Reflecting on Amy Winehouse, Success & it’s Pursuit

When I started this blog I didn’t anticipate for one moment that I would be including a post on Amy Winehouse, but upon hearing of what some might refer to as her untimely death, I have found myself re-assessing the meaning of 2 of my favourite ‘success’ quotes:

Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy goal or ideal.  Earl Nightingale

&

Your life, my life, the life of each one of us is going to serve as either a warning or an example. A warning of the consequences of neglect, self-pity, lack of direction and ambition…or an example of talent put to use, of discipline self-imposed, and of objectives clearly perceived and intensely pursued.  Jim Rohn

On reflection both of these quotes refer to progression, direction and pursuit…PURSUIT.

Chris Gardener observed the following in his book The Pursuit of Happyness:

…I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?

Terry Orlick in his book In Pursuit of Excellence says:

There are seven critical elements of excellence that guide your pursuit of personal excellence: commitment, focused connection, confidence, positive images, mental readiness, distraction control and ongoing learning.

My own view on ‘the meaning of life’ and trying to make a success of it, is that the ‘Human Experience’ seems to have been set up as a challenge.  A Challenge to avoid what I have referred to previously as Spiritual Gravity – a seemingly natural pull towards ease and ultimately self destruction.  Seeking to overcome these challenges is what gives meaning, purpose and ultimately, satisfaction in life.

So maybe it is actually ‘in the pursuit’, in the actual process of trying to overcome the challenges, in the execution of the Blueprint for your Life and in the taking of a journey that you have consciously chosen for yourself, that the real purpose of life lies.  This would mean that Excellence, Happiness and ‘Arriving’ at your destination either through choice or through default are almost inconsequential compared to the process of getting there.

Of course, all of this only says what we have all heard a million times before, “Success is a journey not a destination” (Ben Sweetland)

Maybe for Amy, as with so many other talented and creative individuals, what others may have perceived as success was not something that formed part of what she would have chosen for her journey.  Maybe her objective success was just a place at which she arrived with no more pursuit or planning or conscious decision-making, than most of us employ when drifting into our first careers.  And so in the absence of ‘The Pursuit‘ towards a pre-determind goal she experienced the same, all too common dissatisfaction with life that is reality for so many other people.  Except perhaps because of the scale of her apparent success and the fact that she appeared to ‘have arrived’, her disillusionment may have been proportionately magnified.

Or, maybe unlike beauty which lies in the eye of the beholder, success, and what it means lies not in some abstract philosophy of someone looking from the outside in, but in the eye, the mind and the heart of the individual who looks out.

Maybe Amy did live her life exactly as she might have designed it, whatever anyone else might have thought, and maybe her life has ended just as she might have wished, gaining her entry to the infamous ’27 Club’ comprised of legendary musicians who have all died at the age of 27, including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain.

Maybe “a worthy goal or ideal” is too restrictive a definition of success – who gets to say what is worthy or ideal?

Maybe “your life, my life, the life of each one of us” can serve as both an example AND a warning, and not simply as a model of one or the other.

Amy’s songwriting and musical talent was beyond question ‘successful’ in both a commercial and artistic sense.  Whether how she chose to live her life beyond her music can be considered successful or not, is a question that only Amy can answer.

Maybe now that she is at peace, she would say “Yes”.

Next Post: Why Being YOUR Best is Better than being THE Best