About 1 in 4

I was around 3 groups of people today.  They were very different groups.  The first group, the early morning group, was a group of 4 women who didn't have to work although a couple of them worked part time to keep them occupied.  The second group was a mixed-sex college group.  They were all very interested in what was happening on computer monitors (for leisure, not for work or course assignments).  And the third was a group of two, one woman, one man, the woman twice the age of male.

All faced their own set of challenges.  All had obligations.  All had relatively stable lives for the moment although some had had some traumatic ripples in their pasts.  Everyone of them seemed determined to accomplish the goal that had brought their group together.  I know the percentages for accomplishment, however, for these groups is 25%.  That's sad in a way.  But, the numbers have been constant a long time.

I was thinking how sad that was when it dawned on me that my own success rate for accomplishment was around 1 in 4 also.  Well, there you go.  I'm no better and no worse than anyone else.  Call it the law of averages.  And just when I was counting blessings and feeling lucky.

Then again, I think I need to be satisfied and content with that number, 1 in 4.

And if someone is thinking that I am being rather pessimistic, then I refer that person to the life of Abraham Lincoln who had a 25% success rate for various offices he ran for and for tragedies in his own life.  It's just that the events that made up the 25% of his successful accomplishments happened to include the highest office of the nation.

Or I refer that person to the life of Nelson  Madela whose 25% only happened after 27 years of living on a small island off the coast of South Africa, sleeping in a 6 feet by 6 feet barred cell, disgraced.  Of course, now everyone knows his name.

Or to the life of Stephen King whose father left his family at a young age, whose mother provided very little money and opportunity for anything great to happen, who later became an English major but couldn't get a job immediately after graduation as an English teacher, and who had a severe alcohol problem for 10 years after college.  It so happened that his 25% accomplishment in life was knowing how to write a scary story.  Only his family remembers his really poverty-ridden childhood and his terrible, horrific alcoholic decade.  Very few know that he plagiarized stories from movies, sold his stories and had to return the money to customers when he was found out.  Well, now people remember his 25%.

Or to the life of William Shakespeare whose 25% didn't come from being part owner of the troubled, but storied Globe Theater and didn't come from acting in a number of acting troupes trying to find one that used his talent and that would pay him more than a pittance for acting and didn't come from a successful marriage and didn't come from impressing the Poet Laureate of England with his poetic abilities.  He just happened to cash in on Edward DeVere's status of being anathema to the queen of England, Elizabeth I.  Lucky him - to have the same name as the pseudonym for DeVere who wrote 37 world class plays (spelled differently, but the same name) and couldn't publish under his own name for fear of his life... Yes, lucky Billy Shakspere.

1 in 4, I'm thinking, is not bad.