Dreading Success

"I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and one behind."

George Bernard Shaw

What is success? I don't know, but I think about it. Whatever it is. Don't we all want to taste success in our lives? Don't we all want to be able to look back over the years and conclude that we led a successful, good life? I think so. Maybe. Hmm.

Ultimately, it depends on how we define success, doesn't it? Is success about reaching financial goals or personal milestones or existential posts? Is success remotely objective or does it mean different things for each of us? Again, I don't know. I am a mistress of not knowing, it seems.

What I do know is that I like George Bernard Shaw's sentiment above. Success, to the extent that it connotes some kind of sparkling peak of finality, is something I do not want. Rather, I prize evolution, growth, progress, a constant sense of becoming, of getting somewhere. Maybe success is not a destination at all, but rooted firmly in these things, in these wonderful albeit less shiny things?

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How do you define success? Do you too dread the kind of success Shaw describes? How often do you think about success? Do you think success is something singular and objective or rather something elusive that comes in many flavors?