Success, Virtue, and the Love of the Game
The pursuit of dreams as an exercise of balance
Some things, we believe, just aren’t going to happen. Like I’ll never be a successful writer, or I’ll never stop picking at my blackheads. (Tell me you don’t have an issue with this.)
Could they happen? Any self-help book would tell you if you’re willing to go through all the hard things and feel all the hard emotions in order to be successful at something, then you’ll be successful. The issue here is I’m trying to become a prolific author in a sea of voices. It’s not just a game of endurance. I can be willing to go through all the hard things in order to succeed, but I’d wager there are plenty of people who don’t succeed in the public eye — and there’s a high chance I’m one of them. How do some rise to the top? (And how can I get them to take me with them?)
Discipline is a virtue. Most things are virtues of discipline, too. Courage — the equilibrium between recklessness and cowardice — is a virtue of Aristotelian discipline. Discipline is temperance and moderation; a balancing act. Everything is a balancing act. Writing is a balancing act. You need to be succinct without sacrificing artistry. Your prose can’t be so verbose that no one can understand it, nor can it be so cut and dry that it is indistinguishable from what chatGPT could write. (I strive to write in such a way that AI has a hard time replacing me).
Success is a balancing act, too. Those homegrown in a capitalist culture are ambitious by nature. We are encouraged from a young age to be ‘successful,’ and success is equated with becoming something noteworthy. The association of noteworthiness — and worthiness more broadly — with the upper echelon of achievement is a seed planted in us from our most formative stages of upbringing, and as we’ve cultivated our own thoughts, we’ve been unwittingly using that expectation as a baseline. With that definition of success, our concept of worthiness is skewed to one side, whereas the success that would really constitute human flourishing lies somewhere in the middle.
I want to be successful, but why? It goes beyond the surface. It is not just that I want validation. It is that this idea of importance and glorification is weaved into our inbred need for social belonging. That need is primal. When that need is threatened, our primal brain convinces us we’re in danger. It triggers a stress response. It puts us at that immediate crossroads of flight or flight.
I’ve been oscillating between fight and flight ever since I decided I wanted to succeed with this. The intensity of it grows the more I write. It is because I’m starting to make this whole commitment to writing real. I say I want to commit fully, but I’m afraid of growing deficient in other areas of success. More of my sense of worthiness and social belonging will rest upon my success as a writer. If I give up my dominance in the areas where I reign poster child of post-graduate success (this is accurate; I wouldn’t call myself arrogant), that will place more weight on what happens with the words I put out for people to read. I’m putting myself at risk. I’m putting my existential needs at risk. (And possibly my material ones.) And it feels all the more vulnerable that, of all art forms, I chose to place my worth in my stories, the building blocks of my personal identity. It feels too intimate to have you this close when I’m not even this close with myself sometimes. It feels like the inner workings of my brain are both too much and not enough for your approval.
I don’t blame myself for seeking comfort. It makes cold hard sense. My brain is warning me about something unfamiliar: a possibility that I won’t be successful in the eyes of others. It is alerting me that there is a big chance I will not reach that upper echelon of achievement, and I will not be (note)worthy. It’s just weighing the odds and gauging they aren’t in my favor. That thought seems to threaten much of this generation’s sense of worthiness. We want to be particularly accomplished, particularly beautiful, particularly beloved. Our baseline is way off-base. We have tipped the odds out of our favor.
I’d like to be successful, but that can’t be what I like about this. That’s not saying I’m not going to try, but I can’t throw myself at this with such high standards that I feel wholly unanchored and afraid. Extremity fosters scarcity. In reality, I don’t need to become markedly deficient in other areas in order to succeed here. I am not saying being particularly good at something doesn’t require sacrifice. It’s just that sacrifice is a balancing act, too, and moderation could help us all soften the belief that we must work and succeed at an extreme and extraordinary level. Perhaps when we soften our grip on noteworthiness and recognition, we give ourselves enough space to create something ‘worthy’ rather than creating something we believe will sell. What is true and genuine is what is worthy and inimitable, and what is true and genuine is what is successful.
Maybe we simply need to commit to creating space and time for our ambitions in a balanced manner. When we work with care, intention, and grace, that seems to be when we produce our most honest work — not when we grind our gears until we shut down. Routine is an act of discipline. You want to allow for some room to play while staying committed to good habits. Routine is different from autopilot. It is more like a ritual, a way of nurturing. It is setting non-negotiables for your day that you know feed you in the long-run. Sitting around writing all day feeds me in the short-term, but I start to get sucked into thought patterns that consume me. I have to remember that this is something I love, not an obligation. It is a part of my life, not the whole thing. I do feel I have something to prove, and I have a real fear that I won’t prove it, but I admit I still enjoy this even though no one is paying attention. There is a sort of intrinsic joy in creating something from nothing but a blank page and a blinking cursor, and I don’t want to lose that joy.
Telling myself I was all-in was likely too much. (I tend to live at the very extremes Aristotle warned us about. It must mean I lack discipline.) Writing brought me more joy when it was a pastime, a thing I did for the love of the game. It wasn’t a source of constant rumination or stress. It wasn’t the foremost determinant of my personal worth or merit. It was just that thing I did for the fun of it, and it was true and genuine. Maybe I can try to see it as that again.
And maybe I should get a routine.
(I’m not unemployed. I’m just on hiatus.)
