Facebook, Hayley Williams, & Redefining Success

Recently, one thing led to another on Facebook and I found myself looking at a picture someone had posted of Hayley Williams, wishing the singer a happy birthday. The picture and post were completely innocuous and not at all the point of this post, but a comment someone left underneath the photo read like this:

I hate when super amazing successful fantastic people are younger than me. Blergh.

Interesting.

I was struck by the tone of the comment because I couldn't find it within myself to believe that it was at all in jest. I really do believe that this person, while no doubt being a fan of Hayley's and Paramore's, feels an acute stab of failure due to the fact that she is not as successful as Ms. Williams at this point in her life. Allow me to offer a few thoughts on why this kind of thinking is both nonsensical and unnecessary.

Let me first admit at the outset that yes, I understand that YOUTH is the god of all things in our modern society. I understand that there is immense pressure to succeed while you're still young: mediocre artists not yet 25 receive Grammy's while the old masters linger on the margins, Forbes posts articles about the "Top 30 Under 30", and almost all of popular marketing is directed at young people regardless of the product. I get it. I'm with you.

But this pressure is born of commerce and not reason. It's designed to generate money and income, not to help inform human purpose or elevate human creative experience. To summarize, it's a sham.

Now, of course, this is not to say that talented and successful young people are somehow undeserving of their success. Some are, some aren't. The success itself is not what I'm calling a sham, but the pressure to conform to it as a model for life most definitely is. That little voice inside people's heads that tells them they're nothing if they're not making six figures by the time they're thirty years old? That little voice is spewing lies.

Consider:

1. Everything in life worth doing takes a long time to do. This is true of relationships just as it is true of careers just as it is of spiritual growth just as it is of anything else. Time is an invaluable investment which cannot be replaced by anything else. As the saying goes, "Rome wasn't built in a day". Neither is much else of any value. Nothing worth doing is done quickly.

And more importantly...

2. Control is an illusion. Hayley Williams did not choose the time and place of her birth, who her parents were, what the music scene would be like when she decided to try and get into it, or what the kind of people were like who happened to come along interested in doing business with her. What's more is that Hayley didn't hold a gun to anybody's head and force them to buy her records. In short: her success was not within her ability to control. Neither is mine. Neither is yours. Neither is anybody else's.

The simple truth is that there are just too many variables and too many uncontrollable factors for anybody anywhere to guarantee success. Would Hayley Williams have been a famous singer if she had been born 50 years earlier? 100 years later? Maybe, maybe not. What if she had had different parents? What if she had been born in a different country? What if rock music fans were just into a different kind of sound than what Paramore offered? What if.... What if.... What if....

The point is that we can go round and round with these kinds of questions we don't know the answers to because we don't, can't, and will never be able to understand all of the innumerable factors that add up to someone being successful at a certain time.

So here's what I want you to hear me say, people: success is a gift more than it is an achievement. It comes from a realm far beyond our ability to access and there's nothing we can do to force it, keep it, or make it grow. All we can do is the work. The results are in the hands of someone else and we can never know exactly if or when the right switches will get flipped that will lead to what our culture defines as "success".

So stop beating yourself up about it. Stop defining success as a certain amount of money in the bank or a certain amount of albums sold or a certain amount of photos on magazine covers. If you get to do what you love to do, and if you get to do it with people you enjoy doing it with, and if you are getting to experience dynamics of life that you wouldn't otherwise be able to experience, do your best to be content. Be thankful. Be joyous.

Success looks a lot like doing what you love with people you love.

Again, I get it: many of us want to travel the world, we want to play music for lots of fans, we want to write books for lots of readers, and on and on and on. Those things are not wrong and it's not necessarily wrong to want them. But the thing about it is that not one single, solitary one of us actually possess the power to make any of it happen.

So, instead of playing the comparison game (which always - ALWAYS - results in disappointment and a distinct kind of self-loathing), and victimizing, blaming, or hating yourself for a perceived lack of accomplishment, find purpose, joy, and success in what you can do right now. Let God handle the results: He gave you the gifts, the opportunities, and the circumstances in the first place. Let Him deal with the stuff you can't control.

Get to work. Do your best. Do it every day. That's how you find success.

Let Hayley be Hayley. Just be you and discover your own story as it unfolds.