Ah, success...

This is one of those I-don't-get-it things.

It was something that was constantly pushed in school, and up until I was about twelve, I bought it. Then I started to become aware of the world at large, and it occurred to me that success and happiness are not the same thing--and moreover, in some cases are mutually exclusive.

Slogging one's way up the salary ladder to buy a bigger house, a newer car, to keep up with and surpass the Joneses, and for what?

To stockpile money so that you can retire and hope that you enjoy life, long after the quickness and brightness of your prime has been beaten out of you by your job? To surround yourself with symbols of your success, only to realise one day that your possessions don't love you? To reach the top and realise that you have nowhere left to go? Or is it to provide for your children, so that they can go through the same empty motions once they've grown?

Even in the arts, I have no particular desire to court traditional success. I don't want to be famous (honestly, even my small following gets to be a bit much sometimes). I do not ever want to paint something and think that I have reached my goal, because the joy is in the development.

I don't see cars when I look at a busy street; I see ants swarming about the hive, busily working to maintain a colony that cares nothing for them. For some, the contribution is its own reward, but I've the uneasy feeling that most of them are just waiting for their gold star.