Meaning of Success

Many of us celebrated another successful alumni banquet last Saturday. The alumni committee does a fantastic job, and we RHS and LRHS alums should be grateful for their commitment to this great tradition.

If I haven’t said thank you, then here it is, “Thank you!”

There were a lot of laughs, memories and great conversations on Saturday. As usual there were a whole lot of conversations that started out, “Do you remember the time…”

Another question that was overheard was, “Have you heard from…do you think they’ll ever comeback for a reunion?” For some people a reunion means living in the past and some people certainly could care less about revisiting those days.

I’m not sure what the reasoning is behind not coming back to the hometown to visit with old friends and classmates. Heck, there were people that attended school in Ritzville, didn’t graduate here but came to the reunion because they had fond memories and good friends from those classes and wanted to celebrate with them.

Master of Ceremonies Mike Howell from the Class of 1960 said it best with these words, “I only lived in Ritzville for 10 years, but Ritzville is my hometown!”

I’ve heard that from more than one individual in the last 10 years. There is something about having lived here! But not everyone felt that way I’m sure.

Everyone has those dreams about what they want to do with their lives after graduating. Those dreams have a way of changing now and then. Just because we didn’t succeed in an endeavor or two doesn’t mean failure.

I’ve learned a lot more about myself after falling on my face, so to speak, than I ever did having great things happen to me. And the one thing I do know is that I appreciate those learning experiences as they helped me become a better husband, employee and person in general.

I also know that having done good things on the athletic field or court really doesn’t have a lot of merit anywhere else unless one is able to compete at that next level. We’ve had some great Bronco athletes graduate that didn’t play at the college level.

It doesn’t mean they weren’t good enough but many did not want to go to a Division III or NAIA college for their education and most likely weren’t quite good enough for the Division I arena. The successes that these kids had were team oriented and not so much individualistic.

I remember a long time ago when I was in school our teacher asked us what the true meaning of success was. Our answers were all over the board.

Success is being rich; success is having power; success is being happy; success is having a loving family; success is having a career; success is getting a good education, and so on.

Our teacher being the wise person that he was said, “The meaning of success is defined by you. Whatever you feel that success is the right answer for you!”

After he said that I think we all somewhat modified what our definition of success was going to be because we all had successes in school in various endeavors along the way.

Being successful takes a lot longer for some than for others. I know several classmates that have been retired for the last five to 10 years while I’m still working. I’m happy for those people because they wanted to retire and they were able to. They are now doing a lot of the things that they’ve dreamt about doing while they were sitting at their desks.

I could have retired a year ago but I’m not ready yet. And I have to say that my wife isn’t ready for me to be retired yet either. I look at not being retired as a success for me whereas retirement for my friends has been successful for them.

I do know that those of us that are still working seem to be doing just fine and we don’t seem to be miserable. Many of those retirees are pretty happy too. But there are a few retirees that have said they quit working too soon.

I went to a couple of class reunions on Saturday hoping to see some schoolmates that haven’t been back to Ritzville for a long time.

I hope they know that our friendship is the reason I want to see them again because we were definitely successful as friends and teammates. And that is a definition I can live with!