Things I’ve Changed My Mind About: Success
When I was twenty-five, I thought the guy driving the flash car was winning.
I assumed that if someone could afford a car like that, they must have been doing well.
Now that I’m forty-two, I look back and realize how hollow that lens really is. A flash car tells you absolutely nothing about the other ninety-five percent of a human life. It isolates one metric—money—and ignores everything else that makes a life. The truth is, we can never truly know the internal workings of someone else to suggest whether they are "successful" or not.
When you look past the surface, the questions get a lot more complicated.
Are they healthy? Are they present with the people they love? Do they actually enjoy the life they've built?
The game is far more complex than a single number.
Keeping that balance is a daily struggle. Even now, while building SwiftReporter, I fall right into the trap. There are weeks where the stress creeps in and I start running red-lined. I notice it in the way I overthink the product, staring blankly at screens late into the evening. Sam notices the distracted version of me before I do. And my daughter notices it too; she will pull at my hand to show me something in the garden, and instead of dropping to her level, I'm checking my notifications or thinking about a software feature.
I have to snap myself out of it, fast.
Because if that high-stress state became my permanent baseline, and I managed to build a massive, highly valued software company at that expense... what did I actually win? I’d just be a poor dad with a lot of money.
I don't mind hard days. I mind hard lives.
There is a necessary struggle in anything worth doing. This morning, I did a ten-kilometer paddle in pristine waters, looking up at the mountains. It was tough. My arms ached, and the wind was against me. Struggle is an inescapable part of life—the question is simply what kind of struggle you choose to sign up for.
I'm starting to wonder whether we've confused sacrifice with success.
Wealth has never bothered me. Displaying it as an identity has always made me curious. It reminds me how easy it is to mistake symbols of success for success itself.
When I was twenty-five, I thought success was something other people could see.
At forty-two, I'm beginning to think it's something only you can feel.
Maybe that's why it's so difficult to measure.
How has your definition of success changed?
— Evan
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This field note is part of an ongoing exploration into what makes a good life.
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