Success
By Rev. Lynn M. Acquafondata
UU Church of the South Hills “Sunnyhill”
February 11, 2007
Success can be defined as achieving goals.
I could end
the sermon right there and be done for the day.
The truth is, the youth group asked me to talk about this subject, so I’m going to do it. Success isn’t quite so simple. What goals lead to success? Who defines the goals? Does it matter how one achieves a particular goal? What happens if you don’t achieve the original goal? Does that mean failure?
It’s not surprising that the youth group asked me to speak on this subject. Our society puts intense pressure on people to succeed beginning at a very young age. This fall Newsweek[1] ran an article about the pressures schools put on children starting in Kindergarten. Many schools have cut out nap time, story time, snack time and finger painting in favor of math sheets and reading groups. Testing and homework and spelling quizzes start in the first grade. For some parents that’s not enough. They begin using workbooks and CDs and even tutoring services for their preschool children.
The question is what does this achieve?
Newsweek quoted an answer to this question from one parent was who had been bringing her first grader for tutoring three times a week since he was three years old. The parent said, "It's paying off. In kindergarten, he was the only one who could read a book at age 5."
O.k. so he’s different from his peers. What does that accomplish? If you ask me, all it’s achieving in the long term is stress. And really I think we have more than enough of that in our society these days.
Our youth know that pressure to succeed continues and intensifies in the 11th and 12th grades with PSATs and SATs, Blue Books, achievement tests and college applications. For many colleges, good grades isn’t enough, you need to stand out with accomplishments in extra curricular activities, as well as leadership and service. Once you get into the college the pressure continues. Once you graduate college and start a career the pressure may continue as well.
When do children and teens and adults just get to enjoy life and love and friendships and relaxation? Does that even matter?
I have a set of stories to share today. In the first two stories I’ve changed the names to protect the identities of the individuals. Every one of these stories is about success by someone’s standards. What are the standards? Who sets the standards? What model do you want to follow?
Story I:
I have a friend whose daughter is now 20 years old. My friend and her husband are intellectual. They have higher level educations and their son excels in school. Their daughter, Abby, however never liked school. She resisted and rebelled against it. My friend and her daughter struggled with the question of what really matters. Was Abby not succeeding in school because she wasn’t working hard enough or did her skills lie in different areas other than academics? What did Abby need to achieve in order to live a decent life? They finally agreed that she must graduate high school because that is a basic necessity in today’s society. They agreed that she didn’t have to go on to college. With that decision made, Abby worked very work hard to get passing grades. She graduated high school, moved out of the house and took a job in a restaurant as a waitress. Now she is training to become a manager. Abby particularly likes her job because she can take a lot of time off in the summer to relax.
Story II:
Julia, a high school student had high anxiety regarding testing rationalized that she knew the material, just wasn’t good at testing. She paid someone to help her cheat on the SAT and get the score she deserved. When it came time to write her college application essay, Julia didn’t know where to begin and felt very insecure about her writing ability, so she hired an essay service to help out. Instead of just editing a draft she had written, the service pretty much rewrote it. At first Julia felt offended, then she realized it was better than anything she would have come up with herself. She submitted the essay and the SAT scores and got into her first choice of college. Once she got to college the pressure to achieve intensified and Julia resorted to continued cheating to get by. What will happen when she graduates? An article in U.S. News and World Report said, “For too many students and their parents, getting that diploma–that scholarship, that grant–is more important than acquiring knowledge.”[2]
Both of these stories involve young people achieving their goals, but I would much rather my children followed the example of my friend’s daughter Abby than the example of Julia who got into a good college by cheating. What makes the difference? Can we apply a formula to situations to help guide our success in positive ways?
Morrie Schwartz from Tuesdays with Morrie said many of us put value into the wrong things which leads to disillusioned lives. As he was dying he chose to put his effort into love, teaching, communication, friendship, honesty, tears.
What do you put value in? How do you use those values to set goals?
Here are two more stories. The first is one that no one else here knows.
Story III
My
grandmother who I called Memere (French Candaian) graduated high school and
studied at a two years teacher’s college called Normal School. She spent one
year teaching in a one room school house and hated it. After that she worked as
a bookkeeper and made some money singing at weddings and funerals. After she got
married at age 32, she stayed home as a housewife and raised five children. She
never had much money and led a simple, frugal life in a city neighborhood. She
didn’t drive. She rarely traveled until her later years of life. She loved
music and spending time with her eight grandchildren. She knitted and crocheted
sweaters for everyone of her children, grandchildren and the even the grand
dog. She grew African violets and Christmas cactus. She liked chocolate chip
cookies and drank hot water straight with nothing in it which grossed me out.
