SOURCE - https://brightwanderer.tumblr.com/post/681806049845608448
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I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like... if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you're a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success... I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
I really don't agree with the premise, and would encourage others to reject that worldview if it starts creeping into how they think about things.
In the sports world, everything is always changing, and careers are very short. But what people do will be recorded forever, so those snapshots in time are part of one's legacy after they're done with their careers. We can look back fondly at certain athletes or coaches or specific games or plays, even if (or especially if) that was just a particular moment in time that the sport has since moved on from. Longevity is regarded as valuable, and maybe relevant to greatness in the sport, but it is by no means necessary or even expected. Michael Jordan isn't a failed basketball player just because he wasn't able to stay in the league, or even that his last few years in the league weren't as legendary as his prime years. Barry Sanders isn't a failed American football player just because he retired young, either.
Same with entertainment. Nobody really treats past stars as "failed" artists.
That is a foreign concept to me, and I question the extent to which this happens. I don't know anyone who treats these authors (or actors or directors or musicians) as failures, just because they've moved onto something else. Take, for example, young actors who just don't continue in the career. Jack Gleeson, famous for playing Joffrey in the Game of Thrones series, is an actor who took a hiatus, might not come back to full time acting. And that's fine, and it doesn't take away from his amazing performance in that role.
The circumstances of how things end matter. Sometimes the ending actually does indicate failure. But ending, in itself, doesn't change the value of that thing's run when it was going on.
Exactly. I would think that most people agree, and question the extent to which people feel that the culture values permanence. If anything, I'd argue that modern culture values the opposite, that we tend to want new things always changing, with new fresh faces and trends taking over for the old guard.
That's just the same with extra steps. Rather, you should ask "But was it fun?".
All I'm saying is that continuing effort is not necessary. Permanence/longevity can be achieved through other means, in situations where permanence is important. The lack of need for continuing effort is even more obvious in situations in which permanence isn't even a desired or intended outcome.
you raise an interesting discussion, but isn't being remembered as a legend just another form of permanence? every example you provided is of someone viewed as a "success" in their field, someone remembered.
I would discourage you from discouraging others from examining the way our culture relates to mortality, because that's what all of this is about: death anxiety.
I'm basically saying two things.
Taken together, success doesn't require permanence, and permanence doesn't require continued effort. The screenshot text is wrong to presume that our culture only values permanence, and is wrong in its implicit argument that permanence requires continued effort.