There is No Magic Threshold: Redefining “Success”
There are no success stories. We are more complex than that.
Eisenstein & Chaplin: The Impermanence of Success
The world knows Sergei Eisenstein as the man who practically invented montage and took the world by fire with Battleship Potemkin. In his unabridged memoir—Beyond the Stars—he details his travels all across the globe to give talks, meet Charlie Chaplin, film in Mexico and the like. Surviving the Russian Revolution and civil war, he seemed to be inundated with success.
However, the world doesn’t really know that his story doesn’t end there. Under Lenin, he enjoyed quite the free life. It seemed like success was in the stars for Eisenstein and other Russian filmmakers.
There is no magic threshold. We never “make it”, but that doesn’t mean all we do is for nothing.
This all changed when Stalin came to power. Eisenstein found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place. He was constantly given the “okay” only to have his work thwarted by the Stalinist regime and even Western Europe and the States who had now grown hostile to him.
He died at 50 of a heart attack with about half a dozen unfinished and censored projects that would never see the light of day.
Similarly, his friend Charlie Chaplin once reaped the immense rewards of his slapstick, bumbling Tramp. That “success” is where people bookend Chaplin’s life today. Chaplin died on Christmas day, having been embittered about the conspiracy of the government and talkies to destroy his career.
You see, there is no magic threshold. Success, like recovery, is not linear. We never “make it”, but that doesn’t mean all we do is for nothing.
Life isn’t like crossing thresholds, it’s more like jumping hurdles
I once crossed a threshold. I was accepted to a “church-approved” evangelical college. I’d networked with famous missionaries. I knew the ins and outs of perfect fundraising. I had everyone in my corner. They spread my name like wildfire as a girl who would “bring light to the world”.
And then I fled. I threw it all to the wind and dove headfirst into a world I knew nothing about and never looked back.
Ever since, I have been looking for that threshold.
I graduated college in May and traded New York City for Boston. I spent the first few months living, breathing anxiety because I was wondering when that sign would come, that impending threshold I would cross.
A friend and mentor recently informed me, that that is not how the world works. We pray and we pray that one day when we “make it” we will never have to go back to hustling. That things will just come. But it doesn’t even look like that for Mandy Moore.
I have just finished the plans for my move on August 20th. I will not be moving into an apartment. You see, for the foreseeable future, my sister and I will be bouncing between AirBNBs. We don’t make 3x the rent and we don’t know people yet who are willing to be roommates. Our dad will not be our guarantor. He’s a conservative baby boomer. He thinks that people my age can afford an apartment on their own. He is not aware that in San Francisco, anyone who makes under $105,000 is considered low income.
My grandparents don’t understand either. In fact, I just found an old rent increase statement of theirs. It said “we’re sorry to inform you that your rent is increasing to $125 a month.” $125. A. Month.
“We’re going to be doing this for awhile.” My sister says. “The moving around.” There is a sense of relief, if only briefly. At least someone has said it. Just another set of hurdles.
Our lives are not stories, we are not heroes
I’d give anything to live the metaphorical, dramatic, philosophical life of the hero that Joseph Campbell outlines in Hero with a Thousand Faces. While the book is an excellent tool for understanding myth and life’s divinity, it is not, by any means, a blueprint.
You see, we are not heroes. We are not protagonists. We are not characters.
In hindsight, everything is a story. And this is not a bad thing. We need personal myths in order to integrate our experiences and make sense of the world. If we didn’t have stories, life would feel meaningless.
We are not one single story, but, rather, a collection.
But, you see, when we live life, we are living without hindsight.
It’s so easy for us to look at Charlie Chaplin and Sergei Eisenstein after their deaths and declare them both successes. Chaplin having survived a childhood of abject poverty and trauma and turning it into humor and beauty. We can look at Eisenstein and how he turned tyranny into opportunity and accolades.
But life is more complicated than that.
Chaplin, the forerunner of auteurism and comedy and the father of RKO is also Chaplin, the man who married a teenager and had horrendous accusations—some well deserved some not—throw onto his name. Eisenstein lived a life fraught with anxiety and stress, eventually succumbing to it. Stalin at once declared him a gift to communist Russia and in the same breath declared him a treasonous bastard. You see, we are paradoxes.
Even in hindsight, we are not one single story, but, rather, a collection.
Everyday myth, everyday magic
I sat on my therapists couch and I told her that I was frustrated. I kept losing my mind high up in the clouds. I dreamt of a life far different than my own. Sometimes tragic, sometimes elated, always highly dramatic. I was frustrated because as I much as I wanted to be present, I liked my fantasyland better.
So she set the timer for 7 minutes and sent me into the other room. “Find something that calls to you and write about it from its perspective. What is fantastically ordinary about it?”
I chose a door with stained glass windows that looked like river stones. It was strangely elevated above the ground as if this room didn’t used to look this way. I filled up two pages about this door.
My therapist asked me if I felt more present. I said, “No, but I feel more willing to be.”
And that, my friends, makes all the difference.
We cannot spend all our time living in the future, for that future may never come or the following future may leave us like Chaplin, remembered but unhappy. We cannot spend all our time in the past, for the past is over. We may end up like Eisenstein, fighting for your old name even if it kills you.
In the Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell says the following:
“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”
Life is unclear. It is murky and muddy and we are just children, making mud angels and creating meaning out of the muck. We are never ready. We never make it. So we must press on in spite of success.
People say your twenties are spent wandering, I’d like to expand on this. Our whole lives are wandering. We just learn how to coexist with lostness.
Success is impermanent and so are we. We must learn to live like we’re always letting go.
