Thinking Again
Money, Success & Purpose
Quite often, especially of recent, I’ve found myself pondering life and purpose. It’s primarily born out of a fear of wasting away the resources and abilities/skills I’ve been blessed enough to have. I wonder: what can I do with my life? What can I do with my mind, my skills? What more can I learn, what more can I change or affect? I don’t think I’m so dumb that I won’t be able to develop myself to a good enough stage in whatever field that gains my interest. I think, with time and dedication, strain and feedback (thank you, Mr Newport), it’s definitely possible to achieve whatever. So the question often comes back to: what do I want to achieve? For some of us, it might not really about this. We just want to be rich.
I told my friends yesterday that I think my idea of success is changing. I think it’s subjective. Sure, there are certain things that we perceive as being objective indicators of success — money, material wealth, fame, etc. But I think I’m starting to think differently. There’s no doubt that you need money to make anything of your life in this world. None whatsoever. But how much is enough? Is the lifestyle of someone with £1 billion that much different from the lifestyle of someone with £500 million? At some point, I think, the returns or benefits of money stop being so obvious, if there are any at all. It probably brings even more worry because now one would worry about how to maintain it.
So, for me, money is a mandatory fuel. You need it to do anything substantial, but it’s not the substantial thing on its own. Okay. Now what? The question still remains: what do I want to achieve?
The world we’re raised in today, we’re taught that some people have a specific goal they’re striving towards. Maybe they’re on a mission to create change in the law industry; bring fresh ideas to the film world; produce breakthrough research in the medical realm. And this is true: there are a lot of successful, driven people with this sort of tunnel vision dedication to their craft, career, industry etc. It’s beyond admirable, honestly. I am genuinely jaw-drop inspired at highly skilled craftsmen, in almost any industry. Their attention to detail and finely-tuned techniques are nothing to sniff at. But what about everyone else? What about those people who don’t have their “one thing” they’re laser-focused on?
That’s where I start thinking of this view as ill-fitting for everybody. Most blanket views are, in my opinion. Maybe it’s more nuanced than that: maybe we’re not all one-thing people. Like me.
The more I’ve learned about myself, the more I’ve started to see things about me that I may not have noticed had I been intent on focusing on one thing alone. Not that that’s a bad thing to be. I’m just stating what I’ve realised. Because I didn’t restrict myself to only being defined as a writer, I was able to give myself permission to research, ideate and try new things in fields that may not have directly related to writing. Through my failures, I learned and now I have insight and some degree of skill in more areas than before. I also learned what I didn’t know, now knowing where to go from there if I so wished. It gave me options.
So, now, back to the question: what do I want to achieve? Honestly, I’m not sure right now. That’s a massive question. I know I must be successful; I’m willing to do what I need to for it. On top of that, what success means to me continues to change and evolve as I develop myself. The more I read, research, question and inquire, the more my thinking develops and changes. The more I understand my shortcomings, the more I try to work on them. The more I learn, the more I become. I’m trying to nurture myself into its best version, hoping that my thoughts and ideas do too.
So to that question, what I want to achieve is simple: everything that I can.
