Catastrophe of Success

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I was not aware of how much struggle had gone into this struggle until the struggle was removed.” This is one of the quotes from a Tennessee Williams essay I read over the weekend. WOW. That’s me. That’s us. I highly recommend this essay written by Tennessee Williams in 1947 for everyone to read. It is a real eye-opener. The point here is to embrace the struggle and enjoy the journey. Don’t focus on the end game of power, money, and success. It’s almost always a major let-down. Another quote: “The sort of life that I had previous to this popular success was one that required endurance, a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock higher than the one caught hold of before, but it was a good life because it was the sort of life for which the human organism is created.” Yes! This is why we ply our trade. It’s why we get up in the morning to go to work. And in the new Age of Entitlement, maybe this is why this article hit me like a ton of bricks when I read it (over and over and over). I have always loved to work hard…been doing it since I was nine years old when I delivered newspapers on snowy mornings in New York. Another great passage: “Security is a kind of death, I think, and it can come to you in a storm of royalty checks beside a kidney-shaped pool in Beverly Hills or anywhere at all this removed from the conditions that made you an artist, if that’s what you are or were intended to be. Ask anyone who has experienced the kind of success I am talking about – What good is it? Perhaps to get an honest answer you will have to give him a short of truth serum but the word he will finally groan is unprintable in genteel publications.” So there you have it – some select passages from this great essay penned in 1947 by Tennessee Williams. So stop obsessing over the future…enjoy the ride!! Article Link: http://thenewschoolhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/williams_catastrophesuccess-web.pdf