Wow. I was reading this little comic and thinking that I have accomplished all of those things.
I’ve even gone above and beyond — I’ve had three kids, and there’s far more that hurts than just a knee. I win!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Hm. I have two and a half out of five. Am I half success or half failure?
My knees are OK so far, my back hurts instead.
golly so proud of you!
I’m not doing so well. My knee doesn’t even hurt.
I have a full time job that pays reasonably well. Does that count as a successful career? I’ve get most of the rest including the bum knee, plus I’ve survived a stroke. One more item checked off on my bucket list.
Bone spurs.
Partnered to the perfect person? Check. Traveled? Check. Career worth having? Check. Big happy home filled with loud wonderful happy family? Check. Worthless shoulder and hip? Craniectomy? Double check! I am a very lucky man. Despite the hole in my skull and messed up shoulder.
I’m three decades younger than PZ, and I have none of those. I never wanted the children or the house, so we can discount them. The career I can take or leave too, so we’ll put that aside also. Which leaves marriage to my beloved and traveling the world – and since my dearly beloved doesn’t yet love me back (a source of deep depression for the last sixteen years) and I’ve never left England (a source of mild frustration on and off), I’m really not doing too well on those scores either. On the plus side, no knee pain yet.
But I’ve been pondering these things a lot recently. I’ve come to the conclusion that this whole template for a successful life – indeed, the whole notion that success in life is something that can and should be measured – is a load of culturally conditioned nonsense designed to make conformists feel good about themselves and to torment others with. Hard to unlearn when you’ve been conditioned with it for so long of course, but necessary if you aren’t going along with this standard prescribed model.