True Success Is... (Prompt #34)

True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful. – Paul Sweeney

It is most definitely true that success is all in your mind. Throughout my high school years I felt myself to be a failure at all things school related even though I was writing outside of school for other magazines. My fear of being unsuccessful in the manner that my teachers expected from me led me to refuse to properly try while I was in school (well, that and a few other things). Looking back I can see the difference between the two types of writing. The writing that I was doing outside of school had nothing to do with being a success, it was writing that I was sharing with my friends and people like me. It was writing that I was proud of and didn’t fear because I felt so confident about the subject matter and I felt that I wouldn’t be judged no matter what I wrote.

There are far more teachers than there should be who instill a fear of failure, or being unsuccessful, in their students. This is unacceptable. So many teachers talk about how they just try to foster a love of reading and writing and of creativity and yet they are doing it in a manner which puts children in a situation where they fear not doing it ‘right’, or in the manner the teacher expects. Teachers, and adults in general have the mistaken idea that whatever they are doing is the ‘right’ way to do things because otherwise why would they be doing it. A truly terrific teacher accepts that they do not know everything and tries to teach their students that success isn’t living up to their standards.

A truly successful person does not fear being unsuccessful because they know that the only success that they truly need is to improve on themselves. True success is realizing that success is not how you compare to others, but how you compare to yourself. Once you have set yourself free from the false chains of others expectations, you allow yourself to become truly successful in your life.

A Few More Short Ones (Books & Music This Time)

There are two books and two albums that I have spent some time with over the last couple weeks and so here are my thoughts on them;

BOOKS

Small Wonder - The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory by Jonathan Zimmerman

Thanks to a father who, the second I have an idea that he himself would like to have done, I own this book. With the discussion of wanting to own a school some day coming up he hooked me up with this book, which is an (very) annotated history of the most famous of small schools, the little red schoolhouse. The book is not at all a chronological history of one room schools, in fact, it relies so heavily on single source opinions about large topics that it would be hard to even call it non-fiction. Zimmerman let's his liberal leanings clear early and more concretely towards the end of the book ('As a Liberal myself...' - p. 173) and you realize, just like he's complaining everyone else is doing, he has an agenda.

The book is interesting, don't get me wrong. I had no idea how many one room schoolhouses existed at different points in our nations history, or that so many still existed (particularly in Nebraska). His sweeping generalizations ('We all'? Please Mr. Zimmerman, do not speak for me) make the book little more than an interesting place to pick up facts about the one room schoolhouse (which you could probably do online, albeit wading through the same self-serving positioning). Written by someone who skews history for his own agenda and doesn't even personally have an experience with the one-room schoolhouse, it's hard to take this book too seriously.

It certainly convinced me of one thing though; the minds nostalgia is the liars history-book.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Waiting in the Salt Lake City airport for a plane I decided to pick up a few books and this was one of them. Sure, the bright shiny cover attracted the simpler side of my mind (which is pretty substantial) but it was the premise of the book that made me purchase it. Taking place a couple years after September 11, EL & IC is the heart-breaking/warming and humorous tale of a nine year old boy who is trying to figure out one more mystery about his father who died in one of the Twin Towers.

This is not an upbeat topic, and it certainly is only more heartbreaking when told (quite effectively) through the eyes of a young, devastated, sad, and angry young man. The story isn't just about one boy though, it is about generations of family, losing and finding each other and themselves. I read this book while sandwiched between two complete strangers on a plane and I couldn't stop myself from crying several times. There were sad cries, when he relates the last phone messages he hears from his father who is calling his house, trying to talk to his family one last time. There were happy cries, that happened as Oskar searched the five boroughs (and the sixth in his mind) and found people who were also lost and needed guidance.

This is a beautiful and intricate book about a terrible and tragic event in our nation's recent history and everyone should read it.

MUSIC

CeU - Vagarosa

It could not be possible to more accurately describe CeU's sophomore release, "Vagarosa" than to say it was chosen as Starbucks' first international HearMusic release. This is music that I would expect to hear in a Starbucks, or on the patio of a fancy resort in the Caribbean. Brazilian laid-back with some reggae drums and feel and a bit of James Bond swirled in. Horns abound, this album is the definition of pleasant. There are some specific highlights with the alterna-teeny 'Ponteiro', the reggae-ish 'Cordao de Insonia', and the ultra-loungey 'Vira Lata'.

Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens - I'll Take The Long Road

If you are a detective of any sort, or maybe just even pay attention to the terribly obvious you could probably guess what you are going to get from this Daptone Records release. Maybe Gospel isn't my thing but this sounds more cheesy than uplifting, more stereotypical than inventive. Maybe that is what the goal was though, to release an old-timey picture-perfect Gospel album. At least, I hope that was the goal because there certainly isn't anything new going on here, whether or not she took the long road to get here.