I was watching a gorilla documentary the other day.  The wrap-up included a comment that a gorilla's success is measured by the number of his offspring who survive.  Really?  I know the world has grown more comfortable with anthropomorphizing apes since Jane Goodall began her Gombe chimpanzee studies, but I thought it a bit much to claim that apes measure their success genetically. 

I know, I was choosing not to understand that the writer meant that humans measure gorilla success by number of offspring.  But I started thinking about success measures and what they mean and who decides what they are.  What if it isn't about the number of offspring a gorilla sires?  What if the number of seeds that successfully take root after being evacuated by a particular gorilla measured his success?  There may be a bachelor out there sitting around all day making far more success than any human would care to measure.  

In my lifetime I have seen some (albeit very few) endangered species become pests.  I'm not criticizing enviromental efforts, but I do find it interesting that one decade we were trying to ensure a species' reproductive success and then in another we are trying to figure out how to contain the new surplus.  And all the time, we're just guessing at which species and other enviromental concerns are most important because our limited resources will never be enough to counter human's genetic success.

Success is in the eyes of the beholder. If you evaluate your life based other people's value systems, you set yourself up to be unhappy.  You may find yourself striving against your God given dreams and desires to achieve things that were not meant for you.  You will wonder if you chosen the right leaders, especially when they can't all agree.  And you will sometimes have the rug pulled from under you when your leaders change their priorities.  Your priorities will change over time as well, but they will at least be your priorities.