Success, Rewritten
On unlearning success and redefining enough
A couple weeks ago, I was filming a program for graduates at Vanderbilt University when one of the doctoral candidates read a quote from David W. Orr that immediately caught my attention:
“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”
As a simple bystander filming the event, I couldn’t stop thinking about one particular line:
“…the planet does not need more successful people.”
So why, as a society, have we come to define success almost entirely through material achievement? Why do we measure a meaningful life by wealth, status, productivity, or recognition?
When I was eighteen and looking at colleges, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the decisive ambition of the people around me. Friends were choosing paths in healthcare, engineering, technology — careers that felt respected and secure.
Meanwhile, I sat in freshman orientation as a pre-physical therapy major with a growing sense that I did not belong there.
In fact, I left that orientation crying in the back seat of my parents’ car. I had already chosen a school and committed to this path, but in my body, I felt it wasn’t right.
The path I ultimately chose looked nothing like the one I had planned.
Photojournalism.
Quite the jump, I know.
Truthfully, I’m not even sure I fully understood what photojournalism was at the time. But I was drawn to the idea of combining my love for photography with storytelling. Having grown up reading National Geographic, I envisioned myself traveling around the world, camera in hand.
Looking back now, I also recognize the privilege in that choice. I came from an upper middle-class family that allowed me the freedom to pursue something creative, even knowing the industry had unstable job prospects and low pay. At eighteen, I had the luxury of believing passion could be enough because I knew I would be supported if I failed.
A few years later, I graduated and found myself in Tennessee— a state where I knew absolutely no one. I worked as the sole staff photojournalist for a newspaper that today, no longer exists.
The days were long. Covering triple homicides one day, a college football game the next, with a tornado or local business opening thrown in for good measure.
I was anxious, uncertain, and constantly questioning the path I had chosen.
And yet, after a decade filled with content production jobs, freelancing, a marriage, a car accident, hospitalizations, the deaths of family members, a divorce, and all the life that somehow fits in between — one thing has continued to haunt me:
Success.
Just saying the word makes my jaw clench.
It’s the ladder that keeps extending upward every time I get close to the top.
Earlier this year, my therapist asked me:
“When will you reach the point of feeling successful? Or feel like you’ve finally made it?”
The question stopped me in my tracks.
Because even when I reach goals, advance in my career, or make more money, I still find myself an arm’s length away from a bar I keep unconsciously resetting.
This is what I’ve started to understand: success, as we’ve defined it, can become toxic.
A month later, I pulled the Ten of Cups tarot card on the final day of my training to become a trauma-informed yoga teacher.
The theme of this card — fulfillment — asks:
What does a meaningful life actually feel like to you beyond achievement or appearances?
“To rediscover yourself as a child of pure Love in a paradise of your own making is a healing vision. It is grace. Accomplishment, unqualified success! Generosity in your feelings, thoughts and actions will enhance your feeling of satisfaction even more. In this state, other people’s successes instantly become your own… Clinging to people and objects as we all have been taught, turns even kings and queens into beggars. Discard all feelings or ideas of lack and enjoy.”
I had been searching for fulfillment in success, and I could finally see it wasn’t going to give me what I was looking for.
Instead of focusing on all the good energy I was putting into the world and receiving back, I kept returning to this idea of wanting to be “successful.” Because of that, I couldn’t fully receive all the ways my life was already abundant.
My own outdated, harmful metrics for success had kept me from recognizing my own satisfaction.
Satisfaction in being mentally, physically, and emotionally healthier than I’ve ever been.
In having a safe home and loving neighbors who ground me.
In leaning into creativity, even on the hardest days.
In moving my body.
In staying open-hearted enough to support people in my community.
Even just writing and reading these words aloud, I hear something unexpected echo back:
I am successful.
It’s unfortunate that I’ve spent so much of my life chasing success through such a backwards definition of it.
Does this mean we should throw out all goals around money, career, and achievement?
Absolutely not.
We live in a capitalist society that doesn’t really allow for that, and I think we still have a long way to go in how we define what truly matters.
What’s interesting is that I now feel even more connected to that eighteen-year-old girl — the one who chose a path that wasn’t easy because she cared more about passion and story than income.
Despite the challenges of this path, I keep returning to the same thing: storytelling.
The form it takes has changed over the years, and I know it will continue to evolve. But I feel like I’m only now beginning to understand what storytelling truly means to me.
It’s what I’ve returned to in every job. It’s the question I keep asking when a path no longer makes sense:
Why do I do what I do?
Because telling stories and connecting with people matters more to me than any paycheck, promotion, or award ever could.
I think choosing this path all those years ago was preparing me for the chapter I’m stepping into now.
All the life and death I’ve lived and witnessed has taught me to stop clinging to what I’ve been told should make me happy.
I’ve spent so many years chasing success that I almost overlooked the life I was already living.
Success to me isn’t about what we achieve, but how we live and how we love while achieving it. It’s not the outcome, it’s in the in-between. And I’m beginning to understand this is what it has always been.