How a Career Full of Failures Taught Me Inner Peace

Have you ever noticed that our path in life is often to go through pain and suffering, connect the dots, and emerge a better person?

At least, that’s how it seems to me. What I notice is that at age 57 I am no longer struggling to ‘make something BIG happen.’ I did that, in my own small way.

I can relax now.

From as early as I can remember, I often had the thought that I must become a star – that my life depended upon it. So I went to the best college I could, worked my ass off in job after job, and married a man who I knew would boost me along.

I strived, pushed, and cajoled the Universe. And I had some small success. I published a first novel with Random House, which at the time felt like a crowning achievement. “This is it!” I thought with glee. “I’m gonna be famous for sure!”

I wasn’t; my mother and fifteen of her friends bought my book. Despite my best efforts, my writing career didn’t take off. So I tried again, this time with non-fiction.

I felt spiritually swept along as I followed the up-up-up trajectory of my first self help book, How Much Joy Can You Stand? ‘This time is REALLY it,’ I told myself.

Again, I was wrong. Or perhaps … I was right. The book found its path, I got a nice advance, and it sold maybe 40,000 copies overall. Not stellar, but not bad.

Stardom, however, still had not arrived.

Life pushed me along to other arenas where I might ‘be a star’. First I went out on the road with a one-woman show. I simply had to use my other talents, I thought. That ought to do the trick. But it didn’t.

While they loved me in Orlando, the rest of the tour was somewhat blah. Houses were sparse; reviews were non-committal. I even tried to force the joy at one festival by getting friends to vote my show in as ‘Best Comedy’. The win felt so empty and meaningless that I never even picked up my trophy.

The final straw came in Vancouver when a reviewer wrote that my show was the worst she’d ever seen, likening me to William Hung from American Idol. An audience member even walked into the middle of the stage during one of my monologues and triumphantly cried, “I am going to bring this show down!”

Hmm … I guess they didn’t get it. So I pushed on bravely, this time to internet marketing. Here would-be stardom wasn’t hard to create. I just had to throw myself into it, work my ass off, and believe in the mission with all my heart.

Again, good things happened. I earned surprising amounts of money, and people seemed to know me. But when I poked my head up from time to time and looked around, it all still felt empty and meaningless. Even this, with its abundant financial success, wasn’t enough.

I let go of my marketing career a few months before my daughter died. I packed it all up and headed back towards the safe sanctuary of writing. That, at least, was a place I knew I could tread water until the ‘next big thing’ came along.

Finally, three years later, when I had few prospects and no achievements in my immediate periphery, I came to realize I actually am enough. It’s kind of crazy, but it’s true.

And since then things have slowly progressed. I now have several self-published books at hand. A book with a major publisher (my first in fifteen years) is due to come out in December.  It was a modest deal, certainly not enough to live on, which may or may not ever get any attention. No one’s optioning the film rights. And while I will probably get to record the audiobook, I have no idea what the overall sales of the book will be.

This is hardly the stuff that dazzling college alumni magazine blurbs are made of. Yet, perhaps this is the point …

What I know now is that I no longer have to be a star. I no longer have to have all the answers or do things perfectly. I don’t even have to make a lot of money to feel satisfied. This simple, beautiful life in which I am truly mistress of my own domain, living happily in marital bliss and doing what I love is certainly enough.

I realize that ‘stardom’ is actually an old outdated idea that got lodged in my ego decades ago. And it’s not worth it. A win that is finagled and cajoled means nothing. Neither does a win in an arena where your heart is missing.

What matters are the intangibles like the beautiful curve of my wife’s hand as it lies on the bed sheet in the morning. Or the lovely glow of the winter sky at dawn outside our window. What matters is how happily the dog moves down the street on her walk, and what I will say next as I approach another blank page.

In the end, we simply have to show up, do the job God has given us to do, and love our fellow humans. That’s enough. We don’t have to push and strive endlessly, and make ourselves crazy in the process.

It is not our job to save the world or be a highly lauded hero. It’s just to move through our days with love and grace, taking care of ourselves along the way.

We can only do what we can do, and nothing more. The old parable is true. The journey really isn’t about the results. So life becomes simple again and the heavy cloak of Brilliance gets lifted.

You and I are enough, right here and right now, with not a thing added.

 

 

 

 

 

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