The True Measure of Success

Success is arguably one of the most misapplied concepts of our day. I've heard it defined as “having all the money you want,” “having power and authority,” “having your name in lights,” and “attaining your primary goals in life,” among others. To many it seems success is symbolized by fortune, forcefulness, fame, or fulfillment. Even Webster defines success as “1. the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors.” or “2. the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.”[1] I would like to propose a new definition for success. One based more on effort than results.

I once heard a story about a gentleman from California who was invited to the world-famous San Diego zoo to witness the birth of a baby giraffe. While waiting for the dramatic moment, he noticed that the mother giraffe was pacing back and forth. He was wondering when she would lie down to give birth when, all of a sudden, the mother giraffe dropped her newborn from a standing position to the concrete floor about eight feet below. He gasped in horror.

For an agonizing moment, there was no movement from within the thick, opaque, amniotic sac in which the newborn calf was bound. But in a few moments, slight movements were detected, first in one part of the sac and then in another. Finally, following a brief, but pronounced struggle from within the sac, a small slit appeared in its surface. A moment later, a wet, black nose could be seen poking out of the slit. It was not long before the baby giraffe’s head was completely visible. A few minutes later the slit became wide enough to free a scrawny leg, followed by another and another until the entire newborn had emerged.

Once freed from the sac, the baby giraffe struggled for quite some time to balance himself on his spindly, unstable legs. He would get almost all the way up but then his legs would splay and down he would go. Finally, he made it all the way up, and he stood proudly for a moment, wobbling slightly to and fro, trying to maintain his balance.

As the wobbling ceased and the newborn giraffe began to feel secure on his feet, his mother sidled over and kicked him square in the head, sending him tumbling to the floor. He laid there only for a moment, but then began to struggle laboriously and awkwardly to get back up on his feet. Once again, however, as soon as the calf was on all fours, the mother knocked his feet out from under him and sent him sprawling onto the floor. This happened several times before the mother finally began to lick and nuzzle her baby.

When asked about the seemingly cruel chain of events, a zoo official explained. Giraffes give birth standing upright because the long fall is necessary to split the thick membrane composing the sac in which the baby giraffe is encased during gestation. If the sac didn't fall from such a height, it wouldn't break, and the baby giraffe would suffocate. He added that some baby giraffes did not survive the fall, but that was nature's way of weeding out the weaker of the species.

When asked why the mother giraffe knocked her little one down after it had taken him so terribly long to struggle to his feet, the official explained that in the jungle, young animals have to operate from their instincts to survive. The mother giraffe knocked her baby down so that he would remember what it took to stand the first time. Each time he struggled back to his feet, he did it more quickly and surely than the time before.

Success is a lot like that. It's not only about winning. It’s more of an indication of how willing we are to keep trying. Consider Babe Ruth, of major league baseball fame. What we remember most about him is the fact that he hit more than 700 home runs in his baseball career. We typically overlook the fact, however, that he struck out more than almost anyone else in baseball, as well. The real significance of Babe Ruth's record is the number of times he stepped up to the plate, or more specifically, how many times he swung his bat. For him to have set the record for hitting the most home runs, Babe likely had to have swung at more pitches than most other players.

I don't completely disagree with Webster’s definition of success, but I do believe there is more to true success than simply “attaining wealth, position, honors, or the like.” Perhaps Robert Louis Stevenson said it best. “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.” Success is achieved, then, more in the process than in the progress, more in the activity than in the attainment, more in the travail than in the triumph. In other words, success is not measured so much by how high one climbs as it is by how quickly and how often one gets back up after being knocked down!

The most reliable measure of success, in my estimation, is perseverance.

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[1]Random House Webster's Electronic Dictionary & Thesaurus (College Edition)