“I’ve always got the critic in my mind,” he tells Rolling Stone. “He keeps me on my toes — ‘Don’t get too blasé about it.’ I don’t want to become too smug, to think I’m great.”
Serene, Yes… Satisfied, Never.
Interpreting anyone’s psyche is a hazardous enterprise. That may be even truer of a worldwide celebrity such as Sir Paul McCartney.
He’s been a part of the soundtrack of so many lives–from conception on, no doubt, in many cases. His songs are intimate. Each listener can feel he’s speaking to us, speaking for us, as individuals. His business and friendship and marital successes and failures are known to anyone who cares to learn about them. Their outline, if not their magnitude, is often familiar to our own experiences.
And yet, Paul McCartney is ultimately playing a public persona, a role played on a stage.
That said, McCartney appears to have accomplished something quite notable on a personal level: he’s serene, yet not satisfied.
As seen in the new Rolling Stone interview, there is a manifest serenity, an aura of being at peace with his life and work. It’s interesting that the etymology of the word serene includes early usage as clearness, clarity, derived from Latin.
That fits: serenity may be attained from a clarity of vision, of understanding.
To be satisfied, on the other hand, is to be sated. It suggests consuming rather than producing; taking rather than giving; being inert rather than evolving. It can incline to pride and sloth and a past focus–rather than humility and energy and a focus on the future.
Is it possible to achieve serenity, when one is stultified by satisfaction?
Serenity, Satisfaction, Service
Self-satisfaction is prideful, the antithesis of service.
Serenity, clarity of comprehension, inclines one toward greater service.
Serenity can be a foundation for aligning one’s life and work and very being into one’s calling.
Satisfaction can be a seductive quicksand from which it becomes hard to extricate oneself.
To be sure, some people may glance at another individual, and, based on their interpretation from a specific moment, confuse another’s serenity with satisfaction.
Sir Paul McCartney illustrates the difference.
If anyone might be forgiven for being satisfied, resting on his laurels, it would be he.
Instead, he’s achieving serenity, serving others, never satisfied, still putting himself on the line.
Not a bad example for all of us to reflect upon and learn from.
McCartney Success Secret
