“Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” – Philippians 2:4
“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it,” Dr. Viktor Frankl, the famous psychiatrist and author of Man’s Search for Meaning once lectured a group of students. “For success, like happiness,” he went on, “cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run – in the long-run, I say! – success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”
In the coming weeks our two oldest grandchildren will be graduating from high school, that great right of passage moment nearing the responsibilities of adulthood, higher education marking the next step. As their grandfather, it has been on my mind a lot lately what wisdom I might impart that would be helpful in their life journey. What keeps popping up in my head is Dr. Frankl’s great quote about not aiming for success, perhaps because I was a such a Johnny-come-lately for that message to resonate with me; for when I was their age I was convinced that the purpose of life was to achieve success. Oh, how I wish I had been exposed to Dr. Frankl’s brilliant lecture – or perhaps I was but too proud and self-centered to listen.
To be clear, the pursuit of success is not to be confused with the pursuit of excellence, rather it is a matter of to what end. The Apostle Paul expressed it this way: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” The only proof I have to share comes from my own experience, that is that those times when I have pursued self-serving success the results have been sketchy at best. But when my pursuits have been dedicated to someone else or a greater cause I have been surprised how success – in some form, and when I was least thinking about it – eventually followed. Here’s to my grandchildren, and their generation!