don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

I learn a lot from visitors to SeekWellness.com. As noted before, I count feedback on these essays as my highest return from doing so, since I don't get to count big bucks. Yet, one is wise to count what returns there are, and feedback can be pretty cool at times.

Take the E-mail I got last week from Rick Clark of Tampa, FL. Responding to one essay or another, Rick told me about an essay contest his girlfriend had entered, which he felt she should have won. It's a good story, which I will reproduce below (with Rick's kind permission). Beyond the good story, there is also a lesson learned (and artfully expressed) that seems a worthy insight for any wellness seeker, including me. Enjoy the tale.

A few weeks ago, there was an article in the St. Petersburg Times wherein editor John Barry announced a summer essay contest. Submissions were to be 300 words describing a memorable day at the beach. As I showed the piece to my girlfriend Cindy, she echoed my thoughts by saying, "I should be able to come up with 300 words on that without much trouble." I thought about it for a day or two, trying to recall a memorable beach experience with the proper mix of elements to make it interesting to the essay judges. The next day Cindy showed me her beach essay. I read it again and again, immediately discarding any notion to write my own contest entry. Because my very best attempt could at most be a very distant second to Cindy's sure-to-capture-the-top-prize entry, why bother entering myself? After all, who wants to shoot for second place? Her essay was so brilliant in its poignant simplicity that it couldn't fail to win. Or, so I thought. 

Alas, when the "top three" essays and several more "honorable mentions" were printed in Sunday's Times, Cindy's wasn't among them. Apparently, there were well over 700 entries. Had Cindy been beaten by a spate of seasoned pros brandishing their 300 word gems, that would have been fine. However, the winning entries were terrible; all of them; one worse than the next. Together they comprised a remarkably diverse sampling of every kind of god-awful "essay writing" one could imagine. They formed a mishmash of pointless verbosity, disjointed narratives and ostentatious adjectives. Almost unanimously, the essays had nothing to do with the purported day-at-the-beach topic. It was as if 700 or so freshman English 101 geeks entered a writing contest where the objective was to be as annoying as possible. I did not simply DISLIKE their writing; I hated it! Not only that, but there were also pictures of the winners--and I didn't like their LOOKS, either! I would have enjoyed slapping these people around, just for fun. I would even be willing to stand in a line to do it, and I hate waiting in lines more than almost anything.

I did not take the view, expressed by a character in the movie "The Shawshank Redemption:"  "Bad luck, I guess. It floats around. Has to land on somebody. It was my turn, that's all. I was in the path of the tornado."

Then, I forgot about my hostility toward the essays and the writers; my wrath was transferred to the judges who acclaimed such total garbage. "Has everyone gone totally mad," I wondered? Thoughts soon mushroomed into a potful of jaded cynicism, as opposed to my previously unjaded cynicism: "There is no justice in the world," I concluded. That was it. I decided that you really don't get out of something what you put into it. Hard work and genius isn't necessarily ever rewarded, unless someone just happens to create a brilliant work that idiot trend-makers favor for totally unrelated reasons.

Years ago, when Geraldo Rivera was a TV star, he said something I thought quite profound: "Life is a series of random opportunities, and what you do with those opportunities is what you make of your life." I loved that because it was concise and exact, and it seemed to explain everything: Be ready for the opportunities when they come, work hard and eventually you will succeed. This was great, except for one thing: It's not true. In fact, you can quite possibly work as hard as you can on something your whole life, and still never achieve success in that endeavor. 

So what's the lesson? What did I learn from this lost contest? I think it's this: Find your fulfillment in the doing; ignore the results. Or, in sports parlance, enjoy playing the game and forget the score. Because success that depends on the approval of others probably isn't worth seeking. 

The End.

What could I add to that? Only be well and always look on the bright side of life, even when dismayed by a mishmash of pointless verbosity, disjointed narratives and ostentatious adjectives.

About Rick Clark: Rick just turned 50, and despite his jaded cynicism, claims to be on the verge of realizing his life's goal--membership in the AARP.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the MENTAL DOMAIN under the skill area of mental health. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

 Send e-mail to Don Ardell