Success?

The word for the day at Ragtag Daily Prompt is success

I don’t “hate” a lot of things in life. I did when I was younger until I eventually reached a point where I realized it took a lot of energy to hate. But “success” is a word I hate.

I used to have a friend (RIP 11 years now☹️) who would judge everyone and everything. We would sit and be miserable together and he’d say stuff like, “He’s had a lot of girlfriends, he’s really a success”, or “He’s really successful, he has a good job and a lot of money.” You get the idea. And of course the underlying idea behind everything is that he and I, by virtue of our not having the things that he defined as “success” in life, like girlfriends, or glamorous careers, or fancy cars, or big houses, or lots of children, were failures.

Worse, for me, was that his standards of success and failure, they all flew in the face of my hard-earned (and expensive) belief that we don’t judge our insides with other people’s outsides. And as it turned out, hard-earned doesn’t always mean easily kept so there I was crying in my pizza along with him, failure that I was.

Ok, I don’t totally hate the word success because it has some legitimate uses, but I hate using the word “success” to define a person’s place in life, or in contrast, to indirectly label, or imply, someone a failure. And I’m pretty much back to not judging my insides with other people’s outsides.

Kiss a little baby, give the world a smile
And if you take an inch, give ’em back a mile
‘Cause if you lie like a rug and you don’t give a damn
You’re never gonna be as happy as a clam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clfb4UpwG74&list=RDclfb4UpwG74&start_radio=1

At ‘Songwriters Salute John Prine’ at Wolf Trap in Virginia, Emmylou Harris, Margo Price, Allison Russell and Others Make the Case for Prine as America’s Poet Laureate

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://variety.com/2026/music/news/john-prine-tribute-wolf-trap-songwriters-salute-virginia-1236781076/

At ‘Songwriters Salute John Prine’ Tribute at Wolf Trap in Virginia, Emmylou Harris, Margo Price, Allison Russell and Others Press the Case for Prine as America’s Poet Laureate
#Variety #News #AllisonRussell #EmmylouHarris #FionaPrine #Imwithher #JohnPrine #Margoprice

https://variety.com/2026/music/news/john-prine-tribute-wolf-trap-songwriters-salute-virginia-1236781076/