How do we define whether a lifetime is a success or failure.

We are all Gods and Goddesses. Our lifetimes are our Creations, we are not theirs. Our lifetimes are our responsibility. We are the only people who have the absolute power in determining how they are lived. We cannot ask others to live our lifetimes or solve our problems. The best they can do is help, other people cannot do our work for us. All of us start from places where things are less than perfect and the fact that your lifetime is in a bad place is no excuse for not taking responsibility for yourself. If anything, the fact that your lifetime is in the shitter is a reason to take responsibility for where you are and to begin the work of fixing it.

We must live the philosophy: Once we reach the age of being a legal adult, the excuses stop and the solutions start.
My definition of whether a lifetime is a success or failure is the degree of self responsibility we display in terms of our Creations. I have seen what happens when we fail to take responsibility for our Creations and it wasn't pretty. A lifetime where responsibility has been taken is a beautiful event.
We must work at making our Creations something that is a joyous event. We must display the capacity for honesty about ourselves as people and a willingness to do the work necessary to resolve our problems. We must view "problems" as challenges to be overcome and their resolution to be celebrated.
We must live with great passion. Mark once asked me what did it take to complete a Bachelor of Arts as a mature age student and with a young child in the house. He thought it was a memory event. My answer was that it was all about need and passion: How fucking badly did you need it and how fucking passionate are you about what you are doing. The fact is that if you want something badly enough you will do it. If you are passionate about something then there is joy, there is life and there is success.
Mark never did these things. He never had the need or the passion. The result was that he not only allowed toxic people into his lifetime, he also allowed them to stay even when their toxicity was well established. He even erred so far as to accord the toxic his time and respect. An example of the most toxic in Marks life is below.

He made excuses for the way his lifetime was. Mark never hated the way that he was or the way he was treated enough to change and to take responsibility for his Creation. As a God he was, at best, out of control.
When we live the philosophy so boldly highlighted above we understand that we have the ability and responsibility to make changes in our Creations. Mark whilst knowing the toxicity of his lifetime, never once reached the critical mass of wanting to change his life and deciding that that change no matter how painful it was going to be, was going to happen. He preferred the known toxicity to the unknown freedom of responsibility.
Because he lacked the need and the passion, Mark was lazy. He wanted the impossible to happen. He wanted a magic medication or a father figure in the form of a psychiatrist to fix his many physical and emotional health problems for him. It is an observable fact that the universe doesn't work this way. We cannot abrogate responsibility for our lifetimes and expect them to succeed. We cannot contract out our own healing and personal growth. Which is what Mark wanted to happen.
A Creation where responsibility is assumed and it is an event that displays need and passion frequently ends well. If we live long enough we leave  few enough things undone. We complete "bucket lists" or tick off as many things as we are able to. We leave few regrets and a tidyness in our relationships. Mark left nothing but lose ends in the form of those undealt with health issues. He left me wondering why he never took responsibility for himself and where the passion had gone...if it had ever existed in the first place.
Mark failed.
My resolve is to honour him by pursuing my passions with a deeper need, to have more responsibility for my life. My success, will in part, be born from Marks failure.
Can you learn the lessons Mark has to teach?