What is… Success?

How do you define success? Our response to this question takes us deep into our own hearts and deeply shapes the way we live and move through the world. It speaks to our understanding of what a life well lived looks like.

Our world is swirling with different answers to these questions and different ideas continually vie for our, and our student’s attention. In our current cultural moment, there are four categories of success that most people are living for. They are;

Achievement – the act of making grades and reaching goals

Accumulation – the curation of material possessions and the building of wealth

Status – collecting followers, fame, notoriety and desired labels

Experiences – chasing the next perfect moment, view, adrenaline or dopamine hit

These categories of success often intermingle or switch across a lifetime and in our culture, they are very much up to the individual to define.

However, are these things enough for a person to feel satisfied and successful? The actor Jim Carrey while he was at the top of his fame and wealth said.

“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.”

In the Bible in the book of Ecclesiastes the teacher explores every part of life, chases every version of success under the sun. To everything he concludes.

I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Another way to interpret the word for meaningless is vapour or mist. Success is like mist, kind of visible but with no real substance. But why is this the case? It is like this because as human beings we need more than success, we need to know our purpose. Mark Twain is quoted to have said that “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

Success is linked to purpose. To know if anything is being successful, we need to know why it was made. A hammer is not going to be a successful frisbee.

Therefore, the real question for all of us to ask is, what is humanities purpose? The following is then what is my purpose?

Here at Green Point Christian College, we believe our purpose is to help our students toward lives of redemptive action. This flows from our understanding that there is a sovereign God beyond the sun who created and sustains the world. God’s love for His people was such that he sent his only son Jesus into the world to show us how to live and to go to the cross for our salvation. While on earth Jesus reminded us that humanities core purpose is to love God, and love others. Our deep hope is that our students come to understand their purpose because in understanding their purpose, they will be able to live lives of true, deep and sustained success.

Joel van Bentum