{"id":4993,"date":"2011-04-17T14:16:21","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T21:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josemarquez.com\/xsml\/?p=4993"},"modified":"2011-04-17T14:16:21","modified_gmt":"2011-04-17T21:16:21","slug":"the-agony-of-success-kings-of-pastry-and-the-pixar-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/2011\/04\/17\/the-agony-of-success-kings-of-pastry-and-the-pixar-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The agony of success: Kings of Pastry and The Pixar Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The ancient Greeks defined <a href=\"<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Arete\">excellence<\/a> as becoming one&#8217;s self \u2013 nothing less and nothing more. To become excellent is thus to recognize and fulfill one&#8217;s destiny \u2013\u00a0the recognition and fulfillment being one and the same achievement.<\/p>\n<p>In contemporary America, the pursuit of excellence is often described as self-actualization or success. Both terms diminish the power of  excellence \u2013\u00a0the pursuit of which can drive a person to madness and\/or ruin. (Consider the fate of professional athletes, let alone artists.)<\/p>\n<p>Two recent movies, <a href=\"http:\/\/movies.netflix.com\/WiMovie\/Kings_of_Pastry\/70132743?trkid=496624\">Kings of Pastry<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/movies.netflix.com\/WiMovie\/The_Pixar_Story\/70083532?trkid=496624\">The Pixar Story<\/a>, are breathtaking reminders of excellence as both awesome and devastating to behold.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Agon\">agony<\/a> of success, indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ancient Greeks defined<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}