I recently posted a short reflection on FaceBook and LinkedIn on what I called "Two kinds of people: Exploiters and Enhancers." I didn't mean to imply that you or I will be essentially one or the other for all time. It's just a way of characterizing the main operating system of a person at a given time or stage of our lives. I think we can transition from one category to the other, either for good or ill, depending on the direction of the change.
Exploiters are primarily extractors, seeking to take from individuals, systems, institutions, or processes—from the world around them—what they want for their own perceived ascendancy or self-benefit. Enhancers by contrast are expanders, seeking to improve and grow a little piece of the world, and themselves as well as others, in the process.
I was momentarily tempted to use the contrasting terms "givers and getters" but then realized that when we truly give from the heart, we always get. The distinction I have in mind is more about ultimate orientation, fundamental leaning, and focus. The enhancers of the world are never focused on taking or seeking their own aggrandizement or ascendancy over others. They are creative builders and givers first and foremost, and whatever they get or receive as a result is a nice side effect and never the sole concern or even the main motive for what they're doing.
Too many people in too many sectors of modern life admire and nearly worship the exploiters and extractors as what they consider “conquering heroes” to be emulated, and to become. They use words like "builders" and "creators" to mask that whatever this mindset builds or creates is merely meant to be a tool or instrument intended to strip-mine the riches of the world for the sake of the bloated ego self.
We're here to be enhancers, not exploiters, and no deep satisfaction can be experienced apart from our intent.
It was a further thought of the morning that perhaps what I’ve long call “true success” isn't even about the concrete external results of our best enhancing, expansive efforts in the world. Maybe true success, deeply meaningful success, is really about an ongoing practice, an exalted but also ordinary process of everyday efforts at enhancement, not at all primarily dependent on the external consequences, however big or small, that may result from that practice and its processes. Outer results always happen to us, and not just due to our own efforts but arise, or not, because of larger structures, processes, and people's choices that are not of our own making. Inner results are different. And maybe that's the real realm of true success.
True success is about what you do, and not about what happens to you. And no success is true that isn't about the intent to enhance, at least a little bit, those around us, a piece of the world, and the state of our own souls as creative enhancers and expanders in our attitudes and actions.
Posted
