The Other Side of Success

Nothing and Everything
Ideas too readily accepted, especially in the heat of excitement, often develop into concepts about what is valuable. As time goes on, those false concepts combine to form part of the thought system from which you desire, decide, and act. In many cases it is this self-developed and distorted belief system that “helps” you to determine your goals, telling you what is worth striving for now, based on what you, in your confusion and youthful exuberance, told it was important before.
My first truly fancy home was an excellent example of this. It was an all-glass contemporary perched over the fourth green of an exclusive country club, with sparkling views of lush fairways and of the ocean beyond. When I was younger, I had been in a number of fancy homes and always admired them; they were a symbol of what I then perceived as one of the greatest proofs of “arrival.” However, when I arrived and purchased my own symbol, I found nothing but intrusion. There was always the bother of a non-family member in or around the house: a daily maid, three weekly gardeners, a pest-control man, tree men to keep the trees and shrubbery under control, a pool man to take care of the fountain and waterfall, electricians to maintain the outside lighting and speakers. And that’s not to mention the marble specialists, painters, and sundry repairmen, decorators, and window washers. Experts in this or that always seemed to be around. Did the place look great? Yes. Did visitors usually say, “What a lovely house?” Yes. Did it offer me contentment, security, privacy, and quiet? Not at all.
That “the more” is actually more is one of the great deceptions of the mind. But “the more” no longer works for me; neither, I believe, does it really work for others.
Not that many years ago, I had lunch with a no-longer-young ex-vice presidential candidate. He was a national figure. Obviously, he had lost, however, and was now out of politics and into business. He did not seem much interested in national or international subjects any more. In fact, all he could talk about was his exciting new business venture and how he just knew it would succeed. Think about it: Get through a tough life, full of bruising battles. Become a powerful politician, well-known on the national stage. Thereafter, have an instantly recognizable face, as well as an international reputation. Reach a ripe old age and find yourself mainly interested in one more business deal—to reach more of “the more.” To him, sensible. To me, questionable.
I used to play golf with a (now deceased) multi-multi-millionaire who after missing a shot often threw his club farther than he had hit his ball, cursing loudly as he did so. Was he truly successful? Clearly not. I had a father who did custodial work impeccably and with a dignitas unmatched in most corporate boardrooms. Was he successful? Absolutely.
Helping my father at work as a boy (before my rebellion kicked in) helped me learn later that the “what” of life is nothing more than the particular position you occupy at this moment. The “how” is your performance within that role. What is nothing; how is everything. The world states with certitude that title, position, and influence all have great meaning, yet in truth they are neutral: means, not ends. To be the best (banker, lawyer, father, mother, gravedigger, nurse) you can be at this moment, in this situation, is to fill a neutral form with content, to find the end you seek right here and right now.
This does not mean that you always do what you do perfectly. Neither does it suggest that you spend countless hours at it, or do not spend countless hours at it. Perhaps it is your present love. All it means is that you do your very best with what you have now.
If you seek a high-profile wealth-larded life and place that goal before personal growth, you will get exactly what you seek, which means you lose even when you seem to gain. Like many, you may believe that to walk the aisles of any store able to purchase anything you see means freedom. Real freedom, however, is walking those aisles and not being taken in by the glitter of what you see. This doesn’t mean that you don’t buy things; it just means you no longer believe you cannot do without them. In effect, you sometimes like, but you no longer lust.
Yet, to one still lost in the madness of consumption and the accumulation of the more, even the $475,000 watch recently featured in The Robb Report makes some kind of sense. It is only when you come to accept yourself as a student that you can see your Rolex as just a timepiece; your suit, no matter how fine its cloth and cut, only a uniform; your car merely a means of transportation; excessive servants a bother; the jet a convenience; and the house, or houses, no matter the number of rooms or grandeur of the grounds, no more than a roof over your head when you go to sleep.
A buccaneer of business rarely perceives his golden bracelets as handcuffs and his house as just another tent in the big-tent competition. How could he? For if he understood their essential neutrality and basic meaninglessness, then what he did to get them would cease to have meaning as well. Yet what would he do if he stopped striving for the more? Who would he be if he did not run and fight and win and outgain? Unable to face the thought that his existence so far has been senseless, he fears the loss of wanting as though it were a loss of self. Yet, as intimidating as that may sound, he must ask himself whether the more is actually more or whether it is merely like an appetite that grows as it is fed.
Look around you. There has to be something askew with the whole system when you see a seventy-five-year-old multi-multi-millionaire jumping up and down in excitement because his horse just won a race. He did not win the race; his horse did. All he did was pay for it. Someone else trained the horse, another person rode the horse, and the horse itself ran the race. So why is he so overjoyed? Did the horse’s victory make him a winner? Surely he is behaving as though it had. Would he be as equally deprived and depressed if the horse had lost the race? If so, why? It is only a horse race, after all, and at that, just one race among many.