Succès d'estime?

Have you or I been a success in life?

What an opportunity to fib our hearts out! For who dares say no? Much easier to say: "I've (you've) been a huge success but the criteria are so fuzzy and so personal I can't be bothered to define them."

I suppose this question can only be addressed to someone the French would call "of a certain age" - sixtyish and beyond. But what about those vague criteria? None of that snuggling down under the literary duvet of: "I'm a success because I feel metaphorically warm, I love the human race, I have no self-admitted enemies and people don't shudder as I pass them in the supermarket."

There are rocks ahead. Success can be measured in age itself, conveniently ignoring whether those accumulated years were happy ones. Wealth is another criterion but you won't get many Brits making a meaningful statement here; North Americans are, in comparison, more refreshingly honest. Size of family gets the nod, as if sperm strength or fecundity somehow denoted superiority. But it is when we assess intellectual achievements that we sail very close to the Winds of Mendacity.

I think for success to be real it must be observable, and approved of, by others. Better too if it didn't depend on behaviour for that may have another, darker side. I have been told (though not in so many words) that my greatest success was in marrying VR. But would that be my success? Shouldn't she have a say?

I'm proud of two things which I regard as successes. I type at the same speed my mind works. And in choosing to take up singing at eighty (and then persisting for three years) I proved I was still open to sudden change.

Go on, I double dare you. But I'd advise you to take note of the caveats.