What is a successful life ?

Last night I was reading recent news which was about a well-known Japanese  cartoon writer and his roller-coaster life .

The cartoon writer, who we will call 　"Y", 　got huge success with his cartoon in the 1970s when he was 20 years old and his cartoon series was shown on TV every week.

Y got married when he was 23 years old, after he became successful , and had two children and bought a house and also a condo for his office in Tokyo, Japan.

He was earning about 40 to 50 million yen /year from the series of the cartoon for about 6 years.

He also started to make other cartoon series, but for some reason, Y started feeling pressure to draw and write and get ideas for cartoons and he was unable to get another hit from his other cartoons, after his only cartoon which got big hit series had completed.

From the stress, he started escaping from his work of cartoon drawing /writing,　and he got addiction for gambling and went to night clubs every night.

and he spent all his savings that he had earned from his popular cartoon.

Whenever he was in front of a white paper to draw a new cartoon, he got stressed out and started shaking and had feelings of nausea, like the symptoms of a panic attack.

He just could not continue his work from it.
He also thought about suicide.

Also because of his tax accountant 's bad work, Y had to pay over $1 million yen from a inaccurate income tax report.   

But they didn’t have such money anymore.

His wife had a degree in nursing so she started working again to help her family.
 
and he started working as a janitor in a station building for a year.

and then he suddenly left home and didn't come back for 3 months.

and when he came back home, his wife was welcoming him and happy to see him without any complaints.

He started working as a guard as well as a janitor.

Fortunately, soon , in  one of the trendy dramas, the main character actor was wearing a T-shirt which had Y's cartoon character on it, and since then the cartoon t-shirts started selling well and Y was blessed by it and received a　lot of income from it.

He then started to have addiction to gambling and going to night bars again.

but his wife suddenly got health issue  and stayed in a hospital.

and Y became more supportive to his family and decreased the time of going to night bars and gambling Majang game.

When he and his wife were worried about their future financially again, Y got another luck from his old cartoon which was used as  a drama this year. 

and now it's showing up TV.

He is now enjoying playing with his grand child and playing Majang game and sometimes going to night clubs. 

and he won second place in a Majang competition.

While he is playing with his grand child, he started to be able to draw cartoon again.

He had not been able to draw it since his panic attacks  a long time ago.  He is not suffering to draw anymore, but enjoying.

Y and his family look happy now.
Their life still continues.




Personally, I and my brother really loved his cartoon and enjoyed watching and reading it when we were children. 

Sometimes there was emotional scenes and I cried.

Never knew his life was such a hard life.

Whenever I read biographies of famous people who have ever got career success in their life, it always makes me to re-think what is a real successful life  ?  

When we are seeing only one part of life, it can look like super successful life.

However when we look at the whole of the life until when it's ending, almost all the people's life are a roller coaster life.

and I noticed especially that life for people who got huge career success have super ups and downs in their life.

In the public , we can see only the bright side of life for famous people's lives.

But when I read about their biographies, there were many behind the scenes which were darker side of life.

and not only their personal life but their kids's life, grand children's life can also be influenced by their personal life.

According to the law of the universe,

" All the happiness has positive qi- energy in one's behind the scenes. "

" All the unhappiness has negative qi-energy in one's behind the scenes."

Because everything is made up with energy and it's always that - any particular energy is attracted to the same kind of energy, 

and I was wondering why people who got huge success in life often have a super roller coaster life ?

and I found that many people got stress from pressure and public expectation.

and when they could not get the same successful result,
some are trying to escape from the reality and getting addiction to alcohol , or drugs or gambling or anything which makes them feel better.


There are some creative workers (  such as writers, musicians, singers, composers, entertainers, comedians, etc  ) who only had one or two hits,   

then disappeared from public , often had a super roller coaster life.

While they had no pressure, they can show their talent and creativity effortlessly, naturally and the ideas kept coming to them.


But after experiencing a big success they get pressure of public expectations and critics to make another hit, to make something that the public wants or what is trendy, they started feeling stress and it can block their ability by not being themselves. 

They are not free to create what they want, they have high pressure to follow public demand.

One popular singer who got huge hit with her song around 1980s and looked no problem to sing and dance on the stage,  suddenly got panic attack from stage freight.

and since then she can not be on the stage anymore.

She is still having mental issues with it.

I wonder why suddenly it happened, even though she was fine before ?

It's all coming from the mind and imagination.
Human minds are very complicated and easy to be influenced by the environment.


Until when we get success, we are only thinking about the goal = success.

and then after success is achieved,  pressure to comply with people's expectation to get another big hit.



What is a successful life ?

I think

* Having feeling of satisfaction by doing what we love with passion.

* Having Happy feeling.  ( whatever we achieve our goal what we want, at the end having happy feeling is always our main goal, always. )

* Succeed to give something valuable to society in this life

* Make many people happy

* Be able to live with love and harmony


Purpose of this life I think is having joyful life, doing what we love.

People struggle with their life by trying to change others which is impossible, and unnatural.

and not being themselves for having feeling of fear to lose what we got.


Feel happiness from within before you even achieve your goal can be happy successful life.

What is happening outside doesn't matter, first we must see and feel happiness before it happens outside.


I felt like we really can not know whether one's life is successful or not until when one leave this world.