chorus even with bad voices and bad tunes – and, honestly, some reprehensible lyrics.

The Downside.

The downside of not having an echo chamber is that you don’t have an echo chamber. People don’t repost things you might offer, they don’t necessarily spread what you wish to spread – and I see this largely as a good thing with unfortunate consequences while in an open system where people do have echo chambers that can drown out individual voices.

So you’re likely not going to become popular this way. If you do become popular this way, it means that you are truly appreciated as opposed to not truly appreciated.

And this all revolves around what you actually value.