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The pursuit of success is one most of us join in one way or another. It can be for short term or long-term goals and what we choose can be as individual as our DNA. Even though it is often associated with those who are young, it isn’t limited to any age despite some areas of success being developmental in nature.

Developmental successes get marked early in things like an infant sleeping through the night, learning to sit up, creep, crawl and walk. School brings another common list of what is deemed success as we learn letters, numbers, how to read and do numerical computations and then solve problems.

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What we are exposed and encouraged to and the bent of our interests, talents, and abilities point us to the places and areas where we hope to gain success, but the culture we are a part of plays a role by what it values. Those cultural things can clash with our own ideas of how success is measured. For some cultures the path means pursuing advanced degrees, a growing bank account, and a profitable portfolio. In some cultures it means becoming proficient to join a family business or gain standing in the community in any number of ways including raising the best beef cattle in the area or the largest soybean crop.

But no matter what we choose as our direction or path, we will all face obstacles and setbacks along the way. That’s the way life is. There is rarely a straight line from where we aim to be and where we are. The choice we make because of those things will be the determiner.

Watching our young adult grandchildren brings all these things into focus and reminds us of what we see in our own lives in the rearview mirror.

Some of those we consider to be giants in succeeding remind us of important truths. Thomas Edison is a classic example. He was quoted as saying, “The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” In his quest to invent the lightbulb most of us use and appreciate every day, he conducted thousands of experiments. When confronted about these failed attempts he responded, “I have not failed. I have just found 1,000 ways that don’t work.”

Winston Churchill experienced more than a few missteps and failures as well as some modest success before becoming England’s Prime Minister leading his country through WW II. His words on the subject speak volumes: “Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Words by men known for greatness (and women as well) challenge each of us when we are trying to gain success. Success for us might be a grade on a test, learning to ride a bike, or running a marathon. What determines that is not only whether culture looks at it as a success but whether we believe that or not. It may be not giving up in physical therapy after an accident, surgery or change of any kind in our health. It might be coping and moving through a loss of someone or something we hold dear and never giving in to despair. 

You can undoubtedly think of any number of things looking at this theme but recently while watching a movie (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) one line jumped out that relates to all of our seasons and pursuits at any age: “Our measure of success is how we handle disappointment.”

The movie tells the stories of 5 different senior citizens at points in their lives where things have not always worked out the way they hoped or expected. Each is facing a challenge in physical ability, financial success, relational fulfillment, or loss of a dream. Disappointments abound for each as well as for a young man trying to run a hotel where the movie takes place.

We are living in times that leave us hoping for things while doubts assail us due to disappointment in our quests for achievement, people who have let us down and disappointed us, businesses, professionals, schools, and governments who have disappointed us. We may be disappointed in ourselves. But it doesn’t stop there because our disappointment can extend in our faith and how our prayers were or were not answered and whether the answers came on our timetable.

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If that is true and where we are, what we do or choose next will make all the difference (not to mention that in the faith arena it’s clear God measures success differently than we do). None of us can see clearly around the corner to the next scene. We are living life, not playing in a movie. 

Later in the movie quoted above one of the characters says: “All we know about the future is that it will be different or maybe we fear it will be the same.”  Again, we cannot control as much of life as we might wish but our choices about it will determine much about the outcome. 

Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill and a long list of others would remind us of the truth of the words, “The measure of our success is how we handle disappointment.”

Choose wisely.

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