What You Have

I spent many years dreaming of success. It is a common dream for writers when they begin their writing journey. The agent, the book contract, the bestseller list – all these goals felt like distant, mysterious, and glorious cities. As I wandered about in the familiar circles of my life, I wondered what my days would feel like when I reached those destinations. When I arrived, I believed it would be as if I’d reached Paris, this city I’d read about and I’d seen in movies but never visited, a city of lights, a city of poetry and paintings and cafes – not a city where people trudged about arguing and complaining and worrying about the future. That’s what waited for me. It was hard to picture, truly. Often when I placed myself in that imaginary world of success, it was as if I didn’t really belong there, in the same way the fictional characters I wrote sometimes didn’t belong in the careers or relationships I chose for them. My characters would squirm and behave unnaturally until I found their true vocation or partner. So too Successful Bill in the City of Success. None of it felt natural. Those dreams felt like scenes I’d edit out of a book I was writing.

This worried me. Writing had taught me that nothing unnatural, nothing forced, nothing I willed onto the page belonged in the reality of my stories. I had to allow what wanted to come through to come through. So why didn’t I belong in this wonderful, mysterious city? Was I actually traveling the dirt road of failure, the lonely path toward a ghost town where everything ends in dust? I’d read and heard of Failure Town. I assumed it was as real as Paris. Yet even in my darkest hours, when I dreamed this nightmare ending to my journey, I had to admit that my vision of Failure Town seemed no more real to me than Success City.

How strange. I could make no sense of it, and, in the meantime, my life continued. I kept doing stuff and looking for what was interesting where I was. What else was there to do? By and by, as I found more interesting things where I was, I began to have small successes. I published an essay here, was asked to give a talk there. Each time, however, I did not know if I could call what had happened “a success” -- it felt too familiar. I was just doing what I liked to do, only for money or in front of people. Neither the world nor I had changed.

It took me many more years to understand that everything I would ever create, whether I called that creation a success or failure, was an extension of something I already had. The books were an extension of ideas and feelings living within me, and my talks and classes were extensions of a conversation I’d been having for as long as I could remember. The environment of the experiences was new, but the source of those experiences was not. This is what is meant when we say we “have everything we need.” We do.

The difference, however, between what I have to come to understand as success, and the long, unhappy, frustrating path I used to believe I was traveling toward success, was not the environment. The difference had nothing to do with money or attention. The difference was life with and without one question: Do I have what it takes? To allow this question to hang unanswered in my heart is to live in an unreal city of fear. To release it is to have what I have always had, and live in the only reality I was born to know.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual and group coaching.