08/28/2026
I grew up reading this poem, ‘Success’ who I thought was written by Ralph Waldo Emerson. My mom cross stitched it and it hung in our downstairs bathroom for as long as I can remember it. This poem stating ‘To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived…
This is to have succeeded.’ and an Anne Frank quote ‘How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” have been the pillars of which I try to live my life by and have since I was very young…mostly thanks to my incredible mom who shared them with me and lives these principles in her life.
I just learned today though that the original piece was written a woman, Bessie Anderson Stanley. She wrote the piece as an entry for a writing contest in Brown Book Magazine in 1904, answering the prompt ‘What is success?’ in 100 words or less. She won and received $250 for her beautiful words.
A year before she died though, a newspaper columnist published a rewritten, modern version of the text and claimed it was an abridged quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. From that moment on, it was republished and continued to be attributed to Emerson, not Bessie.
I just found this out this morning while writing about this poem that has meant so much to me. True her original version is slightly different, but the core tenant remains, to be a force of love, of good, to be a safe place for those you encounter, to help bring light to this world one interaction at a time…this is to have succeeded.
I hope this lands in your heart wherever it finds you today and I hope you know that in the face of all the injustices in the world, you still have the power to make this world better, one loving moment at a time.
