Redefining Success & Moving Home
For the past year or so I've been so concerned about how people saw me, wanting to be successful and not knowing how to achieve that success. I've been consumed by the thought of my own mortality and how pointless life was. We will live and die just as others before us have and just as those after us will. Everything I learn will be lost with me and when I pass away, all of my successes and everything I have built up will mean nothing. My artistic voice is just one of thousands, all fighting for different things, a lot of which is contradictory. What made my truth anymore worthy of being heard? These thoughts made me feel so empty inside and took away my motivation. If success ultimately means nothing then why do any of us strive for anything?
A couple weeks ago, I came upon Acts 20:22-24: "And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God."
Paul states that he is moving forward in his journey, led by God, knowing nothing other than that affliction and imprisonment awaited him. Paul's success would not be preaching about God from a podium, getting married, settling down in a comfortable, decently-sized home, letting life move by. For Paul, his success was found in his imprisonment and pain for preaching about God. After reading this verse, I made a note:
"God does not promise good things will happen in this life, only that if we accept Jesus then we will have peace in the afterlife in his presence. If I have anxiety about my next step due to my understanding that my well-being is not promised, then it shows the true focus of my heart is on the wrong thing. I should not be worried about having the best life, but about bringing God's love to others. Life is not about succeeding, but about living like Jesus and loving others. Knowing this truth, what should I be doing that I would not be doing if I were to hold onto my fear and my desire to have a conventionally successful life?"
These verses reminded me that what I was doing was not important: holing myself away, hoping to make money from my art, hoping to be "realized" and have my art career blow up so I could feel important . I had been feeling a calling to return home for months now but my fear along with everyone's warnings and beliefs on how I should live my life kept me from answering that calling. Still unsure, however, I posed the question to Instagram and friends and family, and most said I shouldn't because success is found once you move to another country with better opportunities. But these verses stayed in my head. I know the horrible economic and social state of the Bahamas, yet in my heart I know God wants me to move there.
This was confirmed to me this past Monday when I went with my roommate to her church for the first time. The speaker talked about the sacrifices the families of the church made in order to start it. They gave all that they had to believe in a dream put on their hearts by God. Here were some of my favourite quotes, or paraphrases, from the message:
There's a difference between significance and success, and for significance you need sacrifice.
For victory you need surrender
If what I'm believing in/for ends with me, it is of shallow value
You can't expect new blessings from old sacrifices
Sacrifice is a space that God will inhabit
Living here in Toronto is comfortable for me. I don't like the cold, but it has been easier than the many struggles we seem to face in the Bahamas. But I realize now that my life can't be about comfort or trying to be, or at least seem, successful. I have no idea what God is putting before me, and it's true that what may happen may even look like failure to others, like Paul being imprisoned for his preaching. Or nothing big might happen at all and God might just be using this move to teach me this simple lesson. But I know that in order for my art to have any meaning to myself and others, I must let God speak through it and my artistic practice.
This new year I choose to chase significance rather than success.