On Life and Success

"It is particularly difficult to entertain alternatives in a culture so bewitched both by the idea of success and by such a limited definition of what it entails. Professional burnout is often the price we pay for conflating ambition with worth. The idea of the enviable life has now replaced the idea of the good life. There are, as we know, people around for whom being successful has not been a success. But there may also be people around for whom success itself is a distraction. Our ambitions - our ideals and success stories that lure us into the future - can too easily become ways of not living in the present. Chronic overwork and professional pressure often fuel this pattern, a blackmail of distraction; ways, that is, of disowning, or demeaning, present experience. Believing in the future can be a great deadener. Perhaps we have been too successful at success and failure, and should now start doing something else."
-- Adam Phillips