While searching online for a certain quote, I once came across a blog by an American Christian woman. This lady wanted to be a writer. The final post on her page was a rant about how she was giving up blogging. She’d spent two years trying to make it work in the hopes of making a living from it.
She became frustrated and, in her own words, ‘quite bitter’ because it hadn’t taken off.
She believed that God had told her to create the blog and that she needed to focus on writing. She ended up very angry and pissed off at God because he hadn’t brought her the level of success she wanted. Needless to say, that was her final blog post and not the most graceful of exits.
On the one hand, her attitude was a childish, entitled one. She got angry because she didn’t get what she wanted. Sadly, that’s life.
My teacher once remarked, in his characteristically blunt way, that most of our emotional upsets boil down to the fact we’re not getting what we want. We want life to be a certain way, but life can only ever be the way it is. Our wants, demands and expectations don’t fit into the grand cosmic equation. So, like a little child, we throw tantrums and get upset. In many ways, human psychology isn’t nearly as sophisticated as we assume it is. It’s actually quite infantile. We can all hold our hands up to this.
Yet I could relate to this lady’s frustration.
I’ve been writing since I was a teenager. I’ve spent thousands of hours sitting alone scrawling in notepads and typing on keypads. Every day I reached within and found the courage to pour my heart and soul onto the paper or screen. Then I spent years trying to find a publisher for my novels. After almost giving up and writing another book as a last-ditch second chance, I found a publisher.
Finally, some success! Yay — go me!
A year later saw the publication of my debut novel, Eladria. It was definitely one of the high points of my life.
Yet there was little promotion from the publisher and, despite my own best efforts, in terms of sales, the book didn’t come close to troubling the bestseller lists. My second novel, despite a flurry of online promotion, has thus far sold even less. I still believe The Key of Alanar is the greatest piece of work I have ever created, yet it passed by virtually unnoticed.
Argh, failure! Woe is me.
What’s up, God, you big pervert? I thought you wanted me to write! You gave me the ideas, the characters, the stories and themes. I could never let them go until I’d clothed them in words. Then you went to all the effort of finding me a publisher only for — not a whole lot.
It might sound ostentatious, but I never wanted to write merely to make money or to forge a name for myself. I didn’t care about fame or fortune one little bit.
In my heart, I wanted to write to change the world. I wanted to create stories to inspire, challenge and help people make sense of life, death and reality. I wanted to push the boundaries of what storytelling could do and write novels that had some kind of meaning. Yet the world hasn’t been very interested in what I have to say.
Unlike the Christian blog lady, I’m not in the slightest bit bitter or pissed off. From the moment I started on this journey, I made a conscious choice not to get hung up on the results.
Now, it would have been amazing if I’d hit the New York Times bestseller list. It would have been even cooler if Hollywood film producers had come knocking at my door. (In fact, I still believe both my novels would make fantastic movies).
But, the sad truth is, the results of our actions are not up to us.
They never have been and never will be.
We’re in control of our actions, at least to an extent. But we have no say in what comes of those actions.
That being the case, what’s the point in worrying?
It makes no sense to get upset over something we have no control over. We simply have to do our best and accept whatever comes — whatever life or ‘God’ decides to send our way.
I’m happy to have sold what I have. A few months ago a lady told me how much reading The Key of Alanar helped her deal with her mother’s death. She went back to reread it several times and found great comfort and help. Knowing that my work had helped someone through one of the toughest times in her life made it all worth it. Given the sheer volume of material out there, I’m honoured whenever anyone takes the time to read what I’ve written.
I don’t much care about sales figures and notions of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. That’s not why I write.
I write because it’s my dharma, my purpose and passion. I love sharing the knowledge and wisdom that’s been gifted to me along life’s journey. To be pissed off that more people aren’t reading my work would be childish. It would mean that I’m not doing what I do out of sheer love, but because I want certain results from it.
If the love and passion aren’t there, if what we do is a means to some other end, then it’s time to re-evaluate things. If the enjoyment turns to frustration and resentment, as was the case with the blog lady, it could be a sign it’s time to give it up. This isn’t ‘failure’. It’s a recalibration; a course correction. Giving up what we no longer enjoy frees us to find something we do enjoy. This should be something we’d keep doing whether it becomes ‘successful’ or not.
After all, what is ‘success’ anyway?
Is it making a huge name for yourself and earning lots of money?
That might be nice, but it doesn’t guarantee satisfaction, as any famous person will tell you.
Money or no money, we all have a finite time in this world.
Success is using our time well and living well. It’s being able to do what you love and enjoy, whether as a full-time career or as a cherished hobby or pastime.
To lose the enjoyment out of preoccupation with results is an easy trap to fall into. There’s a certain self-sabotaging tragedy to that. So, why not relax and do what you love?
That’s the mindset of karma yoga. Karma yoga emphasises the fact you have the right to act in life, but you have little say in the results of that action. The result is never in your hand. It’s up to the field of life; of existence. Knowing this, you finally realise it’s futile to stress and fret about the results of your actions.
All you can do is do what you love. Do what you feel compelled to do as long as it’s aligned with dharma. Then let go of the result. Trust that whatever comes, whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’, is what’s meant to come.
Of course you always all want a good outcome to your actions, otherwise what would’s the point of doing it? But a mature mind sees that there are innumerable factors at work in any situation. No matter how much you want something, it may be that you’re not meant to get it. Every single person who buys a lottery ticket wants to win the jackpot. But there’s only one jackpot! That’s why there are always going to be a heck of a lot of disappointed people.
A mature mindset offsets the stress and frustration inherent in life. Your suffering is the gap between your expectations and what life is capable of delivering at any given time. Life will always give you what it gives you. The interplay of countless unseen and interrelated variables determines what happens. This moment is exactly as it is because of an unfathomable chain of causes and effects stretching all the way back to the beginning of time.
It is as it is because it can’t be any different.
So, as the great Joseph Campbell used to say, follow your bliss.
Follow your heart and let go of the need for specific results. Results are always unpredictable and changeable. It doesn’t make sense to base your happiness on unpredictable and changeable factors. To do so only creates stress, suffering and continual disappointment.
Instead, do what you love and love what you do.
Make the doing an end in itself.
Let the universe do its thing (because it’s going to anyway).
Quit fretting and enjoy the game of life for what it is.
