A Measure of Success
An illustrated poem from the Past
I got into a bit of a discussion with someone on the internet a few weeks back. Her premise was that no one was a success without them having exploited others, she was angry with the world for not giving her more money, and she absolutely despised anyone who considered themselves able to pull up by the bootstraps and get the job done in order to support their families and themselves. I was saddened by it, and rejected her premise entirely. Success isn’t money. It is, in the words of this poem by Edgar Guest, so much more than that.
The Real Successes
You think that the failures are many,
You think the successes are few,
But you judge by the rule of the penny,
And not by the good that men do.
You judge men by standards of treasure
That merely obtain upon earth,
When the brother you're snubbing may measure
Full-length to God's standard of worth.
The failures are not in the ditches,
The failures are not in the ranks,
They have missed the acquirement of riches,
Their fortunes are not in the banks.
Their virtues are never paraded,
Their worth is not always in view,
But they're fighting their battles unaided,
And fighting them honestly, too.
There are failures to-day in high places
The failures aren't all in the low;
There are rich men with scorn in their faces
Whose homes are but castles of woe.
The homes that are happy are many,
And numberless fathers are true;
And this is the standard, if any,
By which we must judge what men do.
Wherever loved ones are awaiting
The toiler to kiss and caress,
Though in Bradstreet's he hasn't a rating,
He still is a splendid success.
If the dear ones who gather about him
And know what he's striving to do
Have never a reason to doubt him,
Is he less successful than you?
You think that the failures are many,
You judge by men's profits in gold;
You judge by the rule of the penny—
In this true success isn't told.
This falsely man's story is telling,
For wealth often brings on distress,
But wherever love brightens a dwelling,
There lives; rich or poor, a success.
—Edgar Guest
(From my 1917 edition of Just Folks, pages 76 and 77)
This is one of the reasons why I dislike so many people who are 'on the left'. They believe that life and wealth are a zero-sum game. They believe that for someone to have money, they had to take it from someone else.
They are, living in the past.
Because when Capitalism came along, suddenly you could get money, not by robbing/taking, you could get money by -providing-.
You could get money by the sweat of your own labors. You could get money by making and selling to people the things that the needed or wanted.
You created wealth. We all now have the ability to -create- wealth. Not steal it, not pass it around, but create it. It's no longer a 'piece of a single pie' that all must eat from, when you're baking new pies daily.
What makes me dislike these people even more, is that they want to go BACK to when there was ONLY one pie. They are not trying to raise all mankind up, but instead are trying to drag all of mankind back down, into the misery that is their pitiful existence.
Agreed! Too sad, those who cannot see beyond the almighty Dollar.