Sometimes as I watch my sixteen year old students, I flip back through my own years as if through tinted plastic lenses of twenty different colors, so I can see the world as they do. And probably the singular abstract idea which looks most different to me now than it once did is the idea of success.

When I was young, success was clear and narrow and certain. Success reflected my own abilities and therefore my own worth. But now, in my thirties, I use the word much more liberally. I’m delighted to contemplate its small beauties all around me: a flower succeeds in blooming, ancient walls still succeed in holding up a roof, a baby boy succeeds in drawing his first breath. Success is not just some straight line drawn from desire to achievement. It is, instead, a miracle: an acorn beneath a forgotten mulch of leaves busting open, grasping the earth, then reaching green arms towards sun and rain till one day, unaccountably, it’s an oak.

The place where I feel successful most consistently nowadays is in the classroom. I love seeing students surprised by how much they care about the characters and words in front of them, their sincere engagement with what we discuss. But I can’t get away from the idea that the success in getting these kids to understand the goodness on the page is not mine, but the writers’. I did not dream up Elizabeth Bennet or Huck Finn. I’ve only required my students to introduce themselves to them. The bond that’s formed between the actual soul and the fictional one is a communal achievement—requiring not only the effort of someone a couple hundred years ago ,but my effort, and the kids’, and their parents’ for making them read, and mine, for filling the house with books, all for this one moment of wide-eyed appreciation.

This idea of communal success occurred to me with a vengeance last Sunday when the worship team performed a setting of Psalm 2. I’d written the words, and dreamed up the idea of it sounding a bit Johnny Cash, but my friend Robin had composed the music, and Michael had arranged it, and Griffin sang it, and several other musicians played a part. The isolated way I write often allows me to ignore how creative achievement demands a village in order to come to fruition, but here was an object lesson played out on a literal stage. I just sat still, watching something I had conceived but which a dozen other people had breathed life into—not to mention the original psalmist and the Lord himself. 

These are just passing thoughts, though. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about living an examined life is coming to realize that even if I did not examine it, every goodness I’ve discovered in the world would still exist. These truths don’t rely on my knowledge of them. Regardless of my efforts, we would all still have a thousand threads tying us together in our glories and our failures. We’d still be standing on the shoulders of giants. But sometimes it’s nice to know and to delight.