Success?

I saw three news articles yesterday that dealt with the idea of success, in three very different ways.

One story was about an enclave of obscenely huge mansions in a segment of Los Angeles called North Beverly Park. This is a development of giant, hotel-size homes, some as large as 40,000 square feet, and most 20,000 to 30,000, owned by the mega-super-rich and famous. People who not only don’t believe that less is more, but do believe that more is never enough. The home owners association member list reads like the Academy Awards, plus a Who’s Who of the sports world. Apparently this group of gargantuan homes is deemed “too much” even by the elite standards of Beverly Hills and Bel Air. The article pointed out that the main things this little group of neighbors have in common are their enormous wealth, and their dire need for privacy in a world filled with relentless paparazzi and gawking tourists. It seems this security-gated, border-patrolled, other-worldly community is the only place where this peculiar breed can live a “normal” life, having been rendered unfit to live among the rest of us. The sentence that smacked me in the face was this: “In the center of Beverly Park is an elaborate four-acre children’s park, which is usually empty.”
Is this success?

On the page opposite this article was a story about the Buffett family. (That would be Warren, not Jimmy.) In the last several days all the news outlets have been filled with the story of Warren Buffett’s decision to give the bulk of his 40 billion dollar estate to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The story I read, however, was about his three grown children. Apparently they have always known they would not inherit great wealth from their father, who does not believe in inherited wealth. (Although I’m quite sure most of us would consider the “crumbs“ that fall from the table to be a pretty good amount of wealth.) The three middle-age children of Warren Buffet are apparently low-key and fairly normal, and each of them has his own charitable foundation which he or she runs. They’ve been raised to believe that you use your wealth to help those who need help. Now we’re getting closer to success.

The third story was one I saw on TV. It was about a young soldier who returned from Iraq minus a leg. While still in the hospital, he assumed he would spend the rest of his days in a wheel chair. Then he saw another vet, who had lost both legs, working out and running with his artificial limbs. The young soldier then realized that somebody even worse off was doing so much, and decided that he too would run again. And today he not only runs, he competes and hopes to compete in the next Parolympics. Now we’re talking success.

Success comes in several sizes and measures. Personally, I find success to have nothing to do with wealth or fame. It’s a fleeting thing, therefore a daily thing. One success follows another. Sometimes it follows failure. I know this much; in the end, success is not what’s in the financial portfolio, but what overflows from the heart.