Making The Activist:
Success: Are we there yet?
A teacher of mine back in my first college use to set up various tasks for us and would ask striking questions such as: Why should everybody celebrate Christmas, should they celebrate it at all? Or what would we take back with us if our houses were being completely burnt to the ground, what would the most important thing be for us to salvage? Apparently most people answered photos and home videos to the second question. The reason being because photos and film are irreplaceable. I probably did have some affection towards the things I owned then, but the term “my property” just isn't me. However I don’t really remember what I answered. Though I would like to think it reflected my state of mind at the time which was to “reach out to all I hoped for, and to leave only good memories behind.” I doubt it in that case!
My teacher also asked another question that sounded kind of strange like most of the questions my Communications Skills tutor would ask of us students. He asked all of us as a class and as individuals how would we measure the success in our lives or how would we define the success in our lives as then. Something in that direction at least.
First of course many of us did not really understand what was asked and replied by saying fame or money, and the usual. So he had to rephrase the question and so emphasised the in “your” life what is success? So that made it more directed and more personal to each of us and to what we have lived so far before any career had been built upon. This is what gave the question more edge and meaning. I remember thinking fairly about his emphasis and it really threw me off guard because it was one of those irritable questions that makes us question ourselves and what we have done, which to most of us at the time, and usually don’t like to question our motives as it takes the buzz out of living it through.
So as I sat there on the carpeted canvas in the classroom circle shoes off and tensed up in one of those sit-on-floor lectures I really did not know what to say. Though I am not sure if that was the desired response my tutor wanted but I was left bewildered. Due to the fact that I had not even made an effort to come to terms with the multi-narrative-ruckus of a life that I had lived so far, but even more important than it being too early to count our success was also the fact that questions like those cannot be properly answered in a direct fashion by the one it immediately involves, one man’s success could be another’s utter failure. Maybe if something or someone could have simply presented me or have said “this is your life!” I could have scaled things better. So I remained silent and let the others present their grounds of importance then the room suddenly was filled with noise when everyone started to mimic what sounded the best.
On the other hand the question remains puzzling. Can success really me measured at all and if so by who? The one who sets or by thing set? Either could claim the others failure or success so what matters or when?
The late 80’s memorable pop- hit “I still have not found what I am looking for” by U2 had some weight behind it, to me it really did. I mean what would that Irish band far into their career with all the "green" (£$) they had accumulated for about a decade be searching for yet? One asks. Is success really not about fame and fortune then? Is there really another way to measures one’s worth aside from the public impact that reflects in their income? I wonder, yet that was what the song and the writer behind the song was practically trying to state if not for pop-song reasons at least. The U2's frontman actually considered a split during that time, but suddenly was inspired to later take on in another direction to prolong his and his bands career.
Ah it was just a question my tutor asked, but it caught me off guard still so to the point that it struck me in an interdisciplinary or out-of-curriculum way, and that could really seize the moment of a rather uncertain, and mysterious “campus persona” like I had then. Some how it re-opened a stage no an arena of space for me to count or measure what really mattered then, and would soon matter afterwards.
Prisoner: 1948
MY
ENTRIES