The Foursquare website told me today that "happiness was just around the corner" when I watched their video to see how their website worked. And it got me thinking about the old saying "if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one their to hear it does it make a sound?"
It seems like a more updated version of this today would be to say: "if I experience happiness and I don’t tell anyone did I really experience happiness?"
If I don’t Tweet it or blog it or Facebook it or Foursquare it or Gmail chat it or whatever it is I’m doing did I really experience that moment of happiness?
Is it possible anymore to just experience happiness on our own or are we so tied into social networking and social media and the need to constantly communicate with everyone we know about where we are and what we are doing that our happiness is someone how tied to our ability to share it. What about unhappiness? Can that still be experienced alone...or does it also have to enter a public forum before it can become real?
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Defining Failure
I posted on Facebook yesterday: "Meleena is thinking about the milestones you don't achieve." And got two responses from friends...one said: "you mean like when i didn't run my first marathon?" and the second said: " or I didn't sleep with keanu reeves yet?"
And as so many things do these days it got me thinking about how we define failure. If we tried to run the marathon but only got to mile 5 is that failure? Or if we have always wanted to run the marathon, but never tried, always assuming it was out of our reach is that failure? Are they both?
We wouldn't say a couple who never tried to have children "failed to have them". But we might say that someone who never visited Paris "failed to see the Eiffel Tower".
I think we can break failure down into two distinct categories. Active failure, i.e. I went to Keanue Reeves home every day for 6 months but failed to sleep with him. And passive failure i.e. despite always wanting to sleep with Keanue Reeves I never even tried to meet him.
So if my life is more defined by my failures then my successes...and I believe it is...should I look at these two types of failures differently? And maybe more importantly can we always tell the difference between them?
And as so many things do these days it got me thinking about how we define failure. If we tried to run the marathon but only got to mile 5 is that failure? Or if we have always wanted to run the marathon, but never tried, always assuming it was out of our reach is that failure? Are they both?
We wouldn't say a couple who never tried to have children "failed to have them". But we might say that someone who never visited Paris "failed to see the Eiffel Tower".
I think we can break failure down into two distinct categories. Active failure, i.e. I went to Keanue Reeves home every day for 6 months but failed to sleep with him. And passive failure i.e. despite always wanting to sleep with Keanue Reeves I never even tried to meet him.
So if my life is more defined by my failures then my successes...and I believe it is...should I look at these two types of failures differently? And maybe more importantly can we always tell the difference between them?
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
A Construct of our Failures
I have been thinking a lot since I moved back north about how we recognize the milestones we DON'T reach. The job not gotten, the course not completed, the relationship ending. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that our lives are far more a construct of our failures then our successes.
When I first articulated this to Huey he put his head in his hands and said "oh Pookey..." in a sad voice. He had asked me why I was once again re-reading a Jodi Piccoult book, an author who, while I own everything she has ever written I don't like. And I had told him I was reading it because it reminded me of the failure in my own life to become a writer - and maybe it was that failure in addition to the many other that define me today. I had not meant it as a flashback to unhappy teen years, or that I was disappointed in how my life had turned out. Simply that the failures I have experienced, and, despite wanting to think otherwise, they have been many, have done more to shape me than the successes had.
We get a promotion and go out for a drink to celebrate, take on the new responsibilty, work longer hours, spend more time away from our friends and family, make more money and call it a success. We lose our job due to downsizing, are unemployed for 6 months, rack up credit card debt, put a strain on our marriage, spend more time watching our kids play baseball, become an expert in something that used to be a hobby, find our life more meaningful then ever before and call it a failure.
This isn't about blind optimism and it's not about seeing a silver lining on clouds. It's about taking a good look at who we are, who we were and who we want to be and recognizing that sometimes we need to fail in order to get where we want to go.
Huey came around to my way of thinking when it occurred to him that even our relationship was the result of a series of failures in both of our lives...had either of us not experienced even one, we never would have met and today would look very different.
So how do we measure the milestones we don't reach? By remembering them, and by recognizing what we have gained or learned in our failure to reach them. My life is a construct of my failures...and I feel pretty good about that.
When I first articulated this to Huey he put his head in his hands and said "oh Pookey..." in a sad voice. He had asked me why I was once again re-reading a Jodi Piccoult book, an author who, while I own everything she has ever written I don't like. And I had told him I was reading it because it reminded me of the failure in my own life to become a writer - and maybe it was that failure in addition to the many other that define me today. I had not meant it as a flashback to unhappy teen years, or that I was disappointed in how my life had turned out. Simply that the failures I have experienced, and, despite wanting to think otherwise, they have been many, have done more to shape me than the successes had.
We get a promotion and go out for a drink to celebrate, take on the new responsibilty, work longer hours, spend more time away from our friends and family, make more money and call it a success. We lose our job due to downsizing, are unemployed for 6 months, rack up credit card debt, put a strain on our marriage, spend more time watching our kids play baseball, become an expert in something that used to be a hobby, find our life more meaningful then ever before and call it a failure.
This isn't about blind optimism and it's not about seeing a silver lining on clouds. It's about taking a good look at who we are, who we were and who we want to be and recognizing that sometimes we need to fail in order to get where we want to go.
Huey came around to my way of thinking when it occurred to him that even our relationship was the result of a series of failures in both of our lives...had either of us not experienced even one, we never would have met and today would look very different.
So how do we measure the milestones we don't reach? By remembering them, and by recognizing what we have gained or learned in our failure to reach them. My life is a construct of my failures...and I feel pretty good about that.
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