The best life advise you will ever get. : You are enough just as you are Q: Whats it like to have attended an elite school and then be an utter failure afterward? A: Im a 1980s graduate of an elite institution (not Harvard). My class of approximately 1550 has generated a Nobel prize winner, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a World Bank chief, a few Ambassadors, at least 2 current Governors and 3 Mayors (maybe a senator?), university Presidents, several hedge fund managers (earning much in excess of $10mm/yr), college professors and administrators, an abundance of CEOs, novelists, journalists, scientists, physicians, entrepreneurs, world-class professional athletes (and scholars), policy-makers, elite military, artists and sculptors, filmmakers, ministers and gurus, non-profit founders and executives, chefs, lawyers, farmers, teachers, stay-at-home moms, and now, several early retirees. What a load of over-achievers!! How can any of the rest of us in that class, who are not celebrated/famous/in the public eye, courted by financial institutions, papparazzi, favored charities, luxury real estate agents and art auction houses, 1400 or more of us, look at ourselves, compare ourselves to our one-time peers stupendous, fantastic, visible achievements, and not think were failures? Isnt that what this question is really asking? Both Miguel de Cervantes and Søren Kierkegaard were greatly dismayed by the notion of comparisons. In Don Quixote, Cervantes delusional and wise-beyond-measure eponymous knight recounts to his squire Sancho Panza his conversation with an admirer of the lady Doiia Belerma: ...that if she [Belarma] appeared to me somewhat ill-favored, or not so beautiful as fame reported her, it was because of the bad nights and worse days that she passed in that enchantment, as I could see by the great dark circles round her eyes,and her sickly complexion ; ...by the grief her own heart suffers because of that which she holds in her hand perpetually, and which recalls and brings back to her memory the sad fate of her lost lover; were it not for this, hardly would the great Dulcinea del Toboso, so celebrated in all these parts, and even in all the world, come up to her for beauty, grace, and gayety. Hold hard! said I at this, tell your story as you ought, Senor Don Montesinos, for you know very well that all comparisons are odious, and there is no occasion to compare one person with another; the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso is what she is, and the lady Doiia Belerma is what she is and has been, and thats enough. Kierkegaard uses an Aesopian-style fable to make a similar point: he imagines a conversation between a bird and a lily. This little bird was a naughty bird. Instead of putting itself in the lilys place, instead of rejoicing in its loveliness and rejoicing in its innocent bliss fulness, the bird wanted to give itself an air of importance by feeling its freedom and letting the lily feel its bondage. And not only this, but the little bird; was at the same time chatty and reported all sorts of things, true and untrue, about other places where lilies far more splendid were found in great abundance, where there was an atmosphere of peace and gaiety, a fragrance, a splendour of colour, a chorus of birds, surpassing all description; So the bird reported, and every one of its reports ended with the remark, deeply humiliating to the lily, that in comparison with such glory it looked like nothing at all, indeed that it was so insignificant that it was questionable what right it had to be called a lily. Then the lily became troubled. The more it heard the bird say, the more troubled it became. It no longer slept quietly by night, nor awakened with gladness in the morning. It felt itself bound and imprisoned, it found the murmur of the stream tiresome and the day long.; It began now to be concerned with itself and the conditions of its life, in self-commiseration--so long were the days. ...If the troubled Lily had been content with being a lily, then it would not have become troubled; if it had not become troubled, then it would have remained where it stood--where it stood in all its loveliness if it had stayed there, it would have been the very lily the parson talked about on Sunday when he repeated the words of the Gospel: Consider the lilies, I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.... The lily is man; The naughty little bird is the restless thought of comparison which roves far and wide, unstable and capricious, and culls unwholesome knowledge about invidious differences.... For it is true that differences exist and that a great deal may be said about them....In the distress of comparison the troubled person may go at last so far that in view of the difference he forgets that he is a man, so that in despair he conceives himself so different from other men that he even conceives he is different from what is meant by being a man, just as the lily wasto inconspicuous that it was questionable if it was really a lily. Its difficult to measure success, except from the inside. In my experience, few of us spend much time thinking about whether or not other people think were successful in comparison to others; most of us are too busy trying to get by, doing and undoing the things we enjoy or cant bear or are satisfied or dissatisfied by, or curious about or feel we have to