17
Advisory Council Wisdom Corner
ZERO
KAZAMA
Does money
equal success?
A couple years ago, I woke up in my car behind a laundromat in Humboldt county. I’ve had been living out of it for several weeks and I couldn’t be happier. No job or home, half-starved and sleep deprived, yet I had found what I was looking for. This felt like the success in life I never attained in Los Angeles, no matter how many jobs I booked or where I lived. The sun started to peak over the redwood covered mountains and as the rays cut through the heavy mist, I thought of where to get coffee. I could probably head to the local co-op, get my day started there and then go hang out with elk on the beach...and that’s exactly what I did.
After a stroll with a wild elk herd I saw a sign that said “FREE BBQ” outside of a large RV campground. I looked out of curiosity. Surely, this was only for people paying for a spot there? Nope! Huge free BBQ with limitless burgers and what looked like 50 gallons of soup! After eating enough for two days, I took my time doing laundry at a stream. Have you ever done laundry by hand completely surrounded by what looks like Disney's Pocahontas come to life? It felt like I won the lottery and I had probably $20 left to my name.
I’m incredibly blessed to have gone through these experiences that came from situations that were a complete nightmare at the time. The hardest learning curve in my entire life came from having a string of disasters that got me kicked out of my flat and left me a blissfully homeless social reject. Clearly, there was a notion of success given to me that was not working with my intrinsic values. After coming to my socially acceptable senses right before my financial accounts would become permanently closed, I had to rebuild my life from scratch while battling suicidal depression for two years.
There was no continuation of the life I once had, and the feeling of freedom and bliss were instantly destroyed by confinement and regret. Successful living depends entirely on what you and I label as “successful”, and that may or not even feel like the right way of living because you don’t value what you’re doing. When you become aware that you’re not feeling good at your successful life, you’ve successfully become self-aware that your values are not in line with your success, so the success is not anymore a “success”. Yet that is a successful moment.
Winning. Success. A moment of success is a moment of winning. You win at life when you overcome yourself. A continual state of success is therefore a state of perpetual self-improvement. This line of thinking caused me