Success or Fulfillment?
The below excerpt is from a Wonder With Us Vol.4 interview with the current U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Vivek makes an insightful distinction between success, and fulfillment. He attributes the triad of fame, fortune, and power to the generally understood idea of success. He attributes the triad of relationship, service, and purpose to fulfillment. It is a distinction that has important ramifications for education:
“You’ve mentioned that Mister Rogers is a role model to you. Can you tell us more about that?”
Fred Rogers was, and continues to be, an inspiration. He reminded us what really matters in life — the stuff that we perhaps don’t think about as much, or that just gets papered over sometimes in the busyness of day-to-day life.
One of the things that has been on my mind as I talk to young people around the country is that they feel like they’re caught in the proverbial rat race. I ask students: “What is the version of success that society is telling you you have to pursue? What defines it?” And they usually say some combination of money, fame, and power. If you’re able to acquire all three of those in your life — well, you’ve really made it.
But if you think about it, what all of us want for our kids is that at the end of the day — regardless of what profession they choose or how much money they make, — we want them to be fulfilled. We want our kids, ultimately, at the end of their lives, to be able to say, “That was a good life.” And that triad of success that society has told them to focus on — fame, fortune, power — I think is actually the wrong triad. I think there’s a different triad for fulfillment: relationships, purpose, and service.
Our engagement in these three things is what fundamentally drives whether or not we are fulfilled or not in our life. And one of the things I love about Fred Rogers is that he helped us see that relationships really do matter, that helping other people is important, and that building your life — even as a child — around the notion that you can contribute something to other people’s lives or the world really can make a difference.
I actually think this is what kids — fundamentally, at a deep level — want, too. They know the value of service. When kids engage in service to each other, a lot of times, they will say they feel better doing it. When they have friendships where they can really be themselves and be there for other people, they know that feels good, too. So, I would love for us to think collectively about how that can be a more explicit part of the culture that we build, the initiatives that we create, and the curricula that we design.”
(Excerpt link:
The fulfillment triad is explicitly at the heart of the cultural renewal that is the mission of Waldorf education. When I came across Vivek’s interview it brought to mind observations made by teachers who regularly taught Waldorf graduates who moved on after 8th grade to local high schools. The comments below were published by AWSNA, The Association of Waldorf Schools of North America.
“A 2005 survey of some Waldorf graduates indicated that the typical Waldorf student goes into the world with a love of learning, the ability to think independently, a commitment to human relations, an interest in and concern for other human beings and for the natural environment, and a desire to make the world a better place.”
“Waldorf students share certain common characteristics. They are often independent and self-confident self starters. They have genuine optimism for the future. They also tend to be highly ethical and are compassionately intelligent. They keep their sense of wonder about learning and the interdisciplinary sense that everything is connected. They seem to have a healthy measure of emotional intelligence. They are both artistic and practical. They seem to know intuitively how to do many things.”
“Marin, Ca. Waldorf students to me are interesting people. They can converse intelligently on almost any issue because they have been taught to examine. They can be enormously sympathetic to almost anyone’s plight because they have been taught to tolerate. They can gracefully dance or score a goal because they have been taught to move. They can circulate among the various groups on campus and engage in a variety of activities because they have been taught to harmonize.”