do, to worry much about that. We might compare our performance on an examination, or in getting market share, or in how easily we obtained grant funding; but to compare ourselves against others in the totality of success at being a man is, indeed odious and a futile exercise. A few years ago, I was between jobs in a career I didnt ever imagine myself in, terrified and lacking confidence or courage to take risks, and stuck. I visited a college friend I hadnt seen in 15 years; she was married with two children, a stay-at-home mom who had had a successful decade+ career as an attorney in a big city juvenile justice system who now lived in the suburbs. She has multiple sclerosis, and its starting to be increasingly difficult for her to get by. My memory of her before that time was of a strong, independent, fiercely intelligent, beautiful, compassionate woman. She was still every inch that, and even moreso. She was making me coffee one morning as I sat at the kitchen table. I was complaining, feeling frustrated, feeling badly about where I was in life and what I was doing or not doing. I said I really, really need to get a job. She turned from the counter and said why? I said Because I need to make money, I need to be doing something I feel good about, I need to... and she stopped me, again. And said You are enough just as you are. Sometimes we forget that we are human. Its enough just to be. Many of the women that were in my college class chose to stay-at-home and raise their families after a few years in the workplace; probably many more than would be the case in classes graduating over the past two decades. (One of my best high school friends who went to Dartmouth had, for a while, a successful career as a geologist, and now has a even more brilliant career as a compassionate and caring, community-minded human being). Many of us, men and women, didnt have or werent able to follow the path we thought wed follow when we graduated. Some had family demands; some got sick. Some developed addictions, or found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some died. Whether you are an utter failure or not is a construct of your ego. Many of us are not the kinds of successful thats easy to see. Many of us who have enjoyed say, financial success, were extremely fortunate, but perhaps not so lucky in love, in family, or in doing what it was we thought wed wanted to do with our lives. Many of us understand that no matter how hard you work or how brilliant you might be, you might miss being at the right place at the right time; and that luck has far more to do with success than you might imagine. There may be a few of us in that class who have achieved great things that wont ever be known or celebrated. There are those of us who have struggled with darkness who are very, very happy to simply still be here, and to be able to celebrate the beauty of the world around us. There are those of us whose best, most successful and most fruitful years are yet to come. One member of my college class became a college professor. His name was Randy Pausch. He gave this inspirational lecture, The Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams: He had a lot of good things to say about what it feels like to be human, and how to deal with failure and success and comparisons. He said: If I only had three words of advice, they would be, Tell the Truth. If got three more words, Id add, all the time.” Randy also said: “Time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think. Theres not enough time to spend it making comparisons. I cant pretend to know much about Cervantes, or Kierkegaard. I think Randy Pausch lived in a freshman dorm across campus but I dont remember ever meeting him. I knew a few of the people in my class who have become super-stars in their fields; but Id guess that most of them wouldnt remember me, maybe they would if I got famous for something-or-other. I know that I have considered myself an utter failure many times in the course of my life, and have on occasion disappointed those who expected me to perform differently; and I know that some people consider me to be a role model and a success. I am extraordinarily grateful for the experiences I had at my elite educational institution; and I am almost absurdly proud of being witness to what many of my college friends and acquaintances have achieved and continue to achieve, whether they are famous and successful-in-the-obvious-ways, or not. I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to be part of that elite institution, and appreciate the lessons I learned and continue to learn from the people I met there. Our experience of being human is rich, unique, and utterly beyond comparison. And whether or not we think, at any point in time, that we are utter failures - theres always, hopefully, tomorrow, or better right now, to try to make it better, to meet our own expectations of ourselves, develop our own standards and measures of who we are, and to hold fast with integrity to our own personal, hard-won Truths. Theres time to be happy, and grateful. I look to my college class and see example after example after example of amazing complex diverse human experience. Its awesome to be an utter failure in such astonishing good company.
Posted on: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 14:44:40 +0000
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