Bayou
JoB, I don’t think that what I said is brave, I think it just reiterates that “success” is a personal perception. As Zenguy aptly points out, we are a visual species. We certainly can’t determine the sum of someone’s life experiences with a glance but I think our brains can very quickly sum up a host of other visual clues.
I’m not a judgemental person but I am a natural observer. I don’t think that the statement that I made is necessarily crass or wrong, I just think that we measure with the ingredients that we have at hand. When measuring ourselves, we have a lifetime worth of experiences to review but when looking at others we are only reviewing what meets the eye- the physical. We can’t even pretend to know the emotional/spiritual/intellectual well-being of someone else which I think many would equate with the (intangible) success of finding one’s place of belonging in the world.
In simpler terms, I think we all define our own happiness and our own success.