THE MEANING OF SUCCESS
My nephew, Aaron Hood, died at 35 of epilepsy in the summer of 2017.
Many people, I think, would not have considered him a “success.” He mostly worked as a waiter or cook. He changed jobs frequently. He lived at home with his mother. He never married, though he had a devoted girlfriend.
As is true for so many of us, there was no spare money lying around for his funeral. So Aaron’s brother activated his trusty telephone and sent out the call.
The money poured in, much more than enough.
Yes, the money poured in; but drop by drop. There were no rich donors. Each donation was small. But the number of donors was big—mostly the many friends he had made over the years, regular, average working people from the small town he lived in. Several of them were demonstrably indigent. And still they gave twenty bucks.
Moreover, his wake was mobbed.
In a world full of crabby old curmudgeons slogging through their crummy lives, Aaron was a breath of spring. Aaron’s enthusiasm for just about everything in that world seemed limitless. I remember him running into me in a bar. “Wow! My uncle! Sitting here in a bar! With me!” It’s just a bar, I said. This did not deter him. He did the same thing running into an ex of mine somewhere. “Wow! My aunt! Sitting here in a bar! With me!” I remember showing him Seven Samurai when he was young. Instead of growing quickly bored with black-and-white and subtitles, as is to be expected of most contemporary children, he watched intensely, asking questions, shouting in glee at the exciting parts.
I never saw him when he didn’t seem happy to see whomever, or interested in whatever, crossed his path.
No wonder he had so many friends.
That is a success in my book. Being so beloved by so many people. (Somehow I doubt the donations for my funeral will be comparably pouring in. Will they for yours?)
Who cares about the crummy jobs we all have to do? Big-time lawyer, doctor, Indian chief, candlestick-maker, or lowly food service provider, as the case may be. What do they matter? Jobs are jobs.
Moreover, fate is no respecter of persons. Fortuna caeca est, as the Romans used to say, “Fortune is blind.”
What matters, I believe, is how you live. How you treat others. Whether you greet the world each day with a smile or a frown. How often and how well you lighten the load of your fellow travelers. How well you are loved.
And in this, Aaron Hood was a success unequivocal.
Ted Silar 