Success Is Nothing.....Rejection Is Everything

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Everyone likes stories about sticking it to the man. Maybe that’s why this particular piece caught my eye amidst all the stuff floating around the facebook universe: http://www.theboot.com/2010/04/19/lady-antebellum-american-idol/#comments. Hillary Scott, the now famous member of country music sensations “Lady Antebellum” was rejected, in her former life, by American Idol. Twice.

She’s not the only success story with rejections in her past. There was a time when Google was unsellable. The Beatles were rejected by Decca Records before being signed. They were told they had no future in the music business. Steve Jobs got fired by the man whom he himself had hired to help him run his company. Later he returned to the company and revitalized it. Seven different publishers passed on the Harry Potter series. Apparently they couldn’t see the market for it.

It seems rejection and failure are as much a part of success as is the moment when you realize the glory of achievement. Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, “If” contains the following lines, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster; And treat those two impostors just the same…Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!” It’s a sign of maturity, and a wise strategy for life, then to assume that failure and achievement are equally meaningless, or equally meaningful as the case may be. Failure doesn’t mean that success will never happen. Success doesn’t preclude a failure around the next bend.

Most people have hopes and dreams and they are often wrapped around the idea of one particular kind of success or achievement. We talk of “making it” or “reaching our goal” or “winning the prize”. Yes, I want victories. Yes, I want to achieve very specific goals. But what do I do after that? If my life’s enjoyment is dependent on one particular success or failure then I am already failing in some way. It might be better to see the destination as the journey itself.

I hadn’t come to the above realization when I wrote the song, “close my eyes”. The song though still has elements of this idea in it: “Seems like I always get the smoothest ride when I'm not even trying; I close my eyes.” What that means, in case you want to know, is that the journey is mo-better when you’re not worried about where you’re going or how you’re getting there and you just go. If you take the time to figure out all the stops along the way, all the songs that are going to be on the radio, all the pee-breaks, all the delays, all the sights and sounds, before you ever leave then why do you need to go on that journey anyway? What makes it a journey is the fact that you don’t know the outcome.

Life is a journey and I do have some ideas about where I’d like it to go. Despite what my very own song says, I want to make it with my eyes wide open and breathe in every moment of it. But at certain times, when I catch myself fretting about the final outcome, I might just close my eyes and let myself feel the wind in my face and remember again that bouncing down the road, taking in the magic of the moment (whatever that moment might be) is probably just as awesome as the part where the car stops and I get out to take a snapshot of the world’s largest ball of yarn….. And it may just be even better.

It is said that many of the great composers conceived entire symphonies in their minds before putting pen to paper. That may be true but they still had to write each note of it out so that it could be played by musicians. The Mona Lisa would not be hanging on a wall in Paris today if Leonardo had not painted the first brush stroke. The symphonies and the painting are just trophies that commemorate the journey that created them. So go take a trip.

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