She was married for 35 years and lived another two decades alone after my
Pepere died. Was she a success? It depends on whose standards are applied. On
the one hand she didn’t achieve anything particularly unusual in life. She
didn’t earn any money after her early 30’s. She wasn’t well known. On the other
hand my Memere was content with her life, everyone who knew her, liked her. All
her surviving children went to college and had good careers. She made people
happy with her handmade gifts. My Memere lived out her values: love, family,
peace.
Story IV
The next
story is one most of us have heard over and over. He was born in
----------------------
Setting a goal of making money isn’t a bad thing in itself. We all need money at very least to take care of our basic needs at least. In the end money is neutral. It can further positive values or it can further negative ones. But how one makes money matters. Even when a person makes money in legal ways, the process of making money does affect others.
How one gives money matters also. Next week we will take an offering here and give all of that money to people in need through South Hills Interfaith Ministries. We will be using our money to reach out and make changes in the world. That can be a very positive thing. However giving money to help others can be a negative action in certain situations. If I make money in a way that results in other peoples’ lives being worse off and then I give that money to those people who are in need as a result directly or indirectly of what I’m doing in the world, than giving the money will make me feel good about myself, but it won’t solve the larger problem. The cycle continues and my gift contributes to that rather than changing the underlying problems. Where and how and why we make money as well as where and how and why we give, matters.
Success depends on the values behind it. It also depends on the process used to achieve success. Money and good grades and prestigious positions are one way people measure success, but they are often flawed tools.
Instead, UU youth and adults can use our principles as a kind of yardstick to evaluate success. As UUs one tool we can use to evaluate the process is our UU principles. There are many ways to interpret these and not everyone will come up with the same answers, but stop and think:
Does the goal you set and your method of achieving it either actively promote these values or at least not interfere with them?
Thinking through our principles could you consider Abby a success? She certainly engaged in a free and responsible search for meaning. Can you consider my Memere a success? I’d say she at very least treated other people with respect and dignity and she had compassion for the people around her. Could you consider Julia a success? Or Jeffrey Skilling? How do their actions relate to our principles?
Sometimes there are difficult choices to be made and not everyone will agree on the best path. I know where I personally stand on the next story I’ll share and I don’t think it follows UU principles, but others will look at this and say that it does indeed follow UU principles.
Story V
On the international scene, President
Bush often talks about the need for success in the
“Short
term,
Medium term,
Longer term,
But what does the war mean for individual families, for those whose loved ones are killed, maimed and kidnapped. Many Iraqi families understandably live with serious depression and constant fear to the point that they don’t even want to go out to buy food.
What is winning in war? Can people
who live with such destruction and fear ever understand democracy or peace?
Anyone who becomes the President of the
What is failure for national leaders? What does failure lead to?
Story VIII
Speaking
of failure….
When
I was in college I dreamed of being a newspaper reporter. I spend four years
taking journalism classes and working for the college paper. After graduated I
got a job working for a weekly features section of a newspaper. I had achieved
my goal. However once I started working I discovered something I hadn’t
expected. I loved talking to people and
I could really get people to open up. Sometimes they must have forgotten I was
a reporter and started telling me things I knew they didn’t wanted published in
a newspaper. I remember one woman sharing details of her grief after several of
her cats died from feline leukemia. And I remember another woman telling me
about her divorce. I don’t even remember the original topic of the story I was
supposed to be writing. The problem came when I got back to the office and my
editor expected met to write about these personal things people shared. I
didn’t feel comfortable doing it, so I’d write a watered down story.
I
left journalism after a year because I couldn’t both be a journalist and live
out my core values. The career didn’t fit with what I did best in life. I was
never going to be good at journalism. It felt horrible to walk away from the
career that had been my dream for four years, especially because I had no idea
what I would do or could do.
And
so like my Memere, I failed in my first career, one year after graduating from
college. However, my work as a reporter
for the Ithaca Journal, let me directly to Unitarian Universalism which led me
to ministry. Ironically, I needed the failure in one area of my life to lead me
to discover a career where I could contribute my gifts and be successful.
Success involves accomplishing goals while living out one’s core values and the values of one’s religious tradition. Success includes the flexibility to redefine or change one’s course along the way. Sometimes success grows out of failure. In fact sometimes we need to fail in order to succeed.