Reflections on Success

(image credit)

This is one of my favorite images.  Performers of all sorts - from actors and dancers, to musicians and comedians - may have perfected their craft for the screen and stage so well that they make it all look so easy.  The best of athletes are the same: At the peak, their play is a thing of beauty.

Consider the sylph that is Polina Semionova:

No doubt, Semionova has toiled countless hours perfecting her ballet.  Moreover, the filmmakers must've spent quite a lot of time staging, directing, scoring and editing this video, that is as much of an artistic accomplishment as is Semionova's ballet.  So while the end product may look like a smooth line, what really goes on behind the scenes is a tangled thread.

While success may sometime come easily, in general the more challenging and complex the endeavor, the more hard-wrought success will be.  Of course we ought to reflect on, clarify and define what success really means to us, to begin with.  Then, achieving it may be a process of stops and starts, of detours and dead ends, of retracing our steps and doubling back.  But to the extent that that endeavor is important to us, it makes sense to keep at it and work at it.  The endpoint may also be segmented into check points, if you will, so we have a gauge on how we are progressing and we can celebrate milestones as mini-successes.    

Regardless, the reality behind any successful endeavor may be akin to what the people of Zion in The Matrix saw:  The real world is a dark, devastated landscape.  But it all becomes the orderly, programmed world of The Matrix itself on the one hand, and on the other hand it under girds these very people to strategize and mobile for an ultimately successful revolution.