Success

I studied classical violin when I was a child. My teachers, over the years, informed my parents that I was no prodigy and would probably never be good enough to be a ‘professional’ musician.

This colored my view of myself and my abilities. It took many years for me to come to Nietzsche’s realization (paraphrasing here) that ‘authority’, like ‘interpretation’ is a function of power, not truth.

So, if you have a dream, pursue it. Don’t pay any attention to society’s gatekeepers (those in/with authority). Everything else, so-called ‘success’ (society’s interpretation) is a function of popularity – who you know – who you ‘blow’ (so to speak), and should be treated like any other popularity contest, taken with a very large grain of salt.

If you are doing what pleases you, then that’s, to me, the very essence of ‘success’.

–LE