A life’s success can be measured by unbroken appetite for living, not by achievement

Evidence

Before occupying myself with my estate, with the education of my son, with the writing of books, I was bound to know why I did these things. Till I know the reasons for my own acts, I can do nothing, I cannot live. — Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 48 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

We were utterly hopeless, completely out of our depth, there was not a snowball’s chance in hell of anything coming of this, we wouldn’t even be good enough to perform at a school party, but although this was the reality we never experienced it as such. On the contrary, this was what gave our lives meaning. It wasn’t my music we played, but Jan Vidar’s, and it went against everything I believed in, yet this is what I trusted. The intro to ‘Smoke on the Water’, the very incarnation of stupidity, the very antithesis of cool, was what I sat practising at Ve School in 1983: first the guitar riff, then the cymbal, chicka-chicka, chicka-chicka, chicka-chicka, chicka-chicka, then the bass drum, boom, boom, boom, then the snare, tick, tick, tick, and then the daft bass line started, where we often looked at each other with a smile while nodding our heads and shaking our legs as the chorus, played completely out of synch, took off. — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 344 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Taste earns status only when proven anchored to a life history — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 267; Hopeless artistic ambition can itself give a life its meaning — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 344; Life’s meaning cannot be found in external achievements alone. — Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 48 (+1 more)

Related

• Hopeless artistic ambition can itself give a life its meaning (similarity 0.86)
• Life’s meaning cannot be found in external achievements alone. (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Life’s meaning cannot be found in external achievements alone. #corroborates (0.90) — Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 48
• Hopeless artistic ambition can itself give a life its meaning #corroborates (0.80) — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 344