Carissa Daniel

An alternative approach to the success/failure model

A couple weeks ago, I received the exciting news that my younger brother proposed to his girlfriend the night before. This is the second family engagement this year. My oldest brother proposed to his girlfriend just a couple months prior.

I began thinking about the current and upcoming wedding events and more so, the spanking new experiences my brothers and their partners will embark upon. I then contemplated our traditional perception of life events of this nature. And whether such a perception and more importantly our experience of this perception was truly serving.

Marriage is often viewed as a predetermined next step for two persons, who found each other, fell in love and ‘inevitably’ want to spend the rest of their lives with each other. For the majority of the collective, it symbolizes progress, maturity and represents a step in the right direction.

In a Western framework, major life events such as marriage, becoming parents, owning a home, attaining a certain level of education, securing a good job and acquiring wealth are all considered indicators of a successful life.

From a tender age, most of us are groomed and conditioned into such beliefs and perspectives. The favored outcome of this patterned and ideal life is etched in our impressionable minds and hearts, therefore becoming a path we must pursue to be deemed acceptably successful .

It goes without saying that such a prescribed, 'success blueprint', which often promises a guaranteed recipe for happiness and satisfaction, doesn't always provide the promised return on its investment. This often leaves its converts dismayed and confused as to why they did not experience their happily ever after. Meanwhile, in the eyes of the collective they are deemed failures. But is this title justified?

Perhaps, what is required is a shifting of gears! Instead of seeking to satisfy the elaborate blueprint of the happily ever after, which strives mostly to satisfy the collective's expectation, we can delve into a more uncomplicated, yet expansive approach. An approach which encourages curiosity and exploration of experiences, with the simple motive of being better versions of ourselves.

This light and exploratory approach, will minimize the self-imposed demands and the demands of the collective. Alternatively, our lives will no longer be categorized as either a success or a failure. Individuals will then be free to truly make conscious decisions about how they experience the world, instead of what is expected. Living then becomes an adventure.

According to some Eastern philosophies, all of the Cosmos is simply one intelligent energy form, expressing itself and experiencing itself through individual beings. What a purely mind blowing, thought provoking explanation! This explanation is also founded in science, which has since proven that each and every thing in the Cosmos from a rock to a chair, to a human being comprises of the same energy.

This esoteric explanation of life, places further credence to an exploratory approach to life, which allows for free expressions and differences, instead of the traditional cut and paste, one size fit all path. The traditional ‘blueprint’ approach to life is counter intuitive to the supreme intelligence's objective of expressing and experiencing itself in a unique and infinite number of ways.

I'm sure the imminent question arising from this less traveled framework, inevitably might be, what then is the point of life, if there is no winning or no measure of success? The possible answer?  All of life then becomes the point. Not just the attainment, the acquisition, or the claiming of things but every ordinary and extraordinary, every mundane and exceptional moment in our finite lives.