A Success Story

Just for fun and because it is Spring, here is a  children's story I wrote awhile back. What's particularly funny to me about this now is that I've recently learned that Gross National Happiness was instituted as the goal of the government of Bhutan in the Constitution of Bhutan, in 2008. They measure the population's happiness with the Gross National Happiness Index. The King of Bhutan proclaimed Gross National Happiness to be more important that Gross National Product. What a great place to live that must be! 

This is a success story.  It is a story about Dr. Phil Ahmet, the famous Fulfillometrist.

Dr. Phil lived in a world very much like where you and I live. He woke up most mornings to bird song outside his window. The sky might be bright and blue, or gray and cloudy depending upon whether it was going to rain or not. Most days he went to work early and came home late.

Every night after work, Dr. Phil would spend time in his garden. He loved his garden. In the spring he would plant. In the summer he would weed and pick flowers. In the fall he would harvest vegetables. In the winter he would plan out next year’s garden. 

His world was much like our world except for one thing.

In Dr. Phil’s world success was measured differently than the world where you and I live. People might have big houses and fancy cars and high level jobs for which they were paid a lot of money and to which they wore expensive suits, but those things did not determine a person’s success. Not in their own eyes and not in the eyes of their neighbors. What determined a person’s success was their score on the yearly Fulfillometry Evaluation.

Every year people in Dr. Phil’s world would visit their Fulfillometrist to have their self-fulfillment evaluated. Then they would know how successful they had been that year. 

The Fulfillometry Evaluation was given by an elite group of doctors who had spent many years in graduate school learning how to become Fulfillometrists.  Dr. Phil was the most elite of this elite group of doctors, because he was the one who designed the Fulfillometry Evaluation. And almost no one, in the entire history of the Science of Fulfillometry, had been able to fool the evaluation. You cannot fool Phil Ahmet. Try as you might, and many did, but only one succeeded.

The evaluation ranked everyone on a percentile chart from 1 to 100. Most people fell somewhere around the 50th or 60th percentile or so, and that was to be expected. They would then try to improve their rating the next year. If they could raise their score by a point or two the next year, they were considered successful. It was a neat system and everyone was happy with it. Everyone that is, except for Dr. Phil Ahmet.

Dr. Phil went for his own yearly Fulfillometry Evaluation and always ranked in the top 1%, the 99th percentile. That was not a surprise. Everyone expected him to be happy given that he was such an important man. Dr. Phil expected himself to be happy, but Dr. Phil was not happy. Dr. Phil fooled the Fulfillometry Evaluation every time. After all, he designed it. Why shouldn’t he know how to fool it?

Dr. Phil didn't enjoy spending his days telling people whether they were fulfilled or not. He didn't enjoy teaching classes to young Fulfillometry students. He didn't enjoy being the most elite of elite’s. What Dr. Phil did enjoy was going home at night to putter about in his garden.

Every spring he would start his seeds early and by late spring they would be ready to plant in his garden. Daily he would tend them, lovingly watering and feeding them until they grew to enormous size. Dr. Phil had an enormous garden, but even his enormous garden couldn’t hold all the plants that Dr. Phil wanted to grow. So, when the plants had grown enough he would give them away to his friends and neighbors in order to make room to plant some more. Then Dr. Phil would start all over again and plant more seeds. Dr. Phil was happy in his garden.

Now, you remember I told you this was a success story? And even though Dr. Phil was the elite of elite’s in the field of Fulfillometry, he could not be considered a success in his own eyes because he was not happy. So, Dr. Phil left the profession of Fulfillometry. He left his clients. He left his students, and he went home to his garden. It wasn’t long before he had started up a nursery business and Phil was happy.

The months passed and the time for his next Fulfillometry Evaluation rolled around. This time Phil didn’t try to fool the evaluation. He was ranked in the 82th percentile. Now, that is really good, but nothing like the 99th percentile he used to get. Most people thought it was because he had left success behind. But Phil knew better. Phil was happy.

And the moral of this story? Only a fool tries to measure another’s success, and Phil was no fool.


Photo by Jefferzon Giordany on Unsplash