Word of Wisdom: Success
“Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.”
William Feather
Some years ago, I was sitting with a friend on the East Coast, considering where we were in our lives—and how we felt about it. When I asked him what one word described where he was at, I was taken aback.
“Failure,” he told me with a sigh.
I responded with surprise because, on the outside, nothing about this brother screamed “failure”. Quite to the contrary, everything seemed to be marked by high achievement.
Educational accolades, including an advanced degree. A varied professional career, with a wide relational network across industries. Personally, a smart, well-spoken individual with deep faith and broad talents; a faithful husband to his college sweetheart with her own professional accomplishments and an attentive father to children that were thriving in school.
Above all—from my vantage point—a generous and loyal friend.
But something, or a confluence of things, created within him a sense of absence, that some mark had been missed or some measure of success had not been (or would never be) met.
Hence, “failure”.
Perhaps many of us feel the same way, even if, to the people around us, it would come as a surprise. Failure, as a feeling, can be sneaky like that. Personal progress and achievements, while laudable or enviable to others, can be weighed and found wanting by our internal scales—tipped as they are by expectations and comparisons.
In that case, our individual successes, no matter how many, never seem to add up to success; indeed, like negative numbers, addition of more only puts us into a deeper deficit.
How is it that, almost absurdly, “successes” can feel like failure and significant achievements can fall short of “success”? Let’s look more closely at the word itself.
The English word success came directly from the Latin successus, meaning “an advance, a good result, a happy outcome”. This might provide a partial answer as to our dissatisfaction even after achievement—our “successes” aren’t making us “happy”.
But more insight emerges the deeper we dig. The results-oriented noun successus is derived from the verb succedere, meaning “to come after, to take the place of”, from sub- (“next to, after”) and cedere (“to go, to move”).
Indeed, before the concept of success entered English in the 1500s, there were only successors—someone who succeeded another in a position, an endeavor, a relationship.
Far from a badge of honor for someone who has heroically succeeded in proving their worth to the world, the essence of “success” is one who has succeeded—has “come after”—someone else.
That is the success available to us as sons. Not the wage that a hired servant succeeds in earning, but the inheritance an heir receives when succeeding a father. A good Father, who has prepared a table for now and a dwelling for the future.
We succeed as sons when we fix our eyes on the first Son, when we follow after him in his manner and mission, when we abide in him so that others take note of our family connection.
We succeed when we believe, and receive, that all the Father has is ours—distributed at appointed times, according to the purposes upon our lives as heirs and successors.
That’s a success story we all have a part in.
“Your sons will succeed your ancestors; you will make them princes throughout the land.”
Psalm 45:16