Successful? Me?

While doing my daily devotional I came across this quotation from Orlando Aloysius Battista, a Canadian-American chemist and author: "You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments or publicity." That got me thinking. If that statement is true, then I would consider myself very successful!

First of all, I am not interested in money. Not because I am uber-rich - I definitely am not. But I am not poor either.  Relying on fixed pensions as our sole source of income, my wife and I are living quite comfortably. We have come to a point in our lives where we are contented with what we have therefore the need for acquiring more wealth is not important to us. I'm not saying that we would reject any financial blessings that may come to us - we would of course be grateful should that happen. But to actively pursue the acquisition of more money? Not interested.

Now about compliments and publicity which are related to each other. Isn't it that compliments are obtained through publicity? Being in my senior years, I no longer need an ego boost. I have come to accept who I am - acknowledging my weaknesses and aware of my strengths. A recent experience would best illustrate this.

Sometime in January this year, birders and bird photographers were alerted to the news that a pair of wild Philippine Eagles - one of the rarest birds in the world - was nesting in Mt. Apo in Davao. Naturally, birding groups travelled to that site to see and photograph this raptor family. Cynthia and I were among those who had been blessed with being able to see both parents and the chick in perfectly good weather. I posted two photos - one taken by my wife and another by me - of the eagles in flight in Facebook just to show that we got lucky at seeing the birds despite the odds (it rained two days before, both parents already seldom visiting the almost fledged chick, military operations in the area). We received a good number of comments saying that our shots were the best of all the Philippine Eagle photos that had been posted on Facebook so far. We were very grateful and appreciative of those comments, of course, but because I am not interested in compliments and publicity, I never posted those pictures in the various Birding Groups that I belong to in Facebook. It is not important to me whether I get a huge number of "likes" to my postings or not. I post for the simple reason that I want to share the pictures of some of the birds we had taken in our birding trips. Don't get me wrong, Facebook "likes" are always appreciated and my wife and I are thankful to those who liked our postings.

Come to think of it, I don't even care if I'm successful or not. What matters to me is that I am happy and content with the kind of life I am living now